Case 01 · Carver + Plympton · Injunction in force
Ricketts Pond
Forty acres at the Route 44 interchange. An industrial-park filing in 2018 proposed 800,000 cubic yards of soil removal without ever mapping the excavation for state review. Eight years of mining later: the Town of Plympton sued its own miner in April 2026, a Superior Court judge ordered all earth removal and solid-waste activity stopped in May and required a restoration plan, and the state rejected the developer's request to skip a full Environmental Impact Report in June. The proposed next act is a 60-unit housing development on the mined-out land.
Plain terms
- What happened
- A company mined sand here for eight years under a plan that never got the full state review it described.
- Why it matters
- The digging stripped away the natural sand filter that protects the region's only drinking-water aquifer.
- What's next
- A judge has stopped all work and ordered a restoration plan; a 60-home development is still proposed for the site.
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Status
Preliminary injunction in force (Plymouth County Superior Court, May 22, 2026). Full EIR ordered (EEA #15883, June 29, 2026). The town's complaint alleges two cease-and-desist orders went unheeded; the record also includes the operator's own written statement that it was importing material from other jobsites, on land inside a groundwater protection district.
Case 02 · Carver + Wareham + Plymouth · Federal suit filed
The Largest Landowner
The region's dominant land company farms cranberries and holds a large multi-town land portfolio. The public record includes a recommended state administrative decision concerning wetland fill, a 5-0 municipal cease-and-desist in January 2026, an appeals court remand of citizen claims involving three sites, and an August 18, 2026 federal Clean Water Act complaint by the Conservation Law Foundation naming four bog sites. The complaint contains allegations, not findings. The company has denied wrongdoing and says cranberry farming still defines it.
Plain terms
- What happened
- CLF filed a federal complaint alleging unpermitted discharges from four bog sites operated by the named defendants.
- Why it matters
- The suit concerns sites over the sole-source aquifer and asks the court for compliance, restoration, penalties, and fees.
- What's next
- The defendants can answer or challenge the complaint; liability and any remedy remain for the court to decide.
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Status
CLF filed Conservation Law Foundation v. A.D. Makepeace Company et al., D. Mass. 1:26-cv-13813, on August 18, 2026. It names A.D. Makepeace Company, ADM Agawam Development LLC, ADM Management Corporation, and Read Custom Soils LLC. The complaint's factual and legal assertions remain allegations unless admitted or decided.
Case 03 · Plymouth · Vote recorded 3-2
The Waived Refusal
130 acres of pine barrens over a wellhead protection zone, exiting agricultural tax status for a residential deal. State law gave Plymouth 120 days and a right of first refusal; per reporting at the time, the town's own Land Use and Acquisition Committee had formally recommended exercising it. On June 9, 2026 the Select Board waived it, 3 to 2. The deciding votes came from two members who had disclosed close personal relationships with the developer three weeks earlier.
Plain terms
- What happened
- Plymouth had the right to buy 130 acres of forest over its own wellhead zone. The board voted it away, 3–2.
- Why it matters
- The deciding votes came from members with disclosed personal ties to the developer who benefits.
- What's next
- The project still needs Planning Board and Conservation Commission approvals — those meetings are public.
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Status
The project still needs Planning Board and Conservation Commission approvals. The privately negotiated memorandum of understanding is, per legal experts quoted in local press, unenforceable. Recall and resignation calls ran in the Plymouth Independent through late June. This case connects directly to the money trails page.
Case 04 · Rochester + Wareham · Monitoring gap
The Invisible Stack
One of the country's largest waste-to-energy plants burns about a million tons a year on the aquifer's southern edge. Its public real-time monitor covers carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and opacity — posted a day later, and nothing else. Its dioxins, mercury, lead, and acid gases are checked by periodic stack tests, not continuous monitors, and waste combustors are not a covered sector in the federal toxics-release reporting program. We verified that gap in EPA's own data this month.
Plain terms
- What happened
- One of the country's biggest trash incinerators publishes real-time data on only four gases.
- Why it matters
- Its dioxins, mercury, and lead are checked only by occasional tests — and appear in no public federal toxics database at all.
- What's next
- We're tracking the state permit file, and the June 14 third-alarm fire at the plant is part of the active record.
