Last night at the Medfield High School auditorium, DCAM reported on the current status of its clean up of the environmental contamination of the Medfield State Hospital site.
1. Salvage yard at rear of site is in midst of being removed.
2. Foundations from sledding hill and area around Odyssey House have been removed to area at salvage yard.
3. Two underground storage tanks have been removed from the R Building at the rear of the site.
4. Most importantly for the Town of Medfield, DCAM committed to making the developer pay to tear down Odyssey House, thus saving the town the cost of doing so. All Medfield town committees which oversee historic issues endorsed tearing down Odyssey House this summer. Commissioner Perini noted that in an era of tight budgets that DCAM preferred to not spend the monies to tear it down on its own, and saw making the ultimate developer do so as a good solution, albeit one which will cost the state monies in the end as the developer will probably just deduct that cost from the purchase price it will bid.
5. DCAM will give town Historic Society the main sign to the Medfield State Hospital and a framed print of plans as thanks for Tony Calo’s generous donation of time to their remediation efforts (Tony was the superintendent at MSH for years). Tony reportedly drove around with them for hours sharing his recollections of what was done).
See the DCAM PowerPoint with photos of the work, which will be posted soon at the Town of Medfield website’s Medfield State Hospital section http://www.town.medfield.net/index.cfm?pid=17707. There now is the 552 page Scope of Work document DCAM provide on 8/4/10, detailing the history and current status to that date. The event was recorded, so look for it on MedfieldTV.
Next DCAM meeting will occur 11/30 and its next quarterly meeting will be Dec/Jan.
This observer’s take away – DCAM is truly serious about remediating the Medfield State Hospital site to make it a safe place.
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