Source: Washington Post, 3/23/92:A1
This is a Superfund site.
7/15/89: LEAD IN SOIL AS HIGH AS 270,000 PPM. ELEVATED BLOOD LEAD LEVELS IN WORKERS.
4/3/91: STATE REQUESTED CONCURRENCE FROM ATSDR THAT THE AUTO PARTS WORKERS
ADJACENT TO THE H. BROWN SITE SHOULD RECEIVE BLOOD LEAD TESTING.
The site was
tested and found to contain: aroclor, arsenic, barium, benzene, phthalates, chromium, DDD, DDE, DDT
(1990, ofsite fish at .33 ppm), lead (1990, found in soil offsite, at 380,000 ppm; ), mercury found in 1990
in offsite soil at 1.4 ppm. Toluene. Vinyl chloride found in groundwater onsite at 59 ppb. Xylenes, zinc.
On May 27 Sierra Club members asked for signatures on a petition and fishing boats and surfers assembled off the coast all protesting the dumping of New York Harbor's toxin-laced mud 5 miles offshore.
Elliot Green has been coming to the New Jersey shore for years. The risk of swimming in New York garbage, though, keeps him and his kids out of the water.
"We love the beach. We love the water, but we also recognize the current brings a lot of New York City's material down here," said Green.
Many of America’s waterways are clogged with sediment, silt and other material that has collected on the bottom. Some of this material is contaminated. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is dredging New York Harbor to remove some of this material and dumping some of it in the waters off the Garden State.
It's not a new practice. In 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency closed a long-used disposal site off Sandy Hook, New Jersey and designated a larger Historic Area Remediation Site—also off the Jersey shore—for dumping.
The EPA calls the material deposited at that site "clean remediation material," but environmentlists beg to differ.
According to Cindy Zipf of Clean Ocean Action, Green's fears of the water are founded.
Environmentalists are disappointed that President Clinton, who yesterday called for the protection of the nation's fragile shoreline, allowed his administration to OK ocean dumping.
Zipf said, "Our ocean is under siege by this administration because the federal agencies are dumping contaminated material into our ocean."
As potentially dangerous as mud dumping is, it isn't the only type of pollution that ought to concern beachgoers this summer. "We have real problems with sewage overflows and sewage pollution and polluted sea water from city streets that empty out into the water through storm drains," said Sarah Chasis of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Last summer, there were some 7,000 beach closings nationwide-because of bacteria and viruses in the water which can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and infections.
California saw hundreds of those closings, as did North Carolina, after the hurricanes. But at least those states regularly check their beach water.
Six states—Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oregon and Washington—don't test their ocean water and won't notify residents if there is a problem.
According to the NRDC, the total number of beach advisories and
closures in 1998 was 75 percent higher than in 1997.
http://cbsnews.cbs.com:80/now/story/0,1597,200153-412,00.shtml
South New Berlin site called hazard
By LINDA JUMP
Staff Writer
GILBERTSVILLE - Gilbertsville residents did everything but give two federal Environmental Protection Agency representatives a standing ovation Wednesday night for a plan to remove 1,000 cubic yards of auto-shredding residue from an illegal dump.
About two dozen residents turned out to praise a $266,000 plan to remove fluff from a site off Route 18 in South New Berlin.
Removal and off-site disposal or treatment is needed to remove potential cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and heavy metals, said Joel Singerman, chief of the Central New York remediation section of the EPA. He said the cleanup will be paid for with Superfund dollars if a responsible party cannot be found.
"The people want it out of there. It's been a nightmare we've lived with for 14 years," said former town supervisor Ken Nolan. He said many concerned residents called him about the dumping.
"That should never have been put there in the first place. It should not stay there and you shouldn't just cap it," said John Finnigan.
John and Anne Witkowski, who live on Nelson Hill above the site, also urged the EPA to remove the material, not leave it and cap it on-site, another alternative.
They and other residents said the agency should not even consider leaving the dump alone, the third alternative considered.
Comments on the EPA's preferred plan to remove the material off-site will be accepted until Sept. 14. Singerman said the comments will be reviewed and action selected by the end of September. He said work could be done before winter or at the latest in the spring.
Most of the site is a steep ravine, but access isn't restricted. Waste at the site includes abandoned vehicles, car parts, appliances, large metal items and the fluff. Fluff is the upholstery, rugs, wires and plastic components that remain after the metal and recyclable materials are removed from a junked vehicle, said Pamela Tames, project manager for the EPA.
