FALMOUTH – The water superintendent in Falmouth recently took responsibility for violating state requirements for safely handling and storing asbestos cement pipe.
Stephen Rafferty told selectmen that employees have been following state Department of Environmental Protection guidelines on cutting and removing the pipe, but not on the storage and disposal of the material.
“As the water superintendent I am responsible for the actions of the Water Department’s employees, and for seeing that we perform our job to provide the townspeople with clean water delivered reliably,” Rafferty said.
The DEP has a guidance document in regards to asbestos pipe which was originally developed in 2015. That document was updated and reissued in July.
“At no time have we put the public’s health or the water supply at risk in our handling and storage of asbestos cement pipe,” Rafferty said.
Thirty-eight percent of the town’s water piping is asbestos cement pipe, which was installed in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Many of the town’s water main breaks are associated with a failure of a rubber gasket in the asbestos cement pipes collar-style joint gasket system.
Short segments of pipe and pipe collars removed during repairs have been stockpiled within fenced in locked cage located off Pumping Station Road.
The fenced cage is sited outside of Long Ponds watershed.
Some, but not all, of the pipe has been placed within a plastic wrapper.
Rafferty met with a DEP representative on October 20 to receive direction on how to dispose of the pipe already accumulated and how to bring the town’s process for handling and disposing of the pieces of pipe under compliance with the DEP’s guidance documents.
Rafferty said the Water Department is correcting the deficiency.
“Disposal of the pipe that we currently have will include hiring a licensed asbestos abatement contractor to evaluate the site storage area, to quantify the amount of material to be package and disposed of and followed by the removal of the material for a disposal at a landfill.”
Moving forward, the town is establishing standard operating procedures for documentation of the department’s work on asbestos cement pipe.
Those procedures include pre-demolition survey and documentation, post-abatement documentation, notification to the DEP a minimum of 10 days prior to any work on asbestos pipe that is not an emergency, notification by phone to the DEP prior to excavation commencing on any emergency and providing written documentation within 24 hours of any work.
Rafferty said all staff have been furnished with appropriate respiratory masks and cutting of asbestos pipe is completed with proper tools for wet cutting.
“We will be extending the training to all field staff in the Water Department,” Rafferty said.
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