Wilmington Ballot Question Committee - Election 2000

$1.5M OK'd for Rocco's Landfill cleanup

By FRANK TUTALO
Sun Staff

TEWKSBURY -- Though it's at least four months away from being listed as a Superfund site, federal environmental officials have already designated $1.5 million for the cleanup of Rocco's Landfill and nearby sites.

The surprise chunk of money from the Environmental Protection Agency comes as private investigators hired by the EPA work to identify parties responsible for the pollution.

Already, "a handful" of undisclosed parties have been identified as contributing to the mounds of waste at the former municipal landfill, said Gary Lipson, on-scene coordinator for the EPA.

"We're going after a couple of parties now," Lipson said Thursday.

Lipson would not comment on whether the town is one of the parties, although Tewksbury received a letter of notification from the EPA several years ago.

But he did elaborate on the status of incoming funds.

"The money's already allocated," he said. "We're treating this as three separate waste removals and, we'll start to clean up one area in May."

Lipson was referring to an area known as the pumpkin patch. There are three distinct areas where hazardous waste barrels have been uncovered since last summer:

* Rocco's Landfill.

* An illegal dump, including a former solid waste dump at the end of McDonald Road.

* The Pumpkin Patch, located near a compost operation that abuts the vast landfill and an illegal dump at the end of McDonald Road.

Residents are cautiously optimistic about what the funds will mean.

"We're still very concerned about the areas not looked at yet," said McDonald Road resident Pat Pelosi. "We need a really good guarantee that the whole area is going to be cleaned up."

Other residents agree.

"I still want the EPA to look at other pieces of land back there for hazardous waste," says Tewksbury resident Judy Fittery, who blames her breast cancer and severe rashes on the contamination. "But I'm glad they've got some (potentially responsible parties) on board so soon."

Lipson says the $1.5 million figure would be higher if a private landowner, the Kunigenas family, does not clean its contaminated property near McDonald Road, as it has agreed to with the EPA. He notes that the family is taking on the onus because it wants to develop that property.

"I have no doubt that's the case," Lipson said. "There has been a local developer interested in those parcels. I think there is somebody waiting in the wings for it."