The College has agreed to enter into mediation with Deb and Richard Higgins, a couple whose well was contaminated by carcinogenic chemicals originating from a nearby College-owned site, College spokeswoman Diana Lawrence confirmed in an email. In the 1960s and 70s, the College used the property, Rennie Farm, as a burial site for animal test subjects.
The chemical, 1,4-dioxane, is known to increase risks of liver cancer and other liver-related diseases. Tests of the water in the well near the Higgins’ home found levels of roughly six parts per billion of the chemical — double the state standard of three parts per billion.
In response, the College has provided the couple with bottled water to use, Richard Higgins said. They have also provided filtration tanks for the well and offered to place the family in a hotel. The couple has not drunk the well water even with the filter. Richard Higgins said that they do not trust it.
Many of the test subjects buried at Rennie Farm, a currently unused farm the College purchased in the 1950s, were contaminated with chemicals used in experimentations. In 2011, the College undertook a project to remove the bodies.
In the 1960s, before incineration was adopted as standard disposal practice, test animals were buried in bags underground. In October, the Valley News reported that the College still uses lab animals. According to the article, the College now freezes the carcasses and sends them to Stericyle, a medical and pharmaceutical waste management company based in Illinois, for disposal.
The March-April 2012 edition of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine noted that over 20,000 pounds of rats and other rodents were removed from the burial site during the extraction process in 2011. When the $1 to $2 million cleanup of the 230-acre property began, the College did not know about any potential biohazard risks. Then-director of environmental health and safety at the College Michael Blayney said at the time that the project was about lessening the College’s impact on the environment. He further added that the voluntary cleanup “removed a lot of liability.”
In 2012, during a testing of the former burial site, the College discovered concentrations of 1,4-dioxane in the surrounding groundwater, 50 to 60 times the state standard. The New Hampshire Union Leader reported in February that at the time the contamination seemed to be contained, according to an email from Lawrence. Richard Higgins said the College did not release the news to nearby residents.
The Valley News reported in September that a letter from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services said that analysis from an environmental contractor indicated the cleanup effort might itself have disturbed the contaminant and led to its spread.
Richard Higgins criticized the decision to wait, given the high concentration of the chemicals so close to his home.
“[The site] was less than a five minute walk through the woods,” he said. “In our eyes, it would have been nice to know then that there was a problem. I don’t really know why we weren’t notified at that point.”
He said he was also angered that neither he and his wife nor his neighbors were told beforehand about the excavation of the burial site.
In September, the College contacted the Higgins to let them know about the possibility that their well water had been contaminated, Richard Higgins said. Subsequent tests confirmed that the chemicals had spread.
Paul Rydel, a member of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services who is involved with hazardous waste management, said that in the case of the animals that were dumped at Rennie Farm, the 1,4-dioxane appears to have been used as part of a mixture to track radioactive decay in medical experiments. He noted he would need to check further to determine its exact use.
David Gordon, a public health risk assessor for the NHDES, said that at the level of three parts per billion, a person has a one in a 100,000 chance of developing liver cancer if they drink two liters of water a day for seventy years. Doubling the level to six parts per billion — the level found at the farm — also doubles the risk of cancer. Similarly, drinking over a smaller period of time reduces the risk proportionally, he said.
The main risk from the chemical comes from ingestion, Gordon said. Showering in water with elevated levels would not present a significant risk to human health.
As Dartmouth is the owner of the property where the contamination occurred, it is the College’s responsibility to clean and monitor it, Rydel said. He said that the College has been proactive in pursuing remediation of the site, investigating the monitoring wells and pursuing testing to better understand the distribution of the 1,4-dioxane.
Since the original sources of the contaminants have already been removed from Rennie Farm, the cleanup process now involves locating and containing water sources that have already been contaminated, Rydel said. Data points and monitoring wells can be used to track the flow of groundwater and find where the chemical plume has spread.
The actual process of cleaning would typically involve using hydraulic controls to pump out the groundwater and treat it with purifying agents, Rydel said. Because the contaminant is relatively long lasting, it is more difficult to treat than other contaminants.
The chemical has not been found in water sources for other residents in the area, Rydel said, nor has it spread to surface water further out from the site than the Higgins’ home. He estimates that the chemical spread about 1,000 feet from the original point of contamination — about the distance of the Higgins’ home from the site.
The College reached out to the Higgins’ lawyer during the week of Feb. 19 to discuss mediation, Richard Higgins said. While he would like to move forward with the process, he said that he is not willing to state a specific list of demands of what he would like from the College at this time, given the complexity of the situation. Richard Higgins said that the couple does not feel they could continue living in their house, and that the possibility of the College purchasing the property is an issue that could be raised in mediation.
The house was specially constructed to be accessible for Deb Higgins, who uses a wheelchair. The possibility of having to leave is another reason the news of the contamination has been so painful, Richard Higgins said.
Richard Higgins said that the situation has torn his life apart.
“I’ve referred to it as if your house got hit by a bomb,” he said. “You don’t know what to make of it. Each day it never leaves you.”
