You Can Help Save the Paint Factory

Clean up at our headquarters, the former Tarr and Wonson Paint Manufactory has been a protracted and ongoing process. The birthplace of marine bottom paint, the site was contaminated with large amounts of copper, lead, chromium, arsenic and asbestos. We have invested almost 1 million dollars into clean-up and remediation so far. Currently, a clean utility corridor for the site is in the works–the $200K needed for this project came from the EPA in the form of a brownfields grant.  We expect to have to invest at least another half a million dollars into the site before we can claim that it is fully cleaned up.

On November 19th Iain attended a MA EPA brownfields grantee meeting in Boylston, MA.  The purpose of this meeting was broad but it included reviewing the grantee process, letting the grantees know what technical assistance is available, and a question and answer session on grants administration.  For the afternoon session there was a clean energy panel, a discussion on MassDevelopment Funding and a Developers Panel, during which 3 developers from around the state talked about some of their commercial developments of brownfields sites.

 Certainly we could not have achieved as much as we have on the clean-up front without support from the City of Gloucester and the EPA. You can come visit our finished offices and Robotics Lab on the site to see what we’ve accomplished so far. Alas, the burden is now upon us to finish this job, so we need all the help we can get. We hope you will consider a year-end gift in support of this work of saving a piece of history as a center of ocean research, conservation and education for the future.

[Pictured from left: Joe Ferrari – US EPA Region 1 (our case manager), Tracy Costa – Nobis Engineering (our licensed site professional), Iain Kerr – Ocean Alliance CEO, Steve Winslow – Senior Project Manager, City of Gloucester, Kerry Bowie – MASS DEP]