EPA: Mercury Levels at Reservoir 'Decreased Significantly'

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is recommending not installing a 6-inch thin sand layer at Framingham’s Reservoir No. 2, after new tests show a significant decrease in mercury levels.

Framingham Town Manager Bob Halpin informed the Framingham Board of Selectmen of the change this week.

Last summer, the federal agency “conducted a regular 10-year cycle of tests of mercury levels in fish flesh and found that levels of mercury in fish have decreased significantly,” Halpin told Selectmen at its Tuesday night meeting. “As a result of those findings EPA has reassessed its recommended action and will postpone action on the thin sand layer and instead recommend that that the recommended action become one of ongoing monitoring and signage.”

Halpin said the EPA will begin a formal public process soon to officially change the status of the recommended action.

“Based on input from the Town government and the neighborhood, they assume that the town will support that change in action,” said Halpin.

There had been recorded high levels of mercury in the sediments at the bottom of Reservoir No. 2 in Framingham as well as high levels of mercury in the flesh of fish taken from that reservoir and the Sudbury River downstream.

The EPA had developed a recommended $11 million action of installing a 6 inch thin sand layer over the sediments in order to essentially cap it and isolate it from the food supply of the flesh in the reservoir.

The project was to have started this year. town will support that change in action.

Residents around Framingham’s Reservoir No. 2 have been fighting the the federal government’s $11 million plan to lay down a carpet of sand to bury decades-old deposits of mercury and industrial waste for years.

The reservoir is the final resting place of a host of chemicals and toxic substances that are related to the Nyanza Chemical Superfund Site in Ashland.

For most of the 20th century, various companies on the Nyanza site spewed industrial wastewater that contained high levels of acids and chemicals into the Sudbury River. Once the river opened up to form the reservoir, the heavier substances, such as mercury, sank to the bottom.

After 10 years and $2 million of research, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has created a scenario that would further bury the mercury and other toxic substances under six inches of sand.