By:Jeff Lipton
Recent reports of possible EPA involvement in a cleanup of the Peninsula Boulevard plume of groundwater contamination have frightened residents who said they have been drinking the tap water for years, trusting that it was safe.
Residents flooded water company and health department phone lines last week, inquiring about whether they have been drinking safe water. I-m really concerned, said a resident of Hartwell Place on the Hewlett-Woodmere border. My granddaughter is over at our house four out of the seven days. She has spina bifida, so she has enough problems. I-ve been giving her plenty of water. Should I buy bottled water?
Her husband added, Sure, I-m concerned. I-ve been drinking this water all my life. My children and grandchildren have been drinking this water.
In response, Long Island American Water, based in Lynbrook, said the results of the tests for the presence of tetrachloroethene, or PCE, an industrial solvent used in dry-cleaning, indicated that it is undetected in tap water supplied to Hewlett. The tests are performed by certified laboratories that report the test results to the health department, company officials said.
The concerns arose after Channel 12 News ran a report on the EPA-s possibly placing the plume on the Superfund National Priorities List as a toxic-contaminated site. A water company spokeswoman, G.J. Penza, said the report indicated that the drinking water in Hewlett was affected. People should have no concerns about the drinking water at all, Penza said.
She said the water company has received about a dozen calls from customers in the Hewlett area who saw the report, and she had to explain to them that the tap water is safe to drink. I-m more concerned about the calls we didn-t get [from those] who believe what they heard, Penza said.
She said a letter was scheduled to have been sent out on Monday, March 15, reassuring residents about the safety of the water. The information is misleading, and there-s nothing they should be concerned about, Penza said. The water meets all the regulations. If it did not, then we couldn-t produce the water.
She added that the water is treated with an air-stripping process, which removes all of the PCE that may be present. After the treatment, there-s no trace of the PCE, Penza said.
Long Island American Water has about 100 wells serving Hewlett, 43 of them active. The wells are not that deep, about 135 feet, Penza said.
Cynthia Brown, a spokeswoman for the Nassau County Health Department, said the department has also been busy reassuring residents about the safety of the water they drink. The water in Hewlett meets federal, state and local drinking-water standards, Brown said.
She said that drinking water comes from a far deeper aquifer, while groundwater is just below the surface. It-s confusing, and when I first started out I didn-t know the difference, Brown said.
The confusion arose after the EPA issued a Federal Register Notice on March 8, identifying the area at Peninsula Boulevard in Hewlett as the location of a groundwater contamination plume containing PCE. Long Island American Water operates Treatment Plant No. 5 in the vicinity. The area in which the plume lies is predominantly residential, serving about 6,400 residents in Hewlett.
The EPA report referenced contamination in the untreated raw water that is directly drawn from the wells, but did not indicate contamination of the tap water.
Varying levels of PCE have been found in untreated raw water from Plant 5 wells, but the air-stripping treatment process removes PCE from the water before it is delivered to customers, water company officials said.
We want to assure our customers that providing quality water is Long Island American Water-s primary concern, said William M. Varley, the water company-s vice president and manager. Long Island American Water conducts an aggressive water testing program.
The results from this comprehensive testing program show that the quality of its drinking water complies with, and in most cases is better than, the drinking water standards set up by federal, state and local health authorities.
More than a year ago, the state Department of Environmental Conservation ended its investigation of the former Grove Cleaners hazardous waste-disposal site in Hewlett, which has 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 coming from a different source, DEC officials said. As a result, the DEC has removed Grove Cleaners from the registry of inactive hazardous-waste disposal sites.
EPA spokeswoman Elizabeth Zimmermann said the federal agency has proposed placing the Peninsula Boulevard plume on the National Priorities List, which should be finalized in about six months. Placing it on the list would make it eligible for federal cleanup funds.
We don-t know about the nature and the extent of the contamination and how widespread it is, Zimmermann said.
The study will investigate the different alternatives for cleaning up the contamination and develop a proposed plan of action. The project will then enter a design phase and, after that, a construction phase, which could take years. It-s not as important to determine who did it as it is to clean it up, Zimmermann said.
The DEC has indicated that the groundwater flows from the main plume area to the northwest, in the direction of the Plant No. 5 well field. The DEC investigation also indicated that PCE is present in a stream in the immediate vicinity of the contaminated groundwater plume. The stream flows north from the main plume area and across the grounds of Woodmere Middle School, about 100 feet from the building. Access to the contaminated surface water is restricted but not secure, and the DEC observed an accessway to the stream on school property.
