6 April 2021 – by Andrew Hanna
When you think of environmental contamination, what comes to mind? You’d be right to list examples of a polluted river, a skyline darkened by smog, or an oil leak in the ocean. These capture headlines, and they are an important part of the equation, but these viscerally visual images embody only a small part of the crisis we face. Much of the damage to the environment is harder to see and it is hiding in plain sight all over the nation. Take, for instance, Industri-Plex.
Early History
Industri-Plex is a 245-acre plot of land in Woburn Massachusetts, and it is emblematic of New England’s industrial heritage. This seemingly small plot of land is iconic as both the climax and the new beginning of a story stretching back hundreds of years. It is the tale of a small 1600s settlement, which would rise to an 1800s industrial powerhouse, become the fifth-most contaminated site in the country by the 1980s, and emerge anew in 2010s as a symbol of hope for a revitalized environment.
Nowadays, Woburn is a city of just over 40,000 inhabitants, with a diverse economic sector, but it wasn’t always so. For much of Woburn’s early history – as was the case with many cities, towns, and settlements in the 1600s – it was reliant on agriculture as its primary economic opportunity. Woburn began its first steps into its modern identity in 1648 with the opening of its first tannery. Shoemakers began opening up shop and, not long after, the demand for shoe leather led to the opening of more tanneries. To this day, Woburn’s school sports teams are called the Tanners, in recognition of this history.
Woburn’s location was a massive selling point for industry; it was just 12 miles north of Boston, and it had a large and steady supply of clean water from the Aberjona River. But circumstances improved even further for the City in 1803, with the opening of the Middlesex Canal and the Boston & Lowell Railroad in 1835; both created new means of transportation to and from Boston. Around the same time, just a few miles to the north, the American Industrial Revolution really kicked off in Lowell with the opening of large textile mills.
That industrial spirit was quick to spread across New England, and in 1853, Woburn Chemical Works was built in what would later be part of the Industri-Plex Superfund Site. The company manufactured chemicals used by tanneries and the textile and paper industries. Business was good at this time; the ease with which products could be transported to and from Woburn strengthened the economy and spurred industrial growth. With the onset of the American Civil War, the demand for shoes and boots skyrocketed and Woburn supplied that demand, further bolstering its economic success.
As the nation greeted the twentieth century, the tanning and chemical industries had cemented themselves as two hallmarks of Woburn’s industrial legacy. By 1875, Woburn had risen to be New England’s largest producer of leather and in 1901, a Woburn man by the name of Henry Thayer invented the process of chrome tanning. This revolutionary new process is faster than previous tanning methods and could cure leather in a single day. The process involved soaking leather in chromium sulfate, a mixture of chromium salts and acid produced by Woburn’s own chemical companies. The process also resulted in significant environmental damage as spilt chromium would leach into the ground and groundwater.
Companies in Woburn were also involved in the creation of glue. The process involved cooking raw animal hide and waste from chrome-tanned hide to extract the glue. The discarded hides and residues were dumped in various spots around the Industri-Plex site and would eventually become known as the four “hide piles.”
While companies came and went, the waste remained and continued to contaminate the land. Between the 1850s and the 1950s, the original Woburn Chemical Works was purchased and succeeded by a long chain of other chemical companies. The chain concluded with Stauffer Chemical Company purchasing Consolidated Chemical Company in the 1950s. Stauffer remained in operation until 1969.
These companies didn’t just create chromium sulfate for the tanneries. They also manufactured lead-arsenic insecticides, acetic acid, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, phenol, benzene, toluene, and explosives. These products, the components for their creation, and the byproducts of their creation were dumped into the soil of the Industri-Plex Site. Many of these pose significant risks to human and environmental health.
In 1968, the Mark-Phillip Trust entered the scene with high ambitions of building a large industrial park over the yet-to-be-deemed Industri-Plex Superfund Site. They began purchasing parcels of land, which had been subjected to over one hundred and twenty years of industrial operations, and eagerly got to work on redeveloping the land. Development included the excavation of the old hide piles, which released noxious odors. What became known as the “Woburn Odor” was so bad that passersby on the highway, as well as residents from multiple nearby towns, would complain of the smell.
Creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and Superfund
Around this time, the country was beginning to take more notice of environmental contamination. Concerns over air, water, and land quality sparked then President Nixon to create the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. National dialog around the environment reached a fever pitch in 1978, when the federal government purchased the homes and evacuated hundreds of people residing near Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York. The horror of Love Canal was a significant factor in the 1980 creation of the Superfund program, which authorized the EPA to locate, investigate, and clean up the most hazardous materials nationwide.
The Superfund program was and is an incredibly comprehensive response to one of the most complicated problems modern America has to face. It includes regulations on 761 substances, with almost 600 of them still in active use by industry around the nation. Superfund also includes one of the most aggressive liability frameworks possible under US law. This allows EPA to go after responsible parties and force them to clean up the mess they’ve left behind.
With the nation’s attention focused on environmental contamination, EPA arrived on the scene at Industri-Plex in 1979, after receiving a court order to stop the Mark-Phillip Trust from illegally filling in a wetland. In 1983, the initial iteration of the National Priorities List was finalized (this list includes all the Superfund sites across the nation), Industri-Plex was among the first to be identified, boasting the title of being the fifth-most contaminated site in the nation.
