Beverly Mayor Mike CahillPhoto: WBZ NewsRadio \ Kim Tunnicliffe
BEVERLY, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is ordering one medical instruments maker to clean up an old contaminated site on the North Shore after residents and city officials grew concerned about exposure.
Varian Medical Systems, a radiation oncology treatment and software maker, is being called to come up with a new cleanup plan to get rid of the toxic chemical contamination at its former Beverly industrial site.
Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill said the property has been contaminated for decades and is concerning for the businesses and residents that live nearby.
"Chlorinated solvents, they use them to clean machinery and tools on a regular basis, they dump what was left over in the ground," Mayor Cahill said.
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Varian has proposed several cleanup techniques they say will work more aggressively to clean the mess, but are focusing on thermal remediation at one contaminated site.
Mayor Mike Cahill is concerned doing it at just one site isn't enough.
"We've been asking why not all three," he said.
Varian said using thermal remediation will heat the ground under one Beverly site to vaporize the contaminants.
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