Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER … There is no timetable yet for the installation of carbon filtration systems on two United Water-Toms River wells, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection said yesterday.
Gov. Whitman last week ordered carbon filtration to be placed on wells 22 and 29, in United's well field located off Dugan Lane near the Garden State Parkway. Carbon filtration and aeration systems, used to remove contaminants, are in place on two other parkway field wells, 26 and 28.
DEP spokeswoman Loretta O'Donnell said employees of the agency's site remediation section and its Bureau of Safe Drinking Water will be meeting soon to discuss implementing the governor's order.
O'Donnell said DEP representatives will then meet with United Water and Union Carbide Corp.
Union Carbide has taken responsibility for the contamination of Reich Farm, a Superfund site located off Route 9, about a mile north of the parkway well field. A plume of ground water contamination from Reich Farm has seeped into the well field, contaminating wells 26 and 28.
During the summer, researchers studying elevated levels of some childhood cancers in Dover Township found that the contamination plume had spread into nearby well 29, after that well was pumped at a higher rate to meet customers' summer water demands.
Trace amounts of trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, were found in the well, along with small amounts of styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical compound related to plastics production.
The toxicity of the trimer is not known. A study is under way to determine if it is a potential human carcinogen.
Last week, local cancer activists and families of children with cancer joined with U.S. Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli, both D-N.J., to call for aeration and carbon filtration systems to be installed on four wells in the parkway field that draw water from the shallow Cohansey aquifer.
Lautenberg and Torricelli have since called for all public water supply wells in Toms River to receive treatment, although Linda Gillick, head of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, has said she believes only the shallow Cohansey wells need such treatment.
Whitman's order did not call for aeration systems to be installed on any wells, and only calls for carbon filtration on two more. Despite praising the governor's decision to order additional treatment for two wells, Lautenberg and Torricelli have said it does not go far enough.
The estimated cost of installing carbon filtration on wells 22 and 29 is $1.5 million. It is not clear who will pay, although the two senators have said Union Carbide should foot the bill.
Union Carbide has paid for the installation and maintenance of aeration and carbon filtration systems on wells 26 and 28. Aeration removes volatile organic contaminants, such as trichloroethylene, while the carbon filter removes the trimer from water.
Water from wells 26 and 28, which normally capture the Reich Farm plume, has been pumped to waste, and not used in the drinking water system, for most of the past two years.
Asbury Park Press
Published: November 03, 1998
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