By:Jeff Lipton
The Federal Environmental Protection Agency has formally placed a Hewlett groundwater contamination site on a Superfund priority list for cleanup.
The EPA's announcement last week about putting the site on its Superfund National Priorities List has guaranteed funding for the cleanup of the Peninsula Boulevard Ground Water Plume in a process that could take several years. The site is located about 100 feet from the Woodmere Middle School and was found to contain tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a manufactured chemical that is widely used in dry cleaning and is known to cause liver damage and an increased risk of cancer. The area contained a former dry cleaner, which may or may not have been responsible for the contamination, officials said. EPA officials said no link has been found between the contamination and any specific companies.
"[Placing it on the Superfund list] means we'll proceed working on finding the responsible parties in an on-going investigation," said Rich Cahill, an EPA spokesman. "We'll try to locate the source or sources."
He said it could take 18 months to four years to study the extent of the problem, conduct a feasibility study and then identify the cleanup options.
The plan will then be presented to the public for comment. Until that point, it is not known how much in Federal cleanup funds will be dedicated to the project.
Allison Fisher of Woodmere said she is fearful that the area won't be entirely clean of the toxins. "I'm worried about the contamination and what could happen to us," Fisher said. "I have grown up here."
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) said she worked with the EPA in April in hopes of winning Federal funding for the project. "The EPA wanted to make sure they had the promised funds to continually dedicate to that site," McCarthy said. "It's one thing to put it on the list and now we have to make sure the funds are there, to go with the process of testing the air, the water, the soil.
"Being that it's so close to Woodmere Middle School, I think it's really important to stay on top of it," she added.
School administrators had reported a higher than normal number of headaches suffered by students during the last school year.
High concentrations of PCE in enclosed and poorly ventilated areas can cause dizziness, headaches and nausea and in extreme cases, can cause difficulty in speaking and walking, unconsciousness and possibly even death, officials said.
But PCE levels inside the school were determined to be safe.
"Something being cleaned up is better than nothing being cleaned up," Howard Weinick, Hewlett-Woodmere school board president, said of the Superfund. "This is probably happening faster than normal."
The talk of groundwater contamination has left many local residents jittery. In April, after it was announced that the EPA was considering placing it on the priorities list, residents flooded the switchboards at the Nassau County Department of Health and Long Island American Water company with concern after watching televised reports stating that tap water in Hewlett was affected. Health and water company officials have assured residents that the water is safe to drink.
The water company operates 43 wells in the area, called the Plant 5 well field, which supplies drinking water to 6,400 residents.
McCarthy said she was "leery" about reports that residents should not at all be concerned. "I would always have a little bit of concern," she said. "For adults, we can take higher amounts. It's the children and the babies that I would be concerned about."
But she added that the health department has reported no incidents of illness due to drinking the water.
"You've got to believe that the town and villages are not going to let the residents drink anything that they feel is a risk for anybody," McCarthy said.
She added that she has heard that with all the chemicals being used to treat the water and neutralize the PCEs, the water is "fairly safe."
The EPA, under the Superfund, will now launch its own investigation to assess the health risks in the area.
About two years ago, the state Department of Environmental Conservation concluded its investigation of the former Grove Cleaners hazardous waste-disposal site in Hewlett, which led to the EPA's looking into the possible groundwater contamination by as many as 20 dry-cleaning establishments in the Hewlett-Woodmere area.
The DEC removed contaminated soil and sludge from the Grove Cleaners site at 1220 and 1270 Peninsula Boulevard in April 1994, eliminating the source of much of the groundwater contamination.
The contamination remains but is flowing from a different source, officials said.
As a result, the DEC has removed Grove Cleaners from the registry of inactive hazardous-waster disposal sites, officials said at the time.
