Above: The Fall Town Meeting will include an “appropriation” request to engineer a solution to contamination discovered on the former site of a water tower on Atwood Street. (images from Town’s GIS Map and 2024 meeting packet)
Last week, the Select Board discussed the potential Warrant for the upcoming Special Town Meeting on October 27th. One of the Articles voters will be asked to approve is funding the design phase for remediating contamination discovered on the site of the old Atwood Water Tower.
The Article will ask Town Meeting to:
appropriate from Free Cash the sum of $85,000 for the engineering,
design and bidding of the remediation work for the contamination at the former Atwood water tank site
Though the funds aren’t really “free”, they won’t add to FY26 tax bills.1 The board didn’t discuss how much the actual remediation of the site may cost.
The Town-owned parcel was the site of a water tower from the 1930s to its removal in the early 1990s. Its contamination by lead paint and PCBs was studied after the Town began looking at the potential use of the 1.8 acres for development of a small affordable housing project. Public Works Superintendent Bill Cundiff warned Town Administrator Mark Purple that old water tower sites are sometimes contaminated due to the types of paint that were used.
In April 2024, the board discussed findings from engineering consultant PARE’s preliminary study that confirmed some lead contamination and some PCBs.
On May 7th, the board approved a more thorough follow up study, including soil sampling of a neighboring property owned by concerned abutters (Bruce and Janice Sturgeon at 40 Atwood St). The additional $85,000 cost was covered by the Town’s ARPA funds.
The study findings/report were never posted or brought to a public Select Board meeting. Last summer, the board put a placeholder Article on the Fall Town Meeting agenda for site remediation. But in late August, the board removed it without explanation. (Then-Chair Kathy Cook said it would probably be on the 2025 Annual Town Meeting Warrant.)
During last Tuesday’s discussion, Cook wondered if the Article could again be put off to the 2026 Annual Town Meeting. (Initially, she thought it was going to ask for the entire remediation costs.) She noted the parcel had “been this way for a long, long time”.
Member Al Hamilton responded that he had reasons for wanting to proceed that he couldn’t discuss in an “open session”. But Purple followed with his own reasons, that he could publicly share.
The Town Administrator noted that PARE advised that MassDEP (Dept of Environmental Protection) is aware of the site contamination and expects the Town to take clean up steps. The recommendation was that DEP would be satisfied if the Town pursued the funding for designing the solution this fall, then followed through on the construction cleanup costs in the spring.
