&EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of Solid Waste
and Emergency Response
5204G
EPA540/F-01/017
OSWER 9365.0-29F
September 2001
Industri-Plex:
Superfund Attorneys Make Site Reuse Possible
EPA cleans up the Industri-Plex Superfund site.
Acres of wetlands co-exist with the new commercial and retail
district on the former site.
New developments, such as this retail store, change the face
of Industri-Plex, build the economic base, and restore
community pride.
"Development is going to happen.
For me, I'm thrilled that it is going to
happen on a site that was formerly used as
industrial or commercial property and is
going to be used again, rather than them
setting up a new shopping center 30 miles
out, which would involve plowing up farm
land or cutting down a forest."
Dan Wmograd
Superfund Site Attorney
This is the story of how an EPA site attorney and the Industri-
Plex team helped turn the nation's fifth worst hazardous waste
site into a booming retail, commercial, and transportation
center with a wetlands preserve. There are more than 190
successfully reused Superfund sites around the country. These
reuse projects often raise new and multifaceted issues that
require innovative and dynamic attorneys to find creative
solutions. This fact sheet highlights one site attorney's role in
the cleanup and reuse of the Industri-Plex site. It is one in a
series of fact sheets that describe how EPA site attorneys are
making cleanup and site reuse possible.
Industri-Plex
Industri-Plex was a 245-acre industrial park located in Woburn, Massa-
chusetts, 12 miles north of Boston. Since 1853, it has been the home of
various chemical-manufacturing operations that contaminated the soil and
groundwater. Industrial activities ceased at the site in 1969, and the prop-
erty was sold for development. In the late 1970s, the community protested
when development activities caused strong odors from unearthed wastes.
This development ended in 1980. In 1983, Industri-Plex was added to the
National Priorities List (NPL). Since then, under EPA direction, a group
of companies has cleaned up this former toxic waste site and EPA attor-
neys have helped make it the location of new businesses, commuter facili-
ties, wetlands, and access roads — all adding to the economic vitality of
the Woburn community. The reuse of Industri-Plex provides as many as
4,300 permanent jobs, approximately $147 million in annual income as-
sociated with those jobs, and a $4.6 million potential increase in residential
property values within two miles of the site. This success took the com-
bined efforts of Superfund Site Attorney Dan Winograd, Remedial Project
Manager Joe LeMay and many other federal, state, and private parties.
Untangling the Legal Web - Multi-Party, Multi-Practice
Communities, developers, and lenders - often deterred by the appar-
ent web of legal hurdles and liability issues surrounding reuse — need
skilled and motivated attorneys to untangle the web and lead them to
the new paradigm of Superfund site reuse. A number of site attorneys
have stepped forward to help untangle this web. Their contribution has
ranged from removing procedural obstacles to leading multiple-party
negotiations to make site reuse happen. Their venture has not only re-
shaped the landscape, it has given them a keen sense of mission fulfill-
ment and career development.
They report mission fulfillment because the site is cleaned up and
greenfields are preserved, as new development is steered toward the
former Superfund site. Urban sprawl is discouraged and smart growth
September 20, 2001
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INDUSTRI-PLEX—Superfund Attorneys Make Site Reuse Possible .
encouraged because the redevelopment occurs in areas
where city infrastructure already exists. Communities are
revitalized as former toxic waste sites are replaced by stores,
parks, office clusters, and soccer fields — to name only a few
of the community-supported uses.
On a personal level, site reuse presents an attorney with new
issues, new subject areas, and a whole new set of players. The
attorney is challenged to think innovatively strengthen exist-
ing skills, and learn new skills.
Meeting the Challenge
Dan Winograd is one EPA site attorney who met the chal-
lenge by working in collaboration with public and private
partners and thinking "outside the box" to make site reuse
possible.
The cleanup and development of Industri-Plex "posed new
problems which needed to be worked out," says Winograd.
But to work out these new problems, he had to solve some
pretty big issues.
For example, who would foot the bill? The developer who
owned half the site was bankrupt. Although the developer
offered the land as his contribution to cleanup costs, until
cleanup was complete it could not be sold. But who would
hold and manage this property before the sale, and where
would the money come from needed to promote development?
