The environmental transformation of the site is perhaps one of the biggest benefits from the casino. “I feel confident in saying that’s a safe place to swim,” he said.
Now, he said, those worries have disappeared. Patrick Herron, executive director of the Mystic River Watershed Association, which gathers water samples for the EPA, said before the cleanup he would have worried about swimming in the Mystic out in front of where the casino is located. The site of the Encore Boston Harbor just as construction was scheduled to begin. The combination of the two soil-removal-and-replacement efforts means swimmers won’t kick up contaminated soil on the river bottom or be affected by contaminated runoff from the land. The contaminated soil up on land, left behind when a Monsanto chemical plant was shuttered, has also been carted away and replaced. What has changed is that the river bottom has been dredged – removing tons of debris and contaminated soil – and then capped with new sediment.
