Charlton Board of Health moves toward bidding cap at Flint Road landfill after DEP approvals

Gary Magnuson, town consultant from CMG, told the Town of Charlton Board of Health on March 11 that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has granted approvals that clear the way to proceed toward a capped remedy at the Flint Road landfill and to reduce sampling at some affected homes.

The board heard that DEP agreed the town may move several homes with four consecutive quarters of no PFAS detections to annual testing rather than quarterly testing. Magnuson said that MassDEP currently regulates a subset of PFAS (referred to in the discussion as “PFAS 6”), while the town’s monitoring covers 18 compounds. “DEP said the ones that have no PFAS detections at all in 4 quarters, you can stop and do them annually,” Magnuson said.

The status report submitted in February included a formal IRA modification request that asks DEP to reduce sampling frequency for households that show no detections. Magnuson said DEP approved reducing sampling to annual for homes with four quarters of non-detects; one house with sporadic detections will remain on more frequent monitoring.

Magnuson outlined the next steps…