The Industri-Plex site in Woburn, Massachusetts, sits about 12 miles outside Boston. It operated as a manufacturing facility from 1853 to 1969, producing lead-arsenic insecticides, acids, solvents, and animal-hide glue. Those activities left heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, and other hazardous chemicals in the soil, groundwater, surface water, and sediment. EPA added the site to the National Priorities List in September 1983. More than 34,000 people live within 3 miles, and residences sit within 1,000 feet of the site.
EPA identified 32 contaminants of concern. Key ones include arsenic, lead, chromium, benzene, toluene, trichloroethene, phenol, and ammonia. Contamination affects multiple media across the site. Buried animal hide waste piles covering roughly 20 acres released hydrogen sulfide gas, causing a persistent odor in surrounding neighborhoods. Wetlands near the site have also been threatened by contaminated runoff.
Cleanup has occurred in two main phases. The first phase, Operable Unit 1, focused on capping about 105 acres of contaminated soils and sediments, installing an impermeable cap and gas collection system over the East Hide Pile, and treating groundwater. That work was certified complete in September 2008. The second phase, Operable Unit 2, addressed groundwater and surface water along the Aberjona River. It included dredging contaminated sediments, capping stream channels, and creating a sediment retention area. Remedial action for that phase finished in September 2017. In 2024, potentially responsible parties finished recording 46 institutional controls across properties and roadways to protect the cleanup work and restrict certain land uses.
Physical construction of the cleanup is complete across the entire site. EPA assessments indicate that human exposure is under control and groundwater migration is stabilized with no unacceptable discharge to surface water. However, the site has not yet achieved all cleanup goals for reasonably anticipated future land uses, and EPA continues monitoring to confirm contaminated groundwater stays within the original contamination area. The most recent Five Year Review was completed in May 2024. Redevelopment has been extensive, with a shopping center, office park, hotel, apartment complexes, and a solar facility all operating on former contaminated land. As of December 2024, 41 businesses on site employed 1,091 people.
Community members can get more information by contacting the EPA staff assigned to the site, visiting over 600 documents available through EPA's online system (www.epa.gov/superfund/industriplex), or stopping by the Woburn Public Library at 45 Pleasant Street.
