WATERTOWN COMPROMISE

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>

WATERTOWN COMPROMISE
As much as possible, we see this newsgroup as an opportunity to report 
successes and challenges in the community oversight of military cleanup 
programs. We recently received the following testimony, delivered at a 
May 13, 1996 public hearing on a proposed cleanup plan in the Boston 
area. It describes a compromise reached between the Army and the local 
community. The compromise has broad, but definitely not unanimous local 
support.
Lenny Siegel
 
TESTIMONY OF SUSAN FALKOFF
My name is Susan Falkoff. For the past 9 years, working for a thorough 
evaluation and cleanup of the Watertown Arsenal has been an important 
part of my life. I have worn a number of different hats in my efforts. 
I have worked as a member of Watertown Citizens for Environmental 
Safety, as the WCES representative to the Reuse Committee, as the chair 
of the Environmental Subcommittee of the Reuse Committee and as the 
community co-chair of the Restoration Advisory Board. My work and the 
hard work of many others will soon culminate in the Record of Decision 
which will incorporate the comments you are hearing tonight on the 
proposed plan for the outdoor remediation of this site.
During these years, I have seen the military's respect for the 
interests of citizens of affected communities grow, and so my comments 
tonight are not in response to a work which was completed in isolation 
but one which resulted from a long collaboration between the defense 
department, the regulators, the members of the community and our 
elected officials. In this regard, I want to particularly mention the 
invaluable help the community has received from Representative Joe 
Kennedy in our negotiations with the Pentagon and also the determined 
intervention of our State Senator, Warren Tolman in our dealings with 
the state.
At Restoration Advisory Board meetings, Army and regulatory officials 
have spent many hours listening to and communicating with citizens 
about methods of cleaning contaminated soil. It took several revisions 
of this Proposed Plan for the Army to explain clearly its rationale for 
choosing the method they have (chemical oxidation) but in the Proposed 
Plan we are commenting on tonight, I do believe the explanation is 
clear and adequate and I believe that this method of remediation is a 
sensible and appropriate one, and that the backup method of offsite 
disposal is a realistic second choice.
Identifying an appropriate level of cleanup has been much more 
controversial. When the community began its discussions with the Army, 
pristine cleanup was our goal. At one early meeting, I stated, "Why 
don't you just assume we want to build a really big day care center?" 
The problem with that stance was that no one in town really believed 
this was the best reuse for this historic site. We also came to realize 
that once something is broken you can fix it but it will never be 
exactly the same, and the land could never really be returned to a 
pristine state.
We gradually modified our requests to the more technically acceptable 
language, "for unrestricted reuse" and for a long time, the community 
was united around this goal. For some, it remains a goal which should 
not be compromised, and I respect them for stating forcefully their 
case. In the meantime, however, the Army has developed guidance for 
cleaning sites to the intended reuse as stated in a reuse plan. This 
has not sat well with a community that developed a reuse plan as a goal 
but wanted very much the flexibility to adjust to new ideas and 
changing economic realities, which could potentially include more 
housing. In time, our thinking evolved further, to question whether the 
flexibility to develop the entire site for housing really was 
necessary. Some members of WCES, while doggedly pursuing unrestricted 
reuse, have long questioned building residential units in areas where 
depleted uranium was burned, no matter how high the standards used for 
defining cleanup.
With this is mind, for the last several months I have given much 
thought to which aspects of the cleanup really mattered most of me. For 
safety, aesthetic, and logical reasons, it was clear to me that all the 
green areas visible from the Commander's Mansion should be available 
for unrestricted use. Housing maybe, day care, maybe, university 
classrooms, perhaps, summer camp programs for youth - anything. This 
lovely area, overlooking the Charles River, should not be carved up. It 
clearly operates from a landscaping point of view as a single entity, 
regardless of the way it is carved out in the Reuse Plan. Fortunately, 
the Army has heard this request, deemed it reasonable and feasible, and 
on April 29 Colonel Blose came from the Pentagon to a Reuse Committee 
meeting to announce that there would be an addendum to the Record of 
Decision in which the current Proposed Plan is modified to include the 
cleanup to residential standards of the Areas called "F" and "T." With 
this change, the community has achieved the goal of restoring the green 
areas for safe, unrestricted future use. The consensus of the committee 
that night was that, with this change, the Proposed Plan is fully 
satisfactory. On behalf of the community, I thanked Colonel Blose for 
this change at the April 29 meeting of the Reuse Committee, and I would 
like to do so again tonight for the public record.
With the change presented by Colonel Blose, I am satisfied with the 
Proposed Plan. I believe it will protect the safety of users, abutters 
and trespassers on this property to the extent possible by technical 
and scientific standards as we understand today. I also would like to 
go on record as specifically grateful to the technical assistance 
program of EPA, without which I would not be able to state these 
opinions with the level of confidence I feel tonight.
I thank you for the opportunity to make these remarks, and I look 
forward to continued collaboration with military officials and state 
and federal regulators as we move forward on the actual cleanup and 
development of the site.