Southborough seeks $100,000 to design cleanup after tests show lead under former Atwood Road water tower

The Southborough Select Board on Oct. 7 agreed to support a town-meeting article asking voters to appropriate $100,000 to advance design and bidding for remediation of lead-contaminated soil beneath the site of a former water tank on Atwood Road.

Tim Tees of engineering firm PAR, engaged by the town, told the board that a July 2024 field investigation and a more detailed grid of follow-up samples found elevated lead concentrations concentrated under the former tank’s footprint and at several small “hot spots” nearby. "We found that, in fact, the lead paint from the tank had fallen off into the soil as we had suspected, and left some fairly significant concentrations of lead, in that soil, specifically directly beneath the tank," Tees said.

Why it matters: the tank was a steel structure built in the 1930s and demolished in the early 1990s; paints used during its life are likely to have contained lead. PAR’s testing showed many samples above the state cleanup standard of 200 parts per million (ppm), and a few spots with concentrations high enough that, if excavated and shipped off-site without treatment, would be classified as hazardous waste under the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP), greatly increasing disposal costs.

What the town will do next: the $100,000 article on the special town meeting warrant for Oct. 27 would fund work to move the project from investigation to bidding. Tees said the budget request is intended to produce a remedial plan, a risk assessment that defines limits of excavation based on likely future site uses, survey plans, and technical specifications for contractors. "The town meeting appropriation is to take it beyond the investigation, develop that remedial plan, and then get the project out to bid for cleanup," Tees told the board.

Scope of contamination and testing: PAR reported it carried out an initial set of samples and later a dense grid focused beneath the tank footprint. The team did about 520 samples total, taking repeated 6-inch intervals down to roughly 54 inches near the…