US Army Natick Labs

Latest Environmental News

• The labs has begun injecting a bacterial growth enhancer into an area opposite Third Street to help remove a TCE and PCE solvent plume. The injection area is in red and underground solvent plume is grey at below right. Groundwater testing for possible trace levels of vinyl chloride byproduct (a cancer-causing vapor) will be done as the site is 140 feet from the nearest home. Community representatives asked for more sensitive soil gas tests but no decision has been announced on this precaution. ICF consultants photo
  

• A solvent-contamination plume is in the groundwater below Building 36. Monitoring well testing found chlorinated solvents leaking from underground into two portions of the Lake Cochituate shoreline. Sensitive tests have detected these solvents in lake waters and sediments.

• Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) in Lake Cochituate and Pegan Cove

  PCBs have been found at the Natick labs in soils and in lake sediments near Kansas Street and the T-25 outfall, likely caused in part by a PCB transformer explosion in 1984.

  Ecological toxicity testing found that lake sediments were toxic to aquatic life. Oxygen-poor conditions in the sediments were also factor. Bluegill, bass, and eels all show PCB contamination near the Army Labs, at levels up to and greater than 5000 parts per billion. Animals (including people) eating these fish would ingest enough PCBs to be harmed. A review of Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife data showed that Lake Cochituate fish have PCB levels up to 180 times higher than the statewide average.

  A warning against eating Bass and Eels is in effect for Lake Cochituate due to PCB contamination.

  Fish from Natick's Lake Cochituate should not be eaten due to the proven PCB contamination. No PCB clean up is planned because the Army assumes that no one is eating more than 1/3 of an ounce of de-skinned lake fish fillet per day. Those who eat more fish, or any amount of eels, or unskinned fish will receive higher exposures to PCBs. The Army determined that Natick's animal populations were large enough to absorb the deaths of the animals which forage around the Natick Labs. Read more

• The Army added three new monitoring wells to the area between the Labs and the Town of Natick drinking water wells beside Route 9 (Worcester Road) near Boston Scientific. These wells will improve the odds of detecting chemicals as they are drawn into the Town's water supply wells.
  

Site History - The Natick, MA US Army Soldier Systems Command was formerly a large user of radioactive material, formerly holding 6.0 megacuries of radioactive material. [1 curie = 37 billion radioactive decays per second. 6 megacuries equals 222,000,000,000,000,000 radioactive decays per second.) The installation has been a center of (defensive) atomic, biologial, and chemical research, and still does leading-edge research on chemical weapons detection. One recent project is the release of lightweight body armor which can stop some of the toughest ammo around. It also created the "Future Soldier 2025" (pictured above).

The SSC has performed tests on irradiated foods and mammals, insect killers, air-mobile field dry cleaning equipment, recombinant DNA research, protective clothing and other gear for soldiers, nanotechnology and remote sensing of battlefield wound severity. Less glamorous work includes waste disposal, ordance cleanup, MREs, and boots.

The base sits on a point of land which juts into Lake Cochituate in the heart of downtown Natick, Massachusetts. The campus-like facility sits on the porous remains of the last glacial retreat. Over the years a substantial amount of dry cleaning fluid (also called perchloroethylene or PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), benzene, pesticides, polynuclear aromatic compounds, and mercury has escaped into the local environment. The chemicals that threaten the town's wells, PCE and TCE, both suspected carcinogens, are present in the ground water at the Army base in moderate concentrations.

The 78-acre military property was declared a federal Superfund site in 1994, primarily because of threats to public groundwater wells. Contamination forced the Town of Natick to install a $4 million water treatment system in 1997. The town has determined that the US Army Soldier Systems Center, which is about 2,500 feet from the wells, is at least partly responsible for contaminating local wells.

The Army has paid for a massive investigation to track down this contamination. A local oversight Restoration Advisory Board consisting of Army personnel, government regulators, and local citizens meets every two months at 7 PM to hash out potential problems and to make suggestions. The public is always welcome. Anyone with questions or comments will be given the opportunity to speak on the record. Comments by residents have resulted in improved cleanup plans, such as aborting plans to dispose of 2.7 million pounds of chlordane-contaminated soil at the Natick dump.

The public is invited to all meetings of the Restoration Advisory Board at the Natick Labs. Call (508) 233-5404 or email to Restoration Officer John McHugh for details. All Natick Labs site cleanup reports are available to the public at the Morse Institute Library.

Onsite Waste Incineration

The Natick Labs also operates a medical waste incinerator. The incinerator is used to destroy about 1500 pounds of pathological wastes each year. The US EPA has identified these incinerators as America's third largest source of dioxins. Medical waste incinerators produce more dioxins than all paper mill boilers, industrial furnaces and boilers, cars and trucks, hazardous waste incinerators, and coal and oil burning power plants combined.

