WESTFIELD — Westfield Residents Advocating for Themselves was one of six recipients awarded a Technical Assistance Grant of $20,000 from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, according to an announcement by the Healey/Driscoll Administration on Jan. 27.
“So many Massachusetts residents care about the environment and are interested in making sure their water and air are protected, but get stymied by the complex technical information that informs assessment and remediation,” said MassDEP Commissioner Bonnie Heiple. “These funds support local leaders and residents in gaining the knowledge and confidence to actively shape decisions about the cleanup of contamination in their own communities.”
According to the announcement, the $120,000 in Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) awards can be used to bring in experts, engage more residents and offer educational resources for the public.
WRAFT will use its award to engage technical expertise to review and interpret disposal site documents and information for the Barnes Air National Guard Base to increase public awareness by providing valuable insights into the extent and nature of residents’ health concerns and issues. Contaminants of concern include PFAS, affecting soil, surface water, groundwater, and contaminants impacting municipal and private drinking water supplies.
“It’s all to do with the PFAS contamination,” said WRAFT President Kristen Mello. “The way the TAG grant works is you apply to do a particular project on a particular waste site.”
Mello said this is the second TAG grant the group received, and will build on an information gathering survey the group is developing on PFAS exposure and associated health risks.
“Our PFAS contamination is in the drinking water — the bulk of it came from fire training,” Mello said after receiving the first grant in June 2024, referring to the contamination that has been documented in Westfield from the Aqueous Film-Forming Foam formerly used for firefighting training by the Air National Guard at Barnes Airport.
“We’re going to continue the work from the last grant. The great thing about a community health survey is, we will get more information about what people need,” she said.
WRAFT was given an extension on rolling out the survey after the expert they hired, Wendy Heiger-Bernays, a research professor at UMASS Lowell and Boston University, was recruited to work for MassDEP.
Mello said the group is now working with an expert from the Institutional Review Board at Michigan State University, formerly of Harvard University. She said people should look for an announcement about the community survey at the end of February — around the time of the ninth anniversary of the formation of WRAFT on Feb. 22, 2017.
Mello said the second grant will focus on getting residents the answers they need to their public health concerns, as stated on the surveys, which will be confidential information they can bring to their doctors.
“The ability for one expert to answer the questions for 40,000 is challenging,” Mello said. She said with the new grant, they are going to try to interact with participants in the survey, to allow them to self-service through a computer program, taking the information the expert knows and offering it in an easily digestible way.
“We were going to hold a bunch of meetings where she would talk to them, but it needs to be easier to get the information you need than it is to get a date (for a meeting). Our expert can’t handle 40,000 people by herself,” Mello said.
“Nobody asked for this. We shouldn’t make them work to get help. We’re trying to reduce the obstacles. We want it easily understandable by the providers, by the patients, by the Board of Health, by everybody. The information is out there, but if you’re not some PFAS nerd, you don’t have it,” she added.
Mello expressed appreciation to MassDEP for the grants. “All of the PFAS progress we’ve made has been on the state level. Massachusetts has been almost as helpful as any other state, and our DEP really has been fantastic … really stellar about their PFAS response,” she said, despite pressure from the industries that profit from these chemistries.
She said ever since WRAFT announced the last TAG grant, people have been reaching out. “Then more people get diagnosed, and more people reach out. It’s super great that the administration puts money [in]to communities that have these waste sites if there’s a way they can help. They didn’t have to do this. We’re super grateful for the chance,” Mello said.
The other five communities and organizations awarded the TAG grants, each $20,000, include the Nantucket PFAS Action Group, the Lunt Neighborhood Action Group in Greenfield, the town of Barnstable Department of Public Works, the town of Lee and the town of Westminster.
More information on the TAG program may be found at https://www.mass.gov/info-details/technical-assistance-grants-waste-site-cleanup.
