Thursday, October 1, 2026
A longtime Long Beach dry-cleaning business is working to clean up contamination from compounds that leaked from the property’s facility and landed it on a registry of statewide sites deemed substantially hazardous.
Nu-Clear Dry Cleaners, at 180 E. Park Ave., was designated a contaminated property late last year under New York State’s Superfund program that categorized the business as a class 2 site that represents a “significant threat to public health and/or the environment,” according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The contamination was unveiled when the owner of a commercial building immediately west of the cleaner conducted a sub-slab and indoor air sampling as part of a property transfer in 2014, the DEC told the Herald. The data that the building owner collected and shared with the DEC revealed elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, particularly a dry cleaning solvent called perchloroethylene, which were discovered in soil, shallow groundwater and soil vapor in the vicinity of the dry cleaner’s site.
“My first and only concern right now is cleaning up my property and making sure I’m within proper standards for myself, my employees and my neighbors,” said Gary Hantverk, owner of Nu-Clear Dry Cleaners.
Based on information generated during a subsequent DEC investigation of the site, the department listed Nu-Clear Dry Cleaners on a registry of inactive hazardous waste sites on Nov. 17. The DEC made public the addition of the business to the registry on Dec. 22. The Superfund is the state’s program for identifying, investigating and cleaning up sites “where the disposal of hazardous waste may present a threat to public health and/or the environment,” according to the DEC.
The department expects to launch a wider investigation of the site, which may include neighboring commercial and residential areas, to determine the nature and reach of the contamination, followed by remediation. The dry cleaner is expected to sign an order of consent to launch an additional investigation and to remediate “in the near future,” the DEC said.
