Before 1984, Harvard residents threw their trash, both household and construction, into pits located in multiple areas around what is now the Transfer Station. According to the state, the “old landfill,” the collective name for the trash pits, is the likely source of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in private wells in the area. Two weeks ago, the state notified the town that it is responsible for the contamination, and it must take steps to remediate any PFAS found in private drinking water wells near the landfill.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, or MassDEP, is requiring the town to sample wells at 10 specific residences. If PFAS is found, the town must provide bottled water to the residences and make arrangements to install “point of entry treatment” systems to bring PFAS levels down to below the state’s maximum. Regular sampling must continue after the systems are installed.
The list of homes includes six on Depot Road, two on Under Pin Hill Road, one on Pattee Road, and one on Mill Road. Those properties are within 500 feet of either the old landfill or the groundwater monitoring wells. The sampling process will be iterative; the test zone will be expanded to another 500 feet from any well where PFAS is detected.
How was PFAS contamination discovered?
Last year, MassDEP told the town it needed to officially close the old landfill, a step that didn’t exist when the town stopped using it more than 40 years ago. Part of the closing process includes groundwater monitoring, and last March, seven monitoring wells were installed near the old landfill.
Test results from four of those wells showed PFAS levels above the state’s maximum contaminant level of 20 parts per trillion (ppt) for the sum of six substances: PFOS, PFOA, PFHpA, PFHxS, PFNA, and PFDA, collectively known as PFAS6. Two of the wells had levels 10 times higher than the state’s maximum, while the other two were only slightly over the maximum. Those same four wells also had levels of PFOA and PFOS that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s new maximum contaminant level of 4 ppt for each of those two substances. The PFOA level in one well was 135 ppt and 83.7 ppt in another.
In 2019, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sampled 18 private wells in Harvard as part of its investigation into the migration of PFAS from Devens. PFAS was detected in six Depot Road wells. MassDEP used those test results as evidence of PFAS in the area’s groundwater and determined that the origin was likely the old landfill.
At a Board of Health meeting on Sept. 22, Chair Chris Mitchell told the board that since the properties in question are in range of the new water connection from Devens, it would make more sense to connect those properties to what will be PFAS-free town water when that system comes online. Mitchell and Town Administrator Dan Nason were scheduled to meet the following day with a licensed site professional (hazardous material cleanup engineers licensed by the state) to schedule sampling and discuss remediation options.
