NEW BEDFORD — October 11, 2012 — A long-departed manufacturing company will pay $366 million to clean the PCB-laden harbor here, the largest cash settlement for a single site in the history of the federal Superfund program, government officials announced Wednesday.
The cleanup will reverse decades of embarrassment for the fabled fishing city: Although New Bedford is one of the nation’s top fishing ports, eating even a single fish from its harbor has been prohibited because the water is considered so poisoned with polychlorinated biphenyls, a probable human carcinogen.
“This is a very big deal,” said New Bedford’s mayor, Jon Mitchell. “This is going to allow us to take full advantage of our harbor.”
Residents along the harbor Wednesday celebrated the news, saying they hope it makes the southeastern Massachusetts city more attractive to tourists. But one environmental watchdog said he wanted to make sure the harbor really got clean.
“With this settlement, we are making good on our pledge to the citizens of New Bedford to help clean their harbor.”
Curt Spalding, the regional administrator of EPA’s New England Office
Pollution of New Bedford Harbor began decades ago. By the mid-1900s, the once-pristine harbor had been transformed into an 18,000-acre dumping ground for PCBs. From the 1930s through the early 1970s, several electronic manufacturers, including Aerovox, dumped tons of the chemicals, which settled deep in the harbor’s sediment.
Read the full story in the Boston Globe