By Paul D. Boehm, Chair
Concord’s Select Board asked our Task Force to recommend whether or not the town should acquire the 46-acre property also known as NMI/Starmet Superfund site. The $250+ million cleanup is well underway and will hopefully be completed by 2028. The nine-member Task Force has been working hard for the last 14 months to answer a wide range of complex questions regarding the future of the site. Our work and findings to date were discussed at the June 4 public forum and can be found on our website.
We are entering a critical phase of our work. We will evaluate all information and make detailed recommendations to the Select Board by the year’s end. One of the important topics centers on obtaining liability protections for the town if it should choose to acquire the site. With Town Counsel’s help, we have thoroughly researched these liability protections. Given recent comments in letters to this paper concerning liability and insurance, some clarification is needed.
Liability protection issues have two pieces. First is the potential liability for past manufacturing operations, related wastes and chemicals, and cleanup costs. The U.S. EPA has offered municipalities who acquire Superfund sites liability protections for these past “legacy” problems. Those strong and comprehensive protections will be part of any negotiated settlement if the town moves to acquire the site. In addition, EPA, not the town, will monitor the site in the future.
The second area relates to future ownership and reuse of the site after cleanup. Since the Town would be protected from past “legacy” problems, only the future ownership needs to be covered by insurance. Property insurance and insurers would only be concerned with future actions by the town as an owner (as with any other town property), not with past actions by Starmet.
In summary, there are clear pathways available to obtain solid liability protections for past operations and chemicals. We are looking into insurance policies to cover possible future ownership and are confident that the town can be covered by insurance as have many other towns that have acquired and reused Superfund sites.
We encourage the public to engage and to attend our frequent public meetings in person or on Zoom and also to use the Task Force’s email address, 2229taskforce@concordma.gov, to state specific concerns and to ask any further questions.
