The Oak Bluffs board of health is poised to ask the town’s select board for permission to test soils in Telegraph Hill Park for lead contamination. Health agent Meegan Lancaster told the board Tuesday morning she was going to draft a letter to the select board shortly, and has spoken with the town administrator about doing so.
Lancaster later told The Times the letter, which has yet to be written, will seek permission to secure an environmental engineering firm to both establish the scope of lead testing needed and to execute the lead testing.
The decision to seek more testing comes following a series of articles by The Times that have exposed lead paint pollution stemming from East Chop Light, a Coast Guard lighthouse inside Telegraph Hill Park. The contamination has kept the lighthouse itself, a tourist attraction licensed to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, closed in conjunction with the surrounding town park.
The Coast Guard has stated it believes the lead contamination was caused by paint once applied to the lighthouse. After the Coast Guard sought permission from Oak Bluffs to test beyond the 60-foot by 60-foot federal parcel the lighthouse sits on and received that permission, it discovered the highest concentration of lead found thus far (16,600 parts per million) was in the town park. As part of a remediation project for the federal parcel and town land on the periphery of that parcel, including the area with the 16,600 ppm concentration, the Coast Guard plans to remove 230 tons of soil.
The remediation was previously expected to occur this fall following an archeological survey. That survey was supposed to be done in July, but doesn’t appear to have happened yet. A Coast Guard spokesperson told The Times on Tuesday updated information on the lighthouse project wasn’t immediately available.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the board showed support for Lancaster’s letter, but took no action on it.