Published in the Home News Tribune
By JEAN MIKLE
STAFF WRITER
TOMS RIVER -- Saying "it is clear something is terribly wrong in Toms River," Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg yesterday called for additional water-treatment systems to be installed on four United Water Toms River wells.
Standing in front of a memorial in Riverfront Landing Park inscribed with the names of dozens of children who have died from childhood cancer, Lautenberg called for an air stripping system as well as carbon filtration to be installed on four United Water wells that draw water from the shallow Cohansey aquifer.
"We can not just wait for the conclusion of the current studies to take action," said Lautenberg, D-N.J. "The circumstances in Toms River call for extraordinary precautions."
Lautenberg and Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, D-N.J., have written to the Department of Environmental Protection, asking that agency consider requiring that treatment systems be placed on all the Cohansey wells in the parkway field, which is located off Dugan Lane. State agency officials, while saying the request is under review, don't believe they have the power to make such an order.
Two wells in the well field, numbers 26 and 28, already are being treated with both air stripping and carbon filtration systems. The air stripping system captures volatile organic chemicals, while the carbon filtration removes styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical byproduct of plastics production discovered in the two wells in November 1996.
The treatment systems are necessary because the two wells tap a plume of ground-water contamination that has migrated into the well field from the Reich Farm Superfund site, located about one mile to the north.
Linda Gillick, who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, and other committee members have asked that the treatment systems be installed on the four other Cohansey wells in the well field. Their requests took on new urgency after state and federal environmental officials announced that the Reich Farm plume had spread into parkway Well 29.
The plume was pulled into Well 29 when the water company pumped the well at a higher than normal rate to meet increased demands for water during the summer months.
Tests of water at the wellhead of Well 29 found levels of trichloroethylene, a probable carcinogen, between .4 and .8 parts per billion. The state standard for trichloroethylene in drinking water is 1 part per billion.
By October, the chemical traces had disappeared from Well 29, but Gillick said yesterday that changes in water usage and pumping could draw the plume into any of the nearby parkway wells again.
Source: Home News Tribune
Published: October 27, 1998
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