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Valley Screw Superfund site: decades of cleanup work, monitoring wells remain and questions about reuse persist
Summary
Reporters recap the Valley Screw site’s Superfund history: contamination led to an EPA national priorities listing in 1982, multiple remediation systems ran through 2014 when active groundwater treatment was stopped and monitoring wells remain; the abandoned Valley Screw building and land-use restrictions tied to cleanup constraints leave reuse questions unresolved.
Reporter Mike Dempsey reviewed decades of remediation work at the former Valley Screw Manufacturing site at 64 Washington Street and said that cleanup actions have reduced contamination but left long-term constraints.
Dempsey summarized EPA records: the site was placed on the EPA national priorities list in 1982 after owners allowed hazardous wastes and organic chemicals to be dumped into the ground, which put nearby residents at risk. In the late 1980s the company used a small groundwater treatment system; the EPA later constructed a larger groundwater treatment facility under its oversight. In 2000 the treatment system began operation on land controlled by the Archdiocese of Boston; MassDEP assumed responsibility for overseeing operation in 2011.
Despite treatment efforts, contaminant levels remained above cleanup goals into the 2010s. EPA-funded electrical resistive heating was used from August 2010 through February 2011; by 2014 contamination was reduced sufficiently that active groundwater treatment was shut down and monitoring wells across an approximately 850-acre area remain in place and are regularly measured.
Dempsey said the large filtration building behind Valley Screw was decommissioned in 2020, filtration hardware removed and the building turned over to the Archdiocese of Boston, while the Valley Screw manufacturing building itself remains abandoned. He raised unresolved questions about future reuse of the building and about existing land restrictions stemming from EPA cleanup requirements.
The program said it will attempt to gather additional documents and answers in a subsequent segment.