Over the next few years, EPA set out to identify the parties potentially responsible for the cumulative contamination within the Industri-Plex Site. Numerous tests and studies were conducted on the site, revealing heavy metals, organic wastes, and volatile organic compounds. These various forms of contamination weren’t just in the ground; they continued to move in the groundwater and were released into the air, posing a significant public health risk.
With the situation as dire as it was, the EPA settled on a plan to remediate the site in 1986. The plan involved negotiating with thirty-four past and present owners of land within the site to secure funding from them to clean up the contamination. While it might seem obvious at first glance that the corporations that contaminated the land would be held liable for cleaning it up, this was not the case at the time. EPA relied heavily on its new powers under Superfund to retroactively hold parties liable for the harm they left behind. In fact, Industri-Plex was a somewhat defining case for EPA.
Cleaning up Industri-Plex
Such significant contamination meant that the cleanup was going to be expensive, and some of the parties, including the Mark-Phillips-Trust, did not have the money to pay for their share in it. To resolve this problem, the Trust agreed to sell its land on site to reimburse the government for fronting some of the cleanup costs. Critically, this meant that it was the corporations, not the public, that were going to pay the cleanup.
As for the cleanup itself, under consent orders from EPA and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE, now renamed the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection or DEP) – Stauffer Chemical conducted numerous site assessments and studies of the surrounding geology. Their results confirmed the presence of organic and inorganic compounds in the soil. The results also showed that these contaminants continued to pose risks as they were migrating in the ground water and being released into the air as vapors.
Some of these hazardous materials could be treated on site, some could be consolidated and moved to a permanent disposal facility, but others were too expensive, too dangerous, or simply incapable of being removed or treated. Take, for example, the East Hide Pile. The hides would constantly release vapors, but when they were moved, the release of vapors (including the “Woburn Oder”) would substantially increase. Wherever you put a giant stinking pile of old animal parts, its going to cause problems.
So, environmental engineers devised a different solution. They installed what is called a “cap” over the hide pile, which would prevent the vapors from releasing into the air. On top of the cap, they placed a layer of top soil and planted grass on it to help root it in place. They then drilled monitoring wells and installed a vapor collection system so that they could make sure the protections were holding, and prevent leaching of contaminants into the groundwater.
Similar strategies were used for other hard-to-remove contamination on the site. As for the ground water, the responsible parties were obligated to capture and treat the ground water to prevent it from spreading the contamination further. This is a long and difficult process and is heavily reliant upon the availability of good data, and available methods of removal, as well as the geology itself.
In 1989, EPA, DEP, the City of Woburn, and the current and former landowners created the Site Remedial Trust and the Site Custodial Trust. These Trusts helped organize partnerships with private and public actors to help businesses return and remain on site during cleanup. Nowadays, Industri-Plex is diverse commercial and industrial area. The City’s largest employer, Raytheon, is set up within the borders of the Indusri-Plex Site. 45 other businesses also reside on site and cumulatively, the current Industri-Plex businesses generate $210 million in employment to the city annually, as well as property and sales taxes.
Industri-Plex Today
In 2020, a portion of the Industri-Plex Site was removed from the National Priorities list. Much of it remains under active monitoring and is subject to five-year reviews. The story isn’t over, but it has entered a new chapter. Woburn has been on the pulse of the American industrial experience since the beginning. When the industrial spirit swept the region, it was there that innovative new techniques for the production of leather and chemicals were created. It captured the quintessential nature of the American Dream, that a person with an idea and ambition could build something greater, and it helped vault America forward into the position it is in today. Of course, it was also there when the costs of that untamed ambition and the lack of understanding of the consequences, caught up to it and as a result, it was also on the front lines of America’s reckoning with environmental contamination. Today, Woburn continues to be on the cutting edge, standing as an example of what is possible when we commit ourselves to environmental revitalization.
To be clear, despite the inspiring thread, this story is woven by over a hundred years of contamination. Over that time, people got sick, workers were taken advantage of, employers prioritized profits over people, chemicals were produced that contributed to contamination elsewhere, and millions upon millions of dollars were spent over decades ($70 million in the initial 7-year remediation alone) to get us to where we are today. Furthermore, the industrial practices that led to this reckoning are not gone. Corporations continue to attempt to subvert the government’s attempts to protect people and the environment. Agencies like EPA are a great improvement, but they alone will not solve the crisis facing our planet. And yet, this was an insanely complicated and dangerous situation, and people did come together to respond to it. Industri-Plex today should be seen as an example that change is possible, that absurd and creative solutions can work, and that the rewards of a healthy environment are worth the effort.
A picture is worth a thousand words; I believe this one is worth a lot more. Below is a field of solar panels, residing directly on top of the East Hide Pile. Quite literally, the present, standing atop the past, looking up towards the future.
This article is part of our Spring 2021 collaboration with students from the International Human Rights Clinic at the Western New England University.
Andrew Hanna has always been fascinated by the “why” questions in relation to human behavior. That fascination pushed him to study psychology, sociology, and philosophy during my undergraduate studies. He concentrated in mental health services and worked for two and a half year as residential counselor. The work was transformative, traumatic, and ultimately marred by layers of structure issues which negatively impacted the health of the children he worked with. The frustration he felt with the mental health system pushed him to apply to law school. Andrew is now a 2L at Western New England University School of Law. It is his hope that through legal training, he can find a way to improve the systems that offer services to those in need.
