Barnstable County seeks to pave over PFAS-tainted property
Posted Mar 6, 2020
HYANNIS — Barnstable County is seeking approval from the town of Barnstable to “cap” its PFAS-contaminated Fire and Rescue Training Academy property with 55,000 square feet of impervious pavement.
The 6.2-acre academy property, located off South Flint Rock Road in Hyannis, is polluted with PFAS, a class of man-made chemicals thought to be associated with adverse health effects.
“The cap is designed to prevent rainwater from leaching into groundwater and moving the PFAS to other areas,” Barnstable County Administrator John “Jack” Yunits Jr. said. “Water (coming off the cap) goes into a buffer zone and into a closed drainage system and treatment mechanism, but we don’t anticipate any of the rainwater will contain PFAS.”
One local leader, however, doesn’t think the county is doing as much as it should.
“We need the site cleaned up,” Deborah Krau, president of the Greater Hyannis Civic Association, said. “Capping may be an intermediate process, but ultimately the site needs to be cleaned up.”
PFAS, considered a contaminant of emerging concern by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is found in a wide range of products, including firefighting foams that were used at the academy for decades.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has mandated the county remediate the contaminated academy property. PFAS at the site has been determined to be one of the sources of contamination affecting the Hyannis water supply in recent years, requiring advisories warning pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants from consuming the water.
Yunits said the capping plan has received preliminary approval from the Department of Environmental Protection and is being vetted locally.
The county has filed a notice of intent with the Barnstable Conservation Commission regarding the capping plan and related stormwater management improvements that would be within the 100-foot buffer zone to wetland resource areas — Flint Rock Pond — at the site.
The commission held its third hearing on the notice Tuesday and continued it until March 31. In response to previous public comments, the draft plan for the cap has been significantly expanded and the stormwater system revised.
Yunits said the project is budgeted at $1.2 million, including ongoing monitoring activities, and he expects construction will be underway in late spring or early summer.
“That’s not the case,” he said. “Every time I’ve been asked to speak to the community, I have accepted the offer. And every document regarding the cleanup is on our website, and hard copies are delivered to the local public library.
The county suspended water use and active fire training with water at the academy site a year ago, but classroom training continues to be held in a building on the property.
PFAS also has been found in groundwater and soil at Barnstable Municipal Airport, Martha’s Vineyard Airport and at Joint Base Cape Cod, from which it has migrated to surrounding communities.
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