One solution found by the site attorney who preceded
Winograd, Greg Kennan, and his counterpart at the Depart-
ment of Justice, Bill Brighton, was a Custodial Trust with the
potentially responsible parties (PRPs) creating an interest-free
revolving loan fund. The Trustee could borrow money from
that fund to prepare parcels for redevelopment and then re-
pay the loan when the parcels were sold. Proceeds from the
sales were distributed to the beneficiaries of the Trust: EPA,
Massachusetts, Woburn, and the PRPs. In September 1989,
shortly after the consent decree was entered, Winograd took
over as site attorney and oversaw the implementation of that
Trust. This type of trust had never been implemented at a
Superfund site. In addition, there was redevelopment activity
on the half of the site still privately owned. Throughout the
site, it was extremely important to coordinate remediation and
reuse and to address the concerns of the developers and pro-
spective owners, particularly concerns about liability.
Solutions such as these did not come easily. According to
Winograd, they were preceded by challenging and com-
plex negotiations that required continuous interaction with
a large number of diverse players, including PRPs, the Cus-
todial Trust, the city government, community factions, land
owners, new developers, state agencies, future tenants, and
lenders. Practical and legally proper solutions needed to
be created to satisfy multiple needs.
A Total Learning Experience
To devise these solutions, Winograd had to learn new areas
of law, such as bankruptcy law. "There are also many local
ordinance issues to learn," says Winograd.
While the law library was sometimes helpful, most of the
learning was hands-on. "I talked to the PRPs' attorneys, the
developers' attorneys, and city attorneys to understand from
their perspective what their concerns were and how we could
address them," says Winograd. He asked: "Help me under-
stand the issues, so I can figure out how to help you from the
federal government's perspective, because this is an area we
don't typically get involved with."
Winograd also helped move the prospective purchaser agree-
ments (PPAs) along more quickly and worked with a devel-
oper to create a standardized checklist so PPA protections could
be more easily assigned when new tenants move into a space.
The first PPA at Industri-Plex took 16 months to complete
and the most recent PPA (the fifth PPA at Industri-Plex) took
only three months to complete.
Winograd and the Industri-Plex team worked with a multi-
tude of officials, entrepreneurs, and citizens to help them
understand what was going on at the site. "Any time we saw
an obstacle, [we would] figure how [to] help the developer
or the owner over the problem." Helping to put it all to-
gether was very satisfying, says Winograd, "It's been a total
learning experience."
Innovating Institutional Controls
But the satisfactions of getting involved with site reuse are not
limited to learning new areas of law. Innovative legal instru-
ments needed to be crafted to protect human health and the
environment while allowing development to move forward.
Therefore, the Industri-Plex partners have been working to-
gether to create new, more flexible institutional controls (ICs).
Internet infrastructure supplier Genuity is one of the tenants of the new Metro
North Corporate Center.
2 • September 20, 2001
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INDUSTRI-PLEX—Superfund Attorneys Make Site Reuse Possible
ICs have been around since the first days of Superfund. In
situations like Industri-Plex, where contaminated materials are
contained on site, ICs minimize the risk of breach of contain-
ment by flatly prohibiting activities like digging into the ground
on or near the containment area. According to Winograd,
traditional ICs declare "thou shall not do anything."
While these prohibitive ICs reduce the risk of exposure to
hazardous waste, they also make it difficult to redevelop the
property. At Industri-Plex, Winograd and his colleagues came
up with a number of creative ways for the ICs to allow devel-
opment to move forward and protect human health and the
environment at the same time.
Negotiating the ICs has taken considerable time. One issue
to be addressed was that there were two groups of PRPs with
conflicting interests. The generator PRPs favored restrictive
ICs as protection from potential liability. The landowner PRPs
wanted minimal ICs to encourage development. Add in EPA,
Massachusetts, and Woburn, and, says Winograd, you have
the parties doing "a dance together trying to figure out how
to make things work to everyone's advantage."
The results of this effort are a set of interim ICs that regulate
activities at the site while permanent ICs are being completed.
The proposed permanent 1C framework makes the current
landowners generally responsible for their properties, which
are monitored at various stages by EPA, Massachusetts, and
the landowner PRPs. The developers can dig at the Industri-
Plex site, but only if they follow the strict safety guidelines
specified by the ICs. If the ICs are not followed, the federal
government will step in with an arsenal of remedies. These
innovative ICs at Industri-Plex allow development to trans-
form the site from a symbol of protest to a symbol of pride.
Industri-Plex: From Community Protest
to Community Pride
One source of pride is the new Regional Transportation Cen-
ter. The center is named for Jimmy Anderson, a child who
died of leukemia after being exposed to water contaminated
by a second toxic waste site in the Woburn area. His mother
was a plaintiff in the lawsuit portrayed in the book and movie,
"A Civil Action."
