Everett cleanup report on hold

A report that would detail how a contaminated site in Everett would be cleaned for a $1.3 billion Wynn casino will not be available to the state Gaming Commission before it makes its Boston-area license decision, after the state Department of Environmental Protection granted a request to extend a deadline for a year.

The "Phase IV" report was due June 15, but The DeNunzio Group — which has an option agreement to sell the Mystic River land to Wynn for $35 million — petitioned DEP to extend the deadline to June of next year, saying cleanup plans "could vary" if the site is picked for a casino. DEP approved the delay June 9.

The report will detail how Wynn's $30 million cleanup plan will be implemented, including how dirty soil would be excavated, how dust will be monitored, and how contaminated material would be managed. Wynn Resorts said its environmental impact report filings address many of those questions.

"There's no mystery as to what would have been in their Phase IV," Wynn project manager Chris Gordon said of the site's owners, who could not be reached for comment. "I don't think that the commission is missing anything."

The commission votes Sept. 12 to award the license to Wynn or Mohegan Sun, which is eyeing a casino at Suffolk Downs in Revere.

Commission spokesman Hank Shafran said the panel is satisfied with the cleanup details filed to date and that "the entire process will be carried out under the watchful eye of a licensed site professional."

"The commission is confident that he or she, acting under extensive and comprehensive regulations — and with DEP's oversight — will assure that the cleanup is done carefully and properly," Shafran said. "The commission does not need to see the Phase IV plan to have that assurance."

But Cindy Brooks, an environmental cleanup expert and founder of Greenfield Environmental Trust Group, said the detail contained in a Phase IV report is important when weighing the feasibility of a development on tainted land.

"That is essentially a full cleanup plan," Brooks said. "If you're going to move ahead with a land-use development scenario, in a perfect world, you would have all of that information. From a public policy standpoint, I think it's best to know what you're signing up for, and what a quasi-public entity is authorizing."

DEP spokesman Joe Ferson said the agency granted the request because the site's owner "is in the midst of a real estate transaction which, to the best of our knowledge, could not be finalized until the deadline."

Wynn's site on the Mystic River contains arsenic and lead in soil and groundwater from its decades as a Monsanto chemical site.

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