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Status
EPA's public compliance record shows a facility in good standing — a statement that certifies only what is measured. The gap between "in compliance" and "publicly quantified" is this case. A third-alarm fire at the plant on Sunday, June 14, 2026 — serious enough to pull mutual-aid coverage from surrounding towns — is part of the active file, and a fire is precisely the scenario that bypasses the pollution controls the stack tests assume.
Case 05 · Middleborough + Carver · $33M and counting
The Water Bill
Middleborough broke ground in 2025 on a $33 million treatment plant after PFAS exceedances in its wells. It has named no source and retained no outside counsel to recover costs. Upstream, an actively regulated landfill site carries PFAS and solvent records going back decades, consent orders in 2004 and 2020, and a non-compliance notice in February 2026. The aquifer connects them; attribution is the open question.
Plain terms
- What happened
- "Forever chemicals" showed up in Middleborough's wells, and the town is spending $33 million to filter them out.
- Why it matters
- Ratepayers are footing the whole bill for contamination they didn't create — no polluter has been named or charged.
- What's next
- The cost-recovery question is open, and a neighboring town's water emergency makes it bigger every month.
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Status
Ratepayers are currently the only party paying. Neighboring Bridgewater declared a water supply emergency in December 2025 with PFAS among the causes, and is interconnected with Middleborough's system. The cost-recovery question grows with every connection.
Case 06 · Plymouth · Permit denial upheld
The Decommissioning
The shuttered nuclear plant on the coast is held by a decommissioning company managing a trust fund of roughly $800 million. State environmental officials denied its wastewater discharge permit and the denial was upheld on administrative appeal in late 2025. Federal regulators separately cited a trust-fund use violation. The company won a federal preemption ruling against New York in 2025 that it can be expected to cite against Massachusetts.
Plain terms
- What happened
- The company tearing down the closed nuclear plant wanted to discharge its wastewater into the bay. The state said no — and the no held up.
- Why it matters
- An $800 million cleanup trust fund is being spent down, and how it's spent is a public question.
- What's next
- Final agency orders are pending; the company's federal preemption playbook is the thing to watch.
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Status
Final agency orders are pending. The trust fund is the deepest single pool of money in any of these cases, and how it is spent is a public question.
Case 07 · Plymouth · Wetlands continued to August 11
The Deed Restriction
A national homebuilder holds zoning approval for 163 condominium units in North Plymouth, on and beside land that includes a federal Superfund site carrying a permanent deed restriction against housing and recreation. The cleanup there left contamination in place under a cap designed for commercial and industrial use, with institutional controls restricting residential and recreational use of the capped parcel. On April 14, 2026 the Zoning Board of Appeals approved both projects 3-2, its chairman saying on the record that he had tried every way he knew to deny it and could not find one under the state's affordable-housing law. One identified local permitting process remains: wetlands.
Plain terms
- What happened
- A developer won approval to build 163 condos beside a federal toxic-waste site that is legally barred from having housing on it.
- Why it matters
- The EPA's cleanup left the contamination buried under a cap, with institutional controls restricting residential and recreational use of the capped parcel.
- What's next
- Both wetlands filings were continued to August 11, 2026 on the July 14 Conservation Commission agenda. The August 11 agenda has not posted — check the town's AgendaCenter.
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Status
Two wetlands filings are pending before the Conservation Commission, both continued to August 11, 2026: SE57-3465 at 333 Court Street and 39 Hedge Road, for two 50-unit buildings, and SE57-3464 at 0 Sandri Drive and 0 Hedge Road, for a 63-unit building. Both were filed by Pulte Homes of New England, LLC through LEC Environmental Consultants. The Superfund site itself — Plymouth Harbor / Cannon Engineering Corp., EPA site 0100726 in Cordage Park — was taken off the National Priorities List in 1993 after a containment remedy, and its sixth five-year review was completed on June 27, 2023; lead, pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are the contaminants of record in site soil. Separately, roughly 200 tons of arsenic-contaminated soil were removed from the Sandri Drive parcel in the autumn of 2025 under a state cleanup that the record still showed as open in May 2026. In February 2026 a member of Congress asked the EPA for an updated risk assessment on the ground that high-density housing changes the exposure assumptions the cleanup was built on; no public reply has appeared.