Fire Training Site: follow

The offer by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) to clean up the former fire training site in Gilford on the condition that the city assume long-term responsibility for the contaminated property was met with derision by City Manager Eileen Cabanel yesterday.

After greeting the proposal with peels of laughter, Cabanel said "deja vu," referring to nearly two decades of wrangling between the state and city over liability for the site, which she considers was resolved when finally DES acknowledged the state's responsibility in 2001.

However, last week, Commissioner Michael Nolin of DES told the Town of Gilford that the agency "might be able to contribute to the remediation of the superficial contamination. . .with the stipulation that the City of Laconia, as the property owner, assume the responsibility for long-term monitoring of the groundwater at the site."

From 1963 until 1988, when the site was used for training firefighters by the New Hampshire Civil Defense Agency, which became the New Hampshire Office of Emergency Management within the Department of Safety, leased the property from the city.

A report prepared for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by Roy F. Weston, Inc., Superfund Technical Assessment and Response Team, in 1997 described how the site was used "burn solvents used during practice, including some gasoline-contaminated jet fuel, No. 2 fuel oil, kerosene, waste crankcase oil, and waste alcohols, were imported onto the Gilford Fire Training property in 55-gallon drums, stored in a 10-gallon aboveground storage tank. . .and gravity transferred to the former burn area via a pipeline."

The site sits atop the largest aquifer in the town, from much of its drinking water is drawn. John Regan of the Site Remediation Program at DES said that although the site itself is contaminated, sampling and tests have failed to reveal contaminants in either the municipal water supply or neighboring private wells.

Frank Tilton, the former Director of Public Works, recalled that beginning in the 1990s DES badgered the city to clean up the site until he presented the agency with the lease, which he discovered in the City Clerk's office. "Then they backed off," Tilton said.

A letter on file at the Department of Public Works indicates that DES acknowledged the state's responsibility in 2001. On July 5, 2001, city attorney Walter Mitchell advised Peter Roth, an assistant attorney General at the New Hampshire Department of Justice, that "Recently Mr. Tilton, the city Public Work's Director, received a call from Peg Bastian at DES (Margaret Bastien, Project Manager, Hazardous Waste Remediation Bureau) acknowledging that it was the State's responsibility to do an environmental clean-up at the City's fire training site. The facility had been leased for many, many years to the State, and the damage occurred during that time period. Ms. Bastian also indicated that the State was proceeding to accomplish that clean-up."

Six months later, in February 2002, Bastien outlined a clean-up plan to Tilton, explaining that DES would remove tanks and drums from the site and undertake initial monitoring of the groundwater while the city prepared to monitor the quality of the groundwater and regulate the use of the property in the long-term. Tilton replied firmly that "we would expect any cost required. . .to be borne by DES or another state agency who may have been responsible for the creation of the problem."

Although DES indicated in 2001, 2003 and again in 2004 that work to clean up the site was about to begin, the property remains littered with drums and tanks. In September Gilford Building Inspector David Andrade again brought the site to attention of the Board of Selectmen, whose letter sparked the most recent round of correspondence with DES. Gilford Town Administrator Evans Juris said the Selectmen will discuss DES's latest proposal at their regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday. He said that preparations would be made to refer the issue directly to Governor John Lynch if the board agrees to take that course.