Tests at the site three years ago found 31 contaminants, and PCB levels higher than acceptable, although Tames said the human cancer risk was within acceptable levels. She said the waste poses a potential public health concern because of possible direct exposure to the material or air-borne contaminants. No contaminants were found in ground or surface water.
Not only the EPA, but two state agencies think
the best solution is removal. Jeffrey B.
McCullough of the state Department of
Environmental Conservation and Daniel R.
Geraghty of the state Department of Health
concurred, saying their agencies support the
preferred EPA plan.
http://www.binghamtonpress.com:80/binghamtonnews/local/Thnews7.html
EPA tested the wrong site 20 years ago and called it safe. Chemical hazards are spreading near Quakertown.
By Evan Halper
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
Federal officials now say the Upper Bucks County landfill they mistakenly declared safe 20 years ago - and where 3,200 tons of toxic sludge was dumped in the late 1960s - is a public health risk that should be marked for cleanup under the Superfund program.
The recommendation for the Watson Johnson Landfill in Richland Township was confirmed by the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday - nearly two years after a series of contaminants, some possibly carcinogenic, began turning up in well-water studies. Those studies also turned up evidence of a "plume," or cloud, of hazardous chemicals drifting underground toward public and private drinking-water supplies.
The Watson Johnson Landfill is on farmland off East Pumping Station Road, just north of Quakertown.
While EPA officials say drinking water in the area is safe now, they have acknowledged a health threat exists for dozens of nearby property owners if large amounts of pollutants seep into their wells from the property, an unlined commercial dump until 1972.
EPA site investigator Drew Lausch said yesterday that the agency's "preliminary evaluation indicates that site-related contamination likely warrants long-term federal involvement to ensure protection of human health and the environment."
But Lausch said the contamination "does not currently pose an unacceptable risk to human health."
Superfund status would qualify the site for federal cleanup funding; EPA has given no cleanup cost estimate. The Superfund program, started in 1980, currently lists 114 active sites in Pennsylvania, most of them in southeastern counties.
EPA investigators first visited what they thought was the closed landfill in 1980, after learning a subsidiary of the W.R. Grace Co. had dumped 3,200 tons of paints and pigments there more than a decade earlier. Finding nothing, those investigators declared that property clean, but local environmentalists last year unearthed a critical error in EPA's report: The investigators had visited the wrong site, a farm field across the road from the real dump.
The EPA acknowledged the error - 18 years later - and went back. Test wells were planted on and off the landfill site, and results have Lausch calling now for the Superfund designation.
Lausch's report says groundwater in the area of the Watson Johnson Landfill is tainted with the suspected carcinogen trichloroethylene, or TCE, an industrial cleaning solvent linked to human liver and kidney damage, nervous-system effects, and impaired fetal development if exposure is prolonged.
EPA said earlier this month that TCE from the Watson Johnson Landfill contaminates a Quakertown public water well, less than a mile away, at seven times the level considered safe by the federal government. The chemical is being filtered from the water with stripping equipment.
The contaminant was found on the Watson Johnson property at levels 350 times higher than safe levels.
Also in the underground plume is tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, another suspected human carcinogen, and elevated levels of boron, which can damage internal organs.
Federal officials said cleanup was unlikely anytime soon. It takes an average of eight years from the time a site enters the Superfund program until cleanup is complete, according to the EPA.
The prospect of waiting years for any cleanup action has some residents angry.
"I am just disgusted with the whole darn thing," said Gerald Hardcastle, who lives across the street from the old dump and has been drinking bottled water since the EPA told him last year that there was arsenic in his drinking well.
EPA officials wrote Hardcastle saying that his well water had levels of arsenic at 700 times the federal standard risk level, but was still safe to drink.
Hardcastle said his doctor told him otherwise, and he has been lugging 12 gallons of drinking water to his house from the supermarket every week.
"They were dumping chemicals and chemicals into that thing, and now it's starting to seep into the ground," Hardcastle said.
Lausch's report says the arsenic in Hardcastle's water likely occurs naturally, but the agency will conduct more tests to locate its source. Elevated arsenic levels have appeared in the drinking wells of 10 homes near the old dump.
News of the Watson Johnson Landfill's risk to the water supply has so far not hampered plans for the 112-home Heather Valley/Richland Farms housing development being built next door to the old dump. Developers say the houses will be hooked up to a public water supply based far away from the site.
Anna Smith of Perkasie, one of the environmentalists who discovered the flaws in EPA's 1980 investigation, expressed cautious optimism at news the site would be recommended for the Superfund cleanup.
"We're 20 years behind the eight ball here," she said
yesterday.
http://web.philly.com:80/content/inquirer/2000/08/31/front_page/NDUMP31.htm