Environmental Hazards On Rail Trail? Don't Be Fooled

A Letter to the Editor from Ken and Amy MacNulty:

Opponents of the proposed rail trail have recently used a great deal of vague and scary language about how construction on the rail trail will turn up all sorts of hazardous materials and will result in excessive costs to our town. Let’s examine this with a rational eye, introduce some facts for our citizens, and hopefully dial back the unnecessary hysteria.

To date, 70 former railbeds in Massachusetts have been converted to rail trails. Of these, only 4 towns reported a substantial hazardous material finding during the rail trail construction. Of those, 3 towns incurred no cost for clean-up as those costs were covered by MASS DOT/EPA grants. One town (Newburyport) recently addressed a hazardous waste area while completing construction of their second rail trail - as anticipated - given it was a former industrial site. To date the town has not incurred any costs to remediate the site.

As the Board of Selectmen-appointed Recreational Path Committee point out, rural rail beds such as the one through Lynnfield historically have a very low incidence of any significant hazardous spills and waste. The historical records of sites along our rail bed have been researched. Other than an electrical utility transformer near Summer Street and Westover Drive (reported and resolved more than 10 years), no significant contamination has been identified along the Lynnfield segment during an initial engineering review. However, if the town and its citizens desired, further studies by a Licensed Site Professional (LSP) can be done prior to any construction.

Opponents to the rail trail note a history of pesticide spraying along the rail trail. Such potential hazards and any other low-level contamination like possible rail tie residues may be present today in the soil - subject to erosion and dispersion by wind and water. Once construction is completed such low-level contamination will be safely covered and capped. This represents an important solution to reducing the health risk to our citizens from any contamination which may be present in that open ground today.

Please do not buy into the hype and hysteria of the rail trail opponents. Thoughtful planning and
management combined with time-proven techniques employed before and during the construction of our rail trail will actually help reduce the risk of exposure to possible hazardous materials to our citizens.

We encourage you to vote “yes” April 9th to advance the rail trail for the citizens of Lynnfield.

Ken & Amy MacNulty