[CPEO-MEF] VOCs, CLOSURE: Former Ft. Devens (MA)

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Bringing a sweet touch to dirty work at Devens
Molasses is essential ingredient in effort to clean toxins from soil

By John Dyer
Boston Globe
August 10, 2008

The last vestiges of the Green Berets still haven't left Devens. They 
hold their ground at the former base's airstrip, spread out and dug in. 
Bombs and bullets can't dislodge them. They can't be starved out. But 
show up with molasses, and they'll slowly fade away.

A byproduct of turning sugarcane into raw sugar, great for baking and 
essential to distilling rum, molasses, surprisingly, is the key 
ingredient in a plan to clean up soil contaminated by Special Forces 
soldiers who used dry-cleaning fluid to wash their parachutes at the 
now-defunct Moore Army Airfield.

Years of dumping dry-cleaning fluid into the base's wells resulted in a 
plume of cancer-causing perchloroethylenes, or PCEs, under the airstrip, 
which is within the historic boundaries of Ayer. Left alone, the plume 
could eventually leach into the area's water supplies, specialists said. 
But thanks to the sticky sweet syrup, the specialists expect that 
disaster to be avoided.



...

For the entire article, see
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/08/10/bringing_a_sweet_touch_to_dirty_work_at_devens/

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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