By:Elizabeth Sagarin
Slow system of cleanup keeps hazardous waste in ground
When Gary Gitlin had an old, leaking oil tank removed from the ground at the rear of his dry-cleaning business in 1988, high amounts of the hazardous chemical tetrachloroethylene, or PERC, were found in the soil and groundwater on the property at 3180 Lawson Blvd. in Oceanside.
We were trying to do the right thing and ended up screwed, said Gitlin, owner of Railroad Drive In Cleaners.
And so is Oceanside and the rest of Long Island if 15,000 known contaminated sites aren't cleaned up soon, according to Tom Dehaney, former director of waterways for the Town of Hempstead and current owner of Clean Solutions, a private company specializing in hazardous waste cleanup.
But with the future of the New York State Superfund program held up in a legislative standoff, cleanup of three sites on Lawson Boulevard where PERC was found at levels that exceed acceptable standards doesn't seem likely anytime soon.
Although the three sites in Oceanside don't pose a direct threat to the drinking supply, and the possibility of the public coming in direct contact with the contaminated areas is limited because of their location along railroad tracks, there is a danger to neighboring households, Dehaney said.
PERC is a very mixable chemical that is attracted to water. If sites like these aren't cleaned, Dehaney said, [PERC] will continue to leach into the groundwater ... it's hard to say where it will end up.
Properties downstream from the contamination are in particular danger of having the chemicals travel with the groundwater, he added. From there, they could potentially travel into a homeowner's cellar and compromise the air quality or the purity of the home's soil.
To what extent a person might be affected depends on the levels and duration of exposure, as well as an individual's physical characteristics, according to the state Department of Health. Studies show that if the chemical is inhaled, absorbed through the skin or swallowed, it can cause effects ranging from dizziness to liver and kidney damage.
PERC is the most commonly used chemical to dry-clean clothes and is widely used in a number of consumer products. It also is used to degrease metal machine parts. It is a nonflammable, colorless liquid at room temperature that readily evaporates into air and has an ether-like odor. But because most people stop noticing the odor of PERC after a short time, odor is not a reliable warning signal of exposure, according to the health department.
For Dehaney, long-term consumption of various pollutants at almost undetectable levels is where a lot of Long Island's health problems come from. And that is why he feels the state Department of Environmental Conservation needs to get moving with some innovative cleanup technology that will remove contamination from areas faster and cheaper. Sites all over Long Island continue to languish because of the cost of cleanup, he said.
Mark Lawry, a spokesperson for the DEC, said it wouldn't be unusual for dry-cleaning site cleanup to cost a few million dollars. Part of that cost, Dehaney attributes to the outdated technology used to do the clean-ups and the standards of purity which the DEC mandates. Under current law, sites must be returned to pre-disposal conditions. This has slowed up the process of cleanup, Dehaney said, as well as the refinancing of the Superfund program, which was, ironically, created to speed up getting hazardous waste out of the ground.
With the fund bankrupt as of April 1 and political disagreement about what the conditions for refinance should be, sites will continue to languish. Owners who were reluctant to take on the task of cleaning up their sites have been able to milk the sluggish pace at which the state agency has been operating, knowing that there was a possibility for standards of cleanup to change in their favor.
That's certainly a possibility if Gov. Pataki has his way. A refinance bill he has proposed would evaluate the extent to which a site needs to be cleaned up based on what it would be used for in the future. Opponents of that bill, including Carl McCall. state comptroller and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, want to keep the standards of cleanup as they are and have a bill of their own.
As a result of this tug of war, the contamination at the three sites in Oceanside
