One of the ‘most complex’ contaminated sites is getting cleaned up in Connecticut
STRATFORD — The Environmental Protection Agency pledged roughly $30 million on Thursday toward environmental remediation efforts at former industrial sites in Connecticut, including the ongoing clean up of asbestos, lead and other toxic contaminants at dumping grounds once used by local auto-parts manufacturer Raymark Industries.
The federal investment is part of an overall plan to spend $5.4 billion over the next several years cleaning up brownfields and Superfund sites as part of Congress’ Bi-partisan Infrastructure Bill signed by President Joe Biden last year.
The largest chunk of money from the EPA — $23 million — was dedicated toward the 34-acre site of the former Raymark plant in Stratford, which Deputy EPA Administrator Janet McCabe referred to as “one of the most complex” remediation projects under the agency’s Superfund program.
“It is geographically dispersed, the waste is complex, the solutions are complex,” McCabe said. “Dozens and dozens of residential properties contaminated as well as many commercial properties.”
The EPA, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, has helped manage cleanup efforts at the site for nearly three decades since the Raymark plant closed in 1989, leaving behind a toxic dump filled with contaminated waste used to manufacture brakes, clutches and other friction parts the plant for close to 70 years.
The contaminants, which also include polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, have also leached into several wetlands surrounding the Raymark property, according to the EPA.
On Thursday, McCabe and other administrators spoke in front of the location of a former ball field that once served as the home of Stratford’s championshipwinning Brakettes softball team, named for the parts produced by Raymark. The former field is now being used as a holding site for roughly 100,000 cubic yards of solid waste being collected from surrounding commercial properties, where it will eventually be capped and built over for future development.
Other parts of the site have already been developed into a commercial strip mall that includes a Walmart and a Home Depot.
“It’s really nice to see that there’s some closure here and that there’s a path forward,” for the community, Army Corps Programs and Project Management Division Chief Scott Acone, who said he has been involved with the project since the early 1990s.
That project alone will cost $90 million and at least two more years to complete, officials said. Raymark, which went out of business after the plant closed, is no longer involved in the cleanup efforts at the site.
The EPA also opened a new regional field office Thursday at a building leased by the agency on land contaminated by Raymark. The office will be focused on the agency’s efforts surrounding the Superfund site.
Later Thursday, McCabe and members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation traveled to Waterbury to announce more than $4 million in funding for brownfield projects in the area, including $150,000 to assess possibilities for future development at the site of a former button factory in the city’s South End.
The EPA also announced funding for other brownfield projects in New London, New Haven, West Haven, Vernon and Stafford, for a total of $7 million in new money under the agency’s brownfield program.
“Every one of these is sobering, because it’s a reminder of how easy it was for activities that people maybe didn’t give too much thought to, to really mess up a community so that it takes decades to clean it up,” McCabe said.
At the factory site in Waterbury along the Mad River, a caving roof, numerous broken windows and a potential contamination from chemicals used in brass manufacturing has left nearly all of the nine buildings along the brownfield in need of demolition and remediation, officials said.