Having experienced such tragedy, it is not surprising that many
in Woburn were initially hostile to building stores, offices, and
public transportation facilities over another toxic waste site in
their community. However, this negative perception has been
turned around. When Target announced it was going to build
a store on the site, Woburn Mayor Robert Dever declared
that the new developments will make "people realize that the
stigma is not forever and that communities can go forward."
The initial tour of the new Jimmy Anderson Regional Trans-
portation Center was a major public event attended by
Woburn's mayor and a who's who of local dignitaries.
Enforcement Steps In
When ICs are Violated
The Industri-Plex ICs were put to the test when a sub-
contractor was caught operating heavy machinery
within a sensitive area limited to manual digging.
This violation resulted in the penetration of the geo-
textile membrane cap and the scattering of contami-
nated material over an area of the site.
Joseph LeMay, the Remedial Project Manager at
Industri-Plex, first noticed the violation while visit-
ing the site. All operations on the property were
immediately shut down. Site attorney Winograd then
"read them the riot act," emphasizing the serious-
ness of the violation to the landowners, developer,
and contractor.
The subcontractor was replaced and the developer
was required to cover costs associated with contami-
nation cleanup, equipment decontamination, envi-
ronmental consultation, and site inspection. What's
more, EPA publicized the incident to the other PRPs
so they would know that violating an 1C would have
expensive consequences. Bottom line, according to
Winograd, is that "EPA takes this very seriously."
The transformation of Industri-Plex was recognized at the
Brownfields 2000 conference when the site won a Phoe-
nix Award for outstanding land recycling achievements.
Woburn Redevelopment Authority Chairman Jack
Marlowe spoke for the city when he declared: "This award
is the culmination of ten years of hard work. We have
changed the image of Woburn dramatically."
Today the community is proud of:
The Jimmy Anderson Regional Transportation Center, built
to accommodate 2,400 parking spaces for commuter train
service into Boston, a Park and Ride bus service, and shuttle
service to Logan Airport.
A commercial and retail district, being developed by ma-
jor corporations like Marriott, Genuity, and ArQule, in-
cluding a Target department store and 750,000 square
feet of office and hotel space.
A new highway link, the McKeown interchange, and a new
connector road to Wilmington constructed to ease regional
traffic congestion while providing access to new businesses
at the former site.
. September 20, 2001
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INDUSTRI-PLEX—Superfund Attorneys Make Site Reuse Possible .
A Proud Community says:
• "The transformation of this 245-acre
site has restored Woburn's pride, hope,
and economic future." - Woburn
Mayor Robert Dever
• "We can be very proud. We did what
people said couldn't be done - we reused
a top-10 toxic waste site." — Massachu-
setts State Representative Carol Donovan
• "Everyone involved should be proud of
their contribution toward development
of the Industri-Plex site. The comple-
tion of this project marks a triumph in
redevelopment of a severely contami-
nated site." — Woburn Mayor Robert
Dever
• "Industri-Plex is a model of how eco-
nomic development and environmental
protection go hand-in-hand." - EPA
Region 1 Administrator Mindy Lubber.
Reuse Has Its Rewards
The satisfaction for Winograd is personal: "We kept the community in-
formed and they saw us as people who could help." At public meetings,
people came up to tell him what a good job EPA does. Winograd says he
also feels satisfaction when "each project is finalized and you see the actual
development. Watching old land being redeveloped into something tan-
gible and economically stimulating to the community fulfills my personal,
as well as the Agency's, mission."
The United States Environmental Protection Agency Silver Medal is presented to the Superfund
Redevelopment Team. Among the medalists are Dan Winograd, Site Attorney, and Joe LeMay,
Remedial Project Manager (back row, from left, respectively).
The Woburn Redevelopment
Authority won the Phoenix
Award for Outstanding Land
Recycling Achievements at
the Brownfields 2000
conference.
For More Information...
About the Superfund Redevelopment Initiative (SRI) in general:
consult the SRI web site at
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/index.htm
About tools such as EPA templates and forms for prospective
purchaser agreements and comfort letters: consult the SRI web site at
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/forms.htm
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/forms.htmttPPAs
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/forms.htmttcomfortletters
About Industri-Plex and other successfully reused sites:
go to the Superfund Redevelopment Site Information Table which offers
(by state and by site) Case Studies, One-Page Summaries, Success Stories,
NPL Narratives, NPL Fact Sheets, Record of Decision Abstracts, and Maps at
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/site_tbl.htm#industri
About the benefits of site reuse: consult the SRI web site at
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/bensum.htm
About SRI guidance and policy documents: go to
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/policy.htm
or contact John Harris at harris.john@epa.gov or (703) 603-9075.
4 • September 20, 2001 .
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