PRBuzz
10-11-2012, 04:55 AM
NEW BEDFORD — A long-departed manufacturing company will pay $366 million to clean the PCB-laden harbor here, the largest cash settlement for a single site in the history of the federal Superfund program, government officials announced Wednesday.
The payment by South Carolina-based AVX Corp., whose predecessor, Aerovox Corp., operated an electrical component plant, will mean the harbor could be clean within seven years — a dramatically shorter timeline than the 40 years or more federal officials once predicted.
The cleanup will reverse decades of embarrassment for the fabled fishing city: Although New Bedford is one of the nation’s top fishing ports, eating even a single fish from its harbor has been prohibited because the water is considered so poisoned with polychlorinated biphenyls, a probable human carcinogen.
The payment by South Carolina-based AVX Corp., whose predecessor, Aerovox Corp., operated an electrical component plant, will mean the harbor could be clean within seven years — a dramatically shorter timeline than the 40 years or more federal officials once predicted.
The cleanup will reverse decades of embarrassment for the fabled fishing city: Although New Bedford is one of the nation’s top fishing ports, eating even a single fish from its harbor has been prohibited because the water is considered so poisoned with polychlorinated biphenyls, a probable human carcinogen.