Peterborough’s New Hampshire Ball Bearings sued two companies it contracted after an environmental barrier they constructed in 2014 failed to reduce groundwater contaminants in the South Well Superfund Site in Peterborough by the standards specified by the EPA.
In a preliminary statement from February 2018, the Peterborough company accused Ohio-based project manager and hydrogeological consulting company Hull & Associates, and New Jersey-based GeoSierra Environmental Inc. of breach of contract and negligence in their respective roles in developing and installing the permeable reactive barrier involving zero-valent iron, a system intended to reduce chlorinated volatile organic compound (CVOC) concentrations in the groundwater. Representatives from both contracting companies deny all claims of wrongdoing.
NHBB paid about $13.6 million to construct the barrier, a NHBB representative told the Ledger-Transcript in 2015. NHBB was led to believe the specific technology that GeoSierra patented could treat water to EPA standards and be installed with less disturbance to the surrounding area, which includes wetlands, according to court documents. In 2018, the EPA concluded the new treatment wasn’t meeting standards, and a third party consultant NHBB hired determined the filtration system’s design was based on incorrect data and would never have achieved the EPA mandates, according to court documents.
The permeable reactive barrier replaced a pumping system built in 1994 that the EPA determined was no longer adequately treating the water. Cleanup at the site has been ongoing since 1982, when CVOC contaminants were detected in the town’s South Well. EPA mandates require NHBB to mitigate contaminants so that the well could be used for drinking water if it was ever needed.
The case had a pretrial conference on May 8, and all parties are negotiating the date for a juried trial. A NHBB representative said she would not comment as the case was ongoing.