Benzo-a-pyrene and other combustion-related contaminants have been found in Lake Cochituate next to the Natick Lab's T-25 outfall, behind the NLabs boiler plant and behind the old hazmat storage building. The T-25 outfall is the name of the pipe which carried chemically-contaminated stormwater to the lake near Lakeshore Rd. So far the Army has refused to test for dioxin.

Waste shipments to Sudbury, MA Annex and Watertown, MA MTL

In 1942 the US Army built a 2,251 acre wartime ammunition depot in Sudbury, MA. This became the Natick Labs' Sudbury annex. It is a superfund site in its own right. The annex was used for burial of chemical weapons research wastes from the Natick Labs as well as for uncontrolled disposal of solvent, pesticide, animal, and other wastes. Additional wastes from the Natick Labs were shipped to the Randolph, MA and Natick, MA town dumps.

Former town employees also report that the Natick Labs accepted and transported wastes from the US Army Materials Testing Laboratory in Watertown, MA. A 1970 report for the US Army Toxic and Hazardous Materials Agency reports that wastes were also shipped to Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. Radioactive wastes were shipped to Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, and more recently to Chem-Nuclear Systems in Snelling, SC. Excess uranium has been shipped to White Sands, New Mexico.

$3.1 million settlement with Natick In 2001 the US Army paid the Town of Natick $3.1 million to address the cost drinking water contamination, some of which is related to the Army's release of solvent wastes. (See the terms of the Army's Settlement.) Natick's drinking water wells contain the solvents Perchloroethylene and Trichloroethylene.

Boiler Plant Area - (See MIT MassGIS photo at right)

In 2000 investigators found between 2 and 9 ppm of PCBs buried one to two feet deep behind the boiler plant (building 19). At the shore, the PCBs are closer to the surface. These soils were excavated and removed.

Benzo-a-pyrene (BAP) also exceed state standards by more than 2500 percent. BAP is part of a family of carcinogenic chemicals called Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). Other PAHs were also present in similar or greater quantities.

Building 22, the former hazmat storage building, also has high PAH levels in soils around a buried sump outfall pipe which drained spills of chemicals from the building toward the lakeshore. This area also has high levels of solvents in the groundwater and adjacent lake sediments.

Eco-toxic zone in Lake Cochituate

The sediments surrounding the Army labs' T-25 stormwater outfall near Lakewood Avenue are heavily contaminated with DDT, other pesticides, arsenic, PAHs, toxic metals, and possibly dioxins. This area has more than 600 times the amount of pesticides found at the State Park beach on the opposite side of the lake. PAH levels are more than 100 times higher. Animal testing by the US Army shows that sediments from this area cause chronic toxicity effects in test animals (midges and amphipods). Some lake sediments from this zone will kill these test animals outright.

Tests released in December of 2001 by Arthur D. Little show 860 % elevations in arsenic (37 ppm); 13,300 % elevations in carcinogenic benzo(a)pyrene (40 ppm); 2,850 % elevation in endocrine disrupting 2-ethylhexyl phthalate (20 ppm); 59,500 % elevation in chlordane (2.5 ppm); and 475,000 % elevation in DDT (19 ppm). No tests for dioxins have been performed although state officials expect that these potent carcinogens are present.

DDT and Pesticide Runoff to Lakeshore and Sediments

DDT and other persistent pesticides from the Natick Labs are present in many parts of the bottom of Lake Cochituate. Pesticide levels reach their peaks in the shallow and deep sediments surrounding the Natick Labs shoreline.

The lake bottom pesticide hot spots are found behind the boiler plant in the southern part of the lake, opposite the T-25 outfall to the west, and opposite Arcadia Rd. to the north close to the town drinking water wells. This northern site is not opposite any known NLabs source. These sediments also have high levels of Lindane, Dieldrin, DDE, and DDD.

How are neighbors exposed?

The Natick Labs have released toxic air pollutants from open pit test burns, burning of wastes, including burning of clothing contaminated with small amounts of chemical weapons like Mustard (HD or di(chloroethyl) sulfide). Solvents have contaminated town drinking water wells (which are usually treated before use), and can be found in lake water at low levels. Residents are exposed to contaminants by eating lake fish or ingesting lake water containing stirred-up sediments from the T-25 outfall area.

In the past heavy discharges of solvents and mercury emptied into sewers which flowed into Boston harbor, and occasionally overflowed dramatically onto North Main Street during storms.

The first milestone of the clean-up plan to be reached was the Army's wasterwater treatment plant which processes 40 to 60 gallons of PCE/TCE (Perchloroethylene / Trichloroethylene) contaminated water per minute. This contaminated water would otherwise have reached Natick's drinking water wells.

Early views of the Natick Laboratories Photographs courtesy Alan R. Earls, author of Images of America - U.S. Army Natick Laboratories - The Science Behind the Soldier. ISBN # 0-7385-3729-2

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