PROVIDENCE -- The New England Gas Co. is long on "spin" and short on constructive comments in an "inflammatory" response to the state's demands that it move toward cleaning up contaminated soil in North Tiverton, a high-ranking official of the Department of Environmental Management said yesterday.
Leo Hellested, chief of DEM's Office of Waste Management, said the department is very disappointed in a letter it received from New England Gas lawyer David L. Black earlier this week.
Using strong language, Black said the utility will not comply with the agency's Jan. 4 deadline for submitting at least three alternative remediation plans for nearly 100 properties in the Bay Street neighborhood.
DEM has not decided whether it will impose any fines against New England Gas, Hellested said.
"They say they want to work cooperatively, but that's not the tone of the letter," he said.
"They seem to be setting themselves up to proceed down a legal path," he said of the gas company, alluding to a civil lawsuit that homeowners have brought in an attempt to force the gas company to clean up their properties.
DEM still has to "evaluate its next steps," Hellested said.
"We are disappointed, more for the residents out there," he said.
"I get to go home to my house," he said, but they must live daily with myriad difficulties brought on by the contamination.
Gail Corvello, president of the homeowners' group that has sued New England Gas, said the company is just trying to "muddy the waters, slow things down, and drag it out."
"Instead of things being closer to a solution, the end point seems farther away," she said.
"The gas company calls themselves good corporate citizens, but they fight everything DEM has asked them to do," even questioning DEM's knowledge of its own regulations and faulting the agency for "listening to the residents," Corvello said.
Part of DEM's mission is to "protect the public," she said.
All residents want is for the agency to uphold the regulations, Corvello said.
Hellested said of the gas company's letter, "We would have preferred a more constructive response."
It claimed DEM is making "unreasonable demands" in requiring remediation plans by Jan. 4, claiming that the agency is not following its own regulations, which allow an assessment of human health risks before any clean-up is contemplated.
Black, the gas company lawyer, also denied that the utility is responsible for the contamination, which DEM has traced to the dumping of wastes generated when the former Fall River Gas Co. burned coal to generate gas during the first half of the last century.
Hellested said he and his coworkers "feel completely comfortable that we are very well versed in our regulations."
"Those types of comments are inflammatory and unproductive," he said, referring to Black's letter.
"We would have preferred a more constructive response," Hellested said.
In what Hellested described as a "personal" attack, Black's letter implied that DEM approved construction on contaminated soil in 1988.
"There was no office of waste management back then; no site remediation then; no state requirements relative to these types of clean-ups," Hellested said.
"And most of the houses were already there," he said, when DEM engineer Jeffrey Crawford -- coincidentally the project manager for the current investigation -- visited a vacant 12-acre site in response to a complaint from the town of Tiverton about possible coal gasification wastes.
But the town official who was to meet him to further explain the complaint never showed, and Crawford left after making a cursory visual inspection of the site, Hellested said.
Hellested said that far from being "unreasonable," DEM and the affected residents have been exceedingly patient in waiting for remediation of the contamination, which includes cyanide, arsenic, lead, and benzo(a)pyrene, a probable carcinogen.
"We've known about this site a long time," he said, and "they have not moved quickly enough" to satisfy either the state or the affected homeowners.
Cyanide was found in the soil more than three years ago, in August 2002, when construction workers were digging up a street to install a sewer.
DEM designated New England Gas the responsible party on March 17, 2003.
Since then, New England Gas has conducted two rounds of testing on most of 96 properties identified as contaminated.
"Everyone's patience is wearing very thin," Hellested said. .
He said that before the second round of testing, last year in August and September, DEM pressed New England Gas for assurances that the soil sampling was designed to collect sufficient data for a human health risk assessment.
Those assurances were not forthcoming, he said.
Nor has there been any sign in the last 15 months that New England Gas has attempted to gain the necessary permission from property owners to conduct the health risk assessments, Hellested said.
At the same time, the homeowners have been adamant that they would not agree to such assessments, mathematical analyses that lead to restrictions on the use of property rather than remediation of toxic wastes.
Hellested said DEM made it clear that it wanted the gas company to submit three plans for remediation last summer, along with the data from the second round of testing, to begin moving the project forward into the cleanup phase.
"It's a pretty logical kind of framework," he said.
DEM even gave New England Gas a one-month extension to complete its report, he said.
"The thing comes in in August," he said, and there are "no alternatives for remediation.
"Now they say, 'here's our plan for doing a risk assessment.' "
Hellested said DEM is "very comfortable with our understanding of how the (contamination) was placed there, in that some of the waste from the (former) Fall River Gas Company went there."
The fact that New England Gas acquired Fall River Gas "links them and makes them responsible," he said.
If there are other sources of contamination, the gas company is free to seek out other responsible entities and hold them accountable, Hellested said.
In similar cases, designated responsible parties have instituted third-party lawsuits to recover expenses incurred in remediation.
DEM wants fo focus on the cleanup, he said.
"For them to say, 'drag everybody in here before cleaning it up' will result in very significant delays, " Hellested said.
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