More Needed after MassDEP’s First Efforts to Reduce Courthouse Asbestos Risk
Last Thursday, I reported to city officials that an independent lab had confirmed that large, unsafe quantities of degraded Courthouse asbestos materials were exposed to the open air just 20 yards from the 30 block of Spring Street. I first reported the lab results to the Cambridge Fire Chief, who had publicly taken point on the city’s investigation into the building’s asbestos risks, as well and the City Manager and the Deputy City Manager who oversee the city’s Public Health Department in charge of environmental safety. From there I notified the City Council and set to work informing abutters in hopes that the information would spread and action would be taken.
I am mostly pleased with the response so far. After years of state neglect and dismissed resident concerns, productive steps commenced within hours of my first emails. I am grateful for the urgency and seriousness shown by city officials and MassDEP over the weekend in taking the most basic first steps to ensure that the Sullivan Courthouse is no longer a health hazard to the residents of East Cambridge. And I applaud Rep. Connolly for finally taking action. Hopefully, this progress is just the beginning.
That the Courthouse was unsealed and leaking contaminates has long been a self-evident truth to East Cambridge residents and some elected officials, and I am glad to see a political consensus finally form around the danger. Just over a month ago State Rep. Connolly and City Council Member Zondervan were insisting that the building was safe.
Then, State Rep. Connolly communicated what he called “accurate information” to his constituents and the Cambridge City Council in the form of an unsupported assertion from DCAMM, which stated:
“The former Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse (‘the Courthouse’) does not pose a threat to public health and does not pose a risk to the environment. It is not accurate to suggest that the Courthouse is ‘exposing our neighbors to dangerous cancer-causing toxins,’ as some have claimed. The Courthouse ‘is not actively posing a risk to anybody,’”
Shortly after State Rep. Connolly transmitted his inaccurate memo, Councillor Zondervan seized upon its contents at the July 30th City Council meeting. Then, he laughed as he characterized East Cambridge residents’ well-founded and entirely accurate safety concerns as “rumors”, and he summarized his comments by denying that the building “is a safety hazard to anyone” outside in the neighborhood.
My lab test, confirmed and duplicated by DCAMM, proved that these evidence-free assurances and dismissals were false and ill-advised. The Courthouse was exposing neighbors to cancer-causing asbestos. This is now a fact and a matter of public record. And this fact has almost certainly not changed despite needed efforts over the weekend. Further work is required.
Looking forward, the lab results reported on Thursday demonstrate a mechanism by which contamination could spread from the building in just four easy steps: 1) Begin with city environmental reports that found that spaces above the building’s ceilings were contaminated as early as 2014. 2) Walk around the building and see that, by 2019, most of the building’s ceilings have failed and fallen, thereby spreading contamination into the rooms below. 3) Provide time for former ceiling materials, which contain asbestos, to decay in variably wet, hot, and moldy environment and turn into dust and fiber. 4) Wait for disruption, as water and steam from broken pipes will carry asbestos dust out of the building though any available crack, and any breeze could carry asbestos dust out an open window or gap (note at the links that friends and foes of the LMP proposal agree that the building has many gaps that need to be closed).
That is the process by which the asbestos I confirmed came to rest on the ground 20 yards from the 30 block of Spring Street. Over the weekend, crews provided by the state sealed that exposed room and two first-floor windows that had been open, as I had requested. For that I am grateful.
However, that is just the tip of the iceberg. That same process is almost certainly playing out in every room in the building, and the building still has perhaps a dozen apparent openings in the form of cracked doors, damaged or missing windows on the jail floors, and gaps that need to closed up. And those are just the openings visible from the sidewalk. I expect that more will be apparent to a diligent work crew inside the building. Additionally, the exteriors of many windows and walls are caked with grey-white water stains from the many interior leaks witnessed by residents. The color and texture of those streaks looks consistent with the decayed ceiling materials from which I took my confirmed asbestos sample, as if water leaking from inside the building carried dust from degraded ceiling materials outside. Those windows need to be sealed.
Further, the security guards DCAMM has on site need to be protected. On Saturday morning, the guards on duty still had not been informed of the asbestos they’d been standing next to for months. I called DCAMM on Friday morning, but the message had not gotten through. Nor could DCAMM confirm they had taken action even as of Tuesday morning. Every worker should be made aware of the risks at their job site, provided with PPE by their employer, and notified of their rights by OSHA/DLS. I informed the crew on duty Saturday and provided them with copies of the test, but their employer needs to step up and do their duty for all of the crews.
My interest in the Sullivan Courthouse project began when I learned of the asbestos risk. It’s true that I support the LMP plan, but mostly because of my strong anti-asbestos beliefs and the fact that the development proposal represents the best path towards rapid remediation following a decade of community process. I have never been involved in local politics, and I don’t claim to understand all the political nuances of the debate surrounding LMP’s proposal. But I understand enough to gather that some folks are very mad at me for blowing the whistle and revealing the obvious asbestos danger in my neighborhood. Rep. Connolly’s political allies have called for my arrest, I’ve been described as the perpetrator of a political stunt, and Councillor Zondervan dismissed my test as “unauthorized” (as if the pursuit of environmental justice in the face of official dishonesty and torpidity required an official permission slip). All this despite the fact that I hopped no fences and ignored no signs, and that the sole result of my action is that my neighborhood is slightly less exposed to carcinogens.
And while I’m glad that politics stopped trumping resident safety this weekend to allow remedial steps to begin, I am concerned about a return to form last night. On Monday, Rep. Connolly took to his blog to try and discredit my efforts by attacking me personally because of my Courthouse opinions and my “credentials”, even after DCAMM duplicated my test results. All I can say is that my opinion didn’t put the asbestos there, and my credentials didn’t force Rep. Connolly to claim that the Courthouse was safe. I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish by responding to evidence and empiricism with ad hominem attacks against a whistle blower.
Further, I fear that Rep. Connolly has returned to his old habits. Residents have noted that he spent years ignoring neighborhood concerns and accepting evidence-free assurances from state agencies that the Courthouse is safe, that is until he was finally confronted with incontrovertible evidence gathered by a whistle blower. On Monday, he did the exact same thing again. Residents who support and oppose the LMP plan continued to point out gaps and openings in the building. But, according to Rep. Connolly, state officials declared to him without evidence or investigation that the openings, many of which are high in the building, were somehow not problems, and in an email to the ECPT, Mike accepted their baseless assertions at face value.
On the other hand, Rep. Connolly did support state officials’ decision to lock the gate to the Spring Street loading zone where the exposed asbestos was found. That obviously won’t keep any Courthouse asbestos in, but it will keep future whistle blowers out and accountability down. Had that gate been locked last weekend, I wouldn’t have been able to collect my sample, the state never would have been forced into action, and families would still be living next to piles of asbestos the state and Rep. Connolly refused to acknowledge.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
