Just a straightforward informational post. MassDEP has issued a concise, helpful, guidance on performing response actions during COVID-19. Here are the highlights:
Last month, we wrote about MassDEP’s trichloroethylene (TCE) site reevaluation initiative. MassDEP has begun the process of screening sites previously closed under the MCP to look for sites where TCE might exceed the new groundwater concentration standard of 5 μg/L. At yesterday’s meeting of the Waste Site Cleanup Advisory Committee, MassDEP provided an update on this initiative.
MassDEP has not yet begun contacting owners of closed sites. … More
MassDEP has recently released for public comment draft Guidance on Vapor Intrusion. The proposed guidance would replace MassDEP’s December 2011 Interim Final Vapor Intrusion Guidance, which saw minor revisions in the spring of 2013. The guidance has undergone a substantial revision, largely to make changes that correspond to the recent regulatory reforms to the Massachusetts Contingency Plan.
The guidance provides MassDEP’s recommended technical and regulatory approaches to addressing the vapor intrusion pathway at sites contaminated with releases of oil and/or hazardous materials regulated under the MCP.… More
On Friday, MassDEP issued the formal public comment draft of its package of regulatory reforms under the Massachusetts Contingency Plan. Overall, it’s certainly a good package, which will facilitate getting to an endpoint with reduced transaction costs, but no decrease in environmental protection. It’s not perfect (and you have until May 17, 2013 to provide comments to help make it more perfect), and it took far too long,… More