A mile-wide toxic waste site sits on the ocean floor off Boston Harbor
About 19 miles east of Boston Harbor, beside a national marine sanctuary that’s home to one of the world’s richest fishing grounds, lies one of the nation’s largest offshore dumping sites of radioactive waste.
In less than 300 feet of water, thousands of barrels litter the seafloor, a mile-wide toxic junkyard that fishermen call “The Foul Area.”
It’s called that because many have tangled — or fouled — their gear in the barrel field, at times even pulling up containers filled with toxic chemicals. Government reports and congressional testimony over the years have suggested the dumping ground may include plutonium and other highly dangerous materials discarded after the completion of the Manhattan Project during World War II.
Now, the federal government is trying to bury the barrels at least three feet deep with roughly 10 million tons of sediment dredged from a $340 million project to widen shipping channels in Boston Harbor. Capping the toxic material — which includes unexploded munitions — was seen as a safer way of minimizing risks, rather than trying to bring the rusting barrels to the surface.
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