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Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed the large-scale cleanup of New Bedford Harbor, removing dangerous chemicals called PCBs from the surface water and siloing the remaining toxic sediment in underground cells.
In an annual update on the cleanup Wednesday night, EPA remedial project manager Chris Kelly announced that today, PCB levels in both the Inner and Outer Harbor remain low, posing no threat to swimmers, kayakers, or beachgoers.
Just don’t eat the fish.
Despite ongoing education around the health risks of eating fish and shellfish caught in New Bedford Harbor, a recent survey conducted by the Community Economic Development Center found that over three-quarters of surveyed residents reported eating contaminated seafood caught in the harbor last year. More than half reported eating contaminated seafood at least once a month.
The EPA survey results didn’t come as a surprise since the majority of the 149 respondents said this was their first time taking the survey, said Aaron Sheehan, EPA community involvement coordinator.
“It’s all to say that there’s more education for us to do,” Sheehan said.
Warning signs
For decades, manufacturers dumped PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, into the harbor before the EPA banned the industrial chemical in 1979. Although the EPA and later the New Bedford Port Authority have worked to remove PCBs from the harbor sediment, these “forever chemicals” still live inside the shellfish and fish that call New Bedford’s waters home.
Since 1982, the EPA has placed signs around New Bedford Harbor warning sportsmen of the danger of eating contaminated seafood. These signs are strategically placed around recreational fishing spots along the Inner and Outer Harbor in multiple languages, the most clear being a picture of a fish with an “X” over it.
Still, residents fish anyway.
Low-level PCB exposure has been linked to immune system problems, liver disease, and thyroid disease. Recent studies have also connected PCB consumption to higher rates of ADHD and even lower IQ in children.
But with no outright ban on fishing in the harbor, the EPA is limited to recommendations. These recommendations can be complicated, Sheehan admitted, and depend on where in the harbor fish and shellfish are caught.
The EPA recommends that residents and fishermen avoid all seafood caught north of the hurricane barrier. Quahogs are safe to eat outside of the barrier, and some fish and shellfish species caught in the outer reaches of Buzzards Bay are safe to eat in limited quantities.
These recommendations may fall on waterlogged ears.
According to the CEDC survey, when respondents do eat contaminated seafood, they’re most often consuming striped bass or black sea bass, and they’re most often catching it in the area just south of the hurricane barrier.
To ramp up outreach, Sheehan said the EPA plans to hire several more outreach coordinators to work with the CEDC surveying and educating residents. It’s especially important that these new hires speak multiple languages, Sheehan added, to reach New Bedford’s diverse immigrant communities.
This year also marked the first year the CEDC and EPA conducted surveys online through mobile tablets rather than pen and paper, a switch that CEDC outreach coordinator Ken Rapoza said made surveying “much, much easier.”
Still, Rapoza, who has conducted surveys with the CEDC for years, said he’s encountered challenges approaching fishermen on the harbor.
“Some people I go up to, they tell me to get the hell out of here and they think I’m the cops and all that,” Rapoza said. “It’s not the easiest job just going up to people saying, ‘Hey, you mind answering some questions?’”
Continuing the cleanup
Despite these results, past survey data shows that awareness around PCBs is growing. And even if it wasn’t, the EPA has no plans to ban residents from fishing to feed their families or otherwise engaging in a beloved cultural pastime, Sheehan said.
The highest concentration of PCBs remains at the former Aerovox facility at the far north end of the Inner Harbor, Kelly said, with PCB levels decreasing closer to the open ocean. Over the next year, the EPA plans to work with the City of New Bedford to remediate PCBs from the soil of its Sawyer Street site for what will eventually become part of the city’s Riverwalk park system.
The New Bedford Port Authority is also continuing to remove sediment containing lower levels of PCBs as it works with state and federal officials to expand the harborfront. Two underground cells are actively being filled with PCB-laced sediment and may get capped soon. Another may take years to get filled.
Although these cells are protected by a layer of sand and stone, one cell’s cap last year was damaged by what the EPA suspects were several vessel strikes. The damage did not expose any PCB sediment, but the EPA is now constructing a berm around the cell to protect it from future boat traffic, Kelly said.
With so many moving parts and stakeholders, there’s no set timeline on when the underground cap work will end, Massachusetts State Department of Environmental Protection Project Manager Paul Craffey said.
“It won’t be next year, [but] it might be the year after,” Craffey said. “I don’t know if that was vague enough for you.”
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
