If you ever needed an example of the downside of trying to run state government on a shoestring, you could do worse than to consider the contaminated Beazer Materials property near Greeley Park in Nashua.

It is the state of New Hampshire’s dirty little secret – or one of them, anyway.

From 1924-84, the Beazer property was used to produce railroad ties treated with creosote, a popular wood preservative that prevented the ties from rotting. A lot of the byproduct from that operation got dumped into pits throughout the area.

The result was an environmental mess. Creosote leached into the Merrimack River and those who live nearby suspect the neighborhood is infested with the stuff, which the CDC says is a carcinogen even at fairly low levels.

Beazer was shut down nearly 30 years ago and – as detailed in a pair of stories by The Telegraph’s Bradford Randall – the cleanup is a process that never seems to end.

Beazer – based in Pittsburgh – has an agreement with the state to clean up the site and pay for the costs associated with doing that, but we suspect this is one of those instances where the state is as much a part of the problem as it is the solution.

State Department of Environmental Services officials seem to be in no rush to hold Beazer’s feet to the fire. Beazer and DES are still in the process of approving a site-remediation plan, and it’s
been nearly a year in the making.

“They’re being cooperative,” said Mike McClusky, the DES project manager for the Beazer site, explaining why the state has chosen not to enforce a 2007 consent agreement in which Beazer admitted to illegal dumping and agreed to pay for cleanup costs.

Sorry, but it looks like the creosote is moving faster than the state bureaucracy, and the utter lack of urgency suggested by some of McClusky’s remarks ought to be troubling to anyone who thinks it should work the other way around.

It’s easy to be cooperative when nobody’s pushing you.

DES officials will be in Nashua on Nov. 13 to update the city’s Waterways Committee about recent testing at the Beazer site. (Full disclosure: The Telegraph’s publisher, Greg Pohl, is a recent addition to the Waterways Committee.)

“There is no statutory or regulatory requirement for public meetings,” McCluskey said. “But we anticipate doing that voluntarily.”

The very fact that it’s been 29 years since the plant closed, and the details of the abatement are still being ironed out between Beazer and the state, suggests that the state has failed in its responsibilities to the city of Nashua and the people who live around the site.

We don’t mean to pick on McClusky, because he has bosses and is part of a larger agency. But he sounds at times like he works for Beazer.

McClusky said last week that he hadn’t read the new water-monitoring report that came out the week before, and he expected Beazer to contact him “if there are any issues” with the new data. McClusky said Beazer has not reported any issues “this time around.”

The water quality study was submitted by a company hired by Beazer, and the state apparently sees no potential for conflict with that arrangement.

“They’re a viable, confident partner,” McClusky said of the company that did the study.

That may be true, but it sounds like the culture at DES is to treat polluters much the same way state lawmakers treat ethics: Everybody’s on the honor system. Until, of course, they’re not.

After 29 years, the people around the site may have cause to wonder whose side DES is really on.

Newsletter