June 06--ANDOVER -- Flame retardant used to douse a burning plane at Hanscom Field in Bedford on Saturday night has floated down the Shawsheen River and appeared at the Ballardvale dam, where huge piles of light, white, fluffy foam formed over the rocks and floated into the air Tuesday and Wednesday.
Yesterday afternoon, pockets of it remained and small pieces continued to float into the air around the dam, located just north of the Andover Street bridge. Smaller pockets of foam were reported at the Stevens Street dam in Andover.
Environmental officials say the flame retardant used at the crash site floated down the river as "residuals" which aren't visible unless the water gets stirred up, which is what happened due to the turbulence of the water at the base of the dams. However, it presents no environmental or health threat, they said.
But it certainly created a curiosity.
Charlie MacNeil, co-owner of Andover Hardware, an industrial supply company with an office on the river, said he saw it Wednesday afternoon and assumed it was created by dish soap thrown into the river.
"It was like someone had a bubble-maker," he said. "It was floating up into the air."
He said a fisherman who had waded into the river was enveloped by the foam as he cast his line.
"He was surrounded by it," he said. "It was interesting to see."
The fire-retardant foam was used to douse the flames Saturday night in a plane crash that killed seven people. At 9:40 p.m., the Gulfstream IV aircraft was attempting to take off from Hanscom but apparently never left the ground. Instead, it hurtled off the runway, across a field and into a ravine where it exploded into flames. Federal officials are continuing to investigate the cause of the crash.
The point where the plane crashed and burned is also where the Shawsheen River begins. According to the Shawsheen River Watershed Association, the river starts at Hanscom Field and runs 25 miles through a half-dozen cities and towns before dumping into the Merrimack River near the I-495 overpass in Lawrence.
The dam in Ballardvale is the first dam on the river after the headwaters.
In Bedford, town officials shut down the wells it uses to pump drinking water from the Shawsheen on account of the crash. Environmental cleanup crews installed booms and other devices to soak up the oil and fuel that spilled as a result of the crash.
The booms did not, however, contain the fire-retardant foam.
For a short time, the origin of the foam at the Ballardvale dam was something of a mystery, said Bob Douglas, the agent for the Andover Conservation Commission.
He said he was at the regular, monthly Commission meeting Tuesday night when someone showed him pictures of the foam, which was building up at the base of the Ballardvale dam, blowing around in the breeze and floating down the river.
Conservation volunteer Andy Menezes of 3 Waverly Drive, Andover, was also at the commission meeting and he saw the photos and became extremely curious about where the foam came from.
"I live down there, so after the meeting I went down there at about 10:30 that night and stood on the wall," he said. "I could see some pieces of it floating around. It didn't smell, and to the touch it was very dry. I figured it was some kind of chemical dispersant from some kind of spill. But that's usually slimy. This was dry."
At daylight Wednesday morning, he said, he went out and took a closer look and noticed that it was bright white, so it couldn't have been organic. He said organic foam is usually slightly brown.
He then went home and did some research about the cleanup of the plane crash. He saw photos and read accounts of fire-retardant foam being used. He wrote up a memo and sent it to Douglas.
"Most of the stuff is supposed to be non-toxic," Menezes said. "I think it's benign, but they used a lot of it. The headwaters of the Shawsheen are right at the end of the runway. I thought about those poor people who died, then I thought about the river."
Douglas said that after he got the email from Menezes, he immediately began making inquiries, calling or emailing local, state and federal officials to find out if, in fact, it was fire-retardant foam that was showing up in Andover. And if it was, he wanted to know, was it toxic to humans or the environment.
"First, I notified public health," he said. "They said they'd already been called. The DPW had also been called. I also called the fire department to find out if it was hazardous."
Finally, he forwarded one of the emails to Pam Merrill, a wetlands expert with the Department of Environmental Protection in Wilmington. She investigated and soon found some answers.
Merrill emailed Douglas on Wednesday afternoon, saying that she had spoken with the DEP's Emergency Response team who were able to confirm that the foam was "in fact residuals from the fire suppression used at Hanscom...They did assure me that the foam fire suppression was applied properly and is not an environmental concern."
She said the product, a combination of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon compounds, breaks down in water.
"However, when the 'residuals' are agitated in the stream, due to an increase of water velocity, moving through some rocks/vegetation in the river or over a dam, it turns into foam again, which is exactly what you're seeing at the Ballardvale Street dam," she wrote. "There is no need to contain the residuals as it will eventually be diluted. Emergency Response has been overseeing the remediation efforts from the fuel spill by Clean Harbors at the impact site and there has been zero fish kill reported."
Ed Colletta, the public relations director for Mass. DEP, said Merrill's email pretty much summed up the situation.
"The thought is that it will continue to dissipate and not be a concern environmentally," he said. "Especially once it gets into the Merrimack River. It should be pretty well diluted by then."
He added, "it's not a health hazard. I'm not sure if you'd want kids to play in it, but if you touched it, or got it on your clothes, there is no health issue in that form."
He said the DEP would continue to monitor the presence of the foam through the local Conservation agents in the towns along the Shawsheen River.
"We are aware of it and keeping an eye on it," he said.
Someone else keeping an eye on it is Andover Fire Chief Mike Mansfield, who got a call from Bedford Fire Chief David Grunes who was able to fill him in on the situation.
"I talked to chief and he didn't think enough went downstream to create a problem," Mansfield said. "The state DEP is not that concerned about it. It will work its way out through the system, but it's going to create a foam byproduct."
He noted that different types of foam are used by firefighters in different situations. In this case, he said, the type used was Aqueous Film-Forming Foam, or AFFF.
"It creates a blanket," he said. "It separates the oxygen in the atmosphere and shuts down the ability to have combustion occur."
He said it doesn't absorb hydrocarbons, so that the foam appearing in Andover doesn't contain oil or fuel products.
"It's used extensively on motor vehicle fires, or any kind of oil or gasoline spills," he said. "It's very effective."
Mansfield checked out both the Ballardvale and the Stevens Street dams, reporting that he saw signs of the foam in both places.
"There's no threat to anybody's safety at all with this stuff," he said. "If there was, we would have been notified by the DEP and state and federal agencies that oversee this type of thing."
A Bedford fire official said the foam was put on the plane by the Hanscom Field fire department. A call to the base spokeswoman was not returned.
Copyright 2014 - The Eagle-Tribune, North Andover, Mass.
