Contaminated Marblehead home near landfill demolished

MARBLEHEAD – Jeff Dinsmore didn?t need much time to describe the town?s demolition of his former Stony Brook Road dream home Tuesday morning. “It?s a sad day,” he said.Dinsmore and his wife, Kate, spent about 30 minutes at the site and watched a small, quiet crew from Charter Environmental tear down the main portion of the home where they spent the past eight years.A single wrecking machine knocked down wall after wall as a crew member soaked the remains with a hose to reduce the amount of dust in the air. The machine worked quickly. The chimney on the end of the house went down in three heavy taps.The Dinsmores took pictures and spoke to a small crowd of friends and relatives. “This is closure,” Kate Dinsmore said at one point. Then they left.Director of Public Health Andrew Petty was impressed with their demeanor. “If it was my house, I wouldn?t be here,” he said.Built in 1996, the house at 57 Stony Brook Road was the last on a street that overlooks Steer Swamp, a wooded 43-acre conservation area, but it is also downstream from the former town landfill.The Dinsmores? troubles began three years ago when environmental test results revealed that their property was heavily contaminated with chemicals from that landfill.?The town should never have allowed the house to be built,” Dinsmore said.The town is currently planning to cap the landfill but first there is an ongoing clean-up on Stony Brook Road. The Dinsmore property is the major piece of that.Last year, at the urging of former Director of Public Health Wayne Attridge, the town approved $1.2 million to resolve the Dinsmores? plight, including $277,000 for the clean-up and $970,000 to purchase the property from the Dinsmores, enough for them to buy a new home in the area. The project that began with the demolition Tuesday is expected to be complete by mid-April.After moving, the Dinsmores posted an announcement for area contractors and sold off the oil tank, windows, doors, kitchen cabinets, light fixtures, pipes and other fixtures that could not be moved to their new home.The re-use is continuing. Petty said the wood from the house is scheduled to be recycled as wood pellets, the driveway asphalt will go to Aggregate Industries and the foundation concrete will go to a New Hampshire firm.?We?re going to try to recycle whatever we can,” he said.