New Bedford wins historic Superfund settlement

Federal and state authorities on Oct. 10 announced a negotiated $366.25 million settlement with a South Carolina-based company to clean up New Bedford Harbor.

The agreement, the largest single-site cash settlement in the history of the federal Superfund program, is expected to result in the cleanup and restoration of the harbor within five to seven years – far faster than the 40 or more years that would have been needed under the current level of funding.

“This is a very big deal,” New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell told the Boston Globe. “This is going to allow us to take full advantage of our harbor.”

The agreement was announced by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

The settlement was reached with AVX Corp., the successor to Aerovox Corp., which was among the companies that dumped chemicals into the harbor for several decades in the mid-twentieth century.

On April 18, the EPA issued an enforcement order to AVX to implement the ongoing cleanup work to address PCB contamination in harbor sediment.

New Bedford Harbor was placed on the EPA’s Superfund list in 1983.