Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- Gov. Whitman yesterday ordered carbon filtration systems installed on two more wells in United Water Toms River's parkway field that have been found to contain trace levels of pollutants.
In a letter sent yesterday to U.S. Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli, both D-N.J., Whitman said she had ordered the state Department of Environmental Protection to work with the utility to equip wells 22 and 29.
Installing the additional treatment systems will cost about $1.5 million, Whitman said, suggesting to the two senators they "work together" to come up with the money.
A plume of ground water contamination from the Reich Farm Superfund site is responsible for contamination at the parkway well field, located a mile south, off Dugan Lane.
Union Carbide Corp., which has taken responsibility for the Reich Farm cleanup, has paid the installation and maintenance costs for air stripping and carbon filtration systems previously installed on two other parkway wells, 26 and 28.
Those two wells capture and treat the contamination plume, and even after treatment, water from the wells is not normally used in the drinking water system.
United Water spokesman Richard Henning said the company will "cooperate fully" with both the DEP and the federal Environmental Protection Agency "in implementing whatever measures they deem appropriate."
But Henning again stressed that the drinking water here meets all federal and state standards.
The governor's action came three days after Lautenberg and Torricelli joined with local cancer activists to call for more treatment on the well field.
Linda Gillick, executive director of Ocean of Love, a support group for families of children with cancer, said yesterday that the governor's order is a step in the right direction.
Gillick said, however, that she believes all six wells in the field should have air strippers as well as the carbon filtration systems. They draw water from the shallow Cohansey aquifer.
In a joint statement, Torricelli and Lautenberg echoed Gillick's call for treating all six wells.
Air strippers remove volatile organic contaminants from water, while the carbon filtration system removes all traces of styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical waste from plastics production that has been found in three parkway wells.
Whitman said treatment is needed for wells 22 and 29 because "trace amounts of contaminants have been detected" in both of them. Trace amounts of trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, were found in Well 29 during the summer.
Traces of the trimer were also found in that well, and state and federal environmental officials said ground water contamination from Reich Farm had migrated into Well 29 when the well was pumped at a higher rate to meet peak summer water demands.
The toxicity of the trimer is not known. A study is under way to determine if it is a potential human carcinogen.
Additional tests found no sign of the trimer or trichloroethylene earlier this month.
But health officials have never previously reported that pollutants were also found in Well 22.
"We would like to know more about these contaminants," Gillick said. "We're awaiting further detailed information about what was found."
Asbury Park Press
Published: October 30, 1998
|
