By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer
—
Testing to determine the full extent of oil and chemical contamination, the inheritance of a century of gas production on the Gloucester waterfront, is beginning this summer on Harbor Loop.
Oil was detected on Harbor Loop in 2005, when the planned rehabilitation of the city harbormaster's wharf was halted after drilling there spread an oily sheen across the surface of the harbor.
It was not unexpected.
Harbor Loop had been the home of the former Gloucester Gas Light Co. manufactured gas plant in the 19th century, a major source of energy before the days of natural gas pipelines or liquefied natural gas container ships.
But precisely what is down there and how far it has spread beneath the surface is still unclear.
State and federal environmental protection officials have required — and this week the city approved — an extensive testing regimen stretching from Coast Guard Station Gloucester all the way across Fitz Hugh Lane Park and Rogers Street to Walgreens Plaza.
Whatever is under there, it is buried deep and not an imminent safety threat, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and utility National Grid, the company responsible for the site both agree.
"The park is safe," National Grid attorney Bradford Maxwell told City Council last week, referring to Solomon Jacobs Park, at the center of the suspected contamination area. "The contamination is 50 feet fellow the ground."
National Grid assumed responsibility for the contamination, the testing and whatever cleanup is ordered when it took over the entities that once were Gloucester Gas Light and became the only provider of natural gas in the city.
In its days of operation between the 1850s and 1950s, Gloucester Gas Light, like manufactured gas plants across the country, turned coal and oil into heating fuel while producing by-products like tars, oils and sludges, that often ended up in the ground.
The end of the Gloucester Gas Light plant came just before Gloucester's mid-century urban renewal, which saw dense, multi-use neighborhoods on the waterfront cleared in favor of the large-scale, automobile-focused developments that dominate most of the harbor now.
Knowing that an environmental cleanup was likely, National Grid bought the building, once a lobster shack, and pier at 19 Harbor Loop, now home to the city pier and Gloucester harbormaster's office.
While it owns Solomon Jacobs Park and the floating docks next to it, the city has been renting the pier since at least 2000 and the contamination has prevented the renovation of the ramshackle pier and made it virtually unusable.
When it needed a "downpayment" to buy the urban renewal parcel known as I-4,C-2 this year, the state used state grant money it had ticketed for the pier, but could not be use because of the pollution.
Testing of the water and in the harbor itself has already been done, but so far no estimate had been given for when work on the pier may resume or whether it will be impacted by the testing now starting on land.
"I have no idea," Harbormaster Jim Caulkett said Thursday about when regulators would give National Grid the green light to start work on the pier again. "It will be at least another year before National Grid has all the permits for the waterside."
When work on the pier does begin, it could be around the same time the extent of any cleanup work on land is known.
National Grid has said the physical work of digging, drilling and inserting test equipment in the Harbor Loop area should take around two months, but finalizing the results of the tests could take "a year or two."
For property owners in the area other than the city, the extent of the testing being proposed has come in some cases come as a surprise.
"We don't know any of the details, but will cooperate," said Mac Bell, who owns Main Street Plaza, the Walgreens-anchored shopping center whose parking lot is slated for a few test borings. "(National Grid) has been very considerate about it. Hopefully they are not going to make a big mess."
Larry Ciulla, owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction and Captain Carlo's restaurant, said he had not been aware of any contamination on his property when the soil was tested before building construction 15 years ago.
With Solomon Jacobs Park the center of the testing area, other sites planned for test borings include the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center, the Harbor Loop sidewalk, the AmeriCold freezer property on Rogers Street and Coast Guard Station Gloucester. According to a map of the planned work, four surface soil samples will be taken from Fitz Hugh Lane Park.
When it granted National Grid permission to dig on city land, City Council Tuesday requested that the work not begin until after St. Peter's Fiesta and July 4.
"National Grid inherited the responsibility for the former (manufactured gas plant) from the Gloucester Gas Light Company, which owned and operated the (plant) in the 1800s and early 1900s," National Grid said in a statement Thursday. "We now have the opportunity to correct (manufactured gas plant)-related environmental problems inherited from the past."
Patrick Anderson can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3455, or panderson@gloucestertimes.com.
