Published in the Asbury Park Press
By PATRICIA A. MILLER
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- State Senate President Donald T. DiFrancesco said he expects the Senate to approve a bill Monday to provide $1.5 million for carbon well-filtration systems on two United Water Toms River wells here.
"This is a very important first step toward identifying the contamination, its source and its effect on the community," DiFrancesco, R-Union, said in a prepared release yesterday.
The bill passed 6-to-0 in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee yesterday. The Assembly Appropriations Committee approved the Assembly version last week. The legislation would go to Gov. Whitman for her signature following passage by both houses of the Legislature.
Whitman in February promised that the state would pick up most of the cost for installing the filtration systems on wells 22 and 29 in United Water Toms River's parkway well field.
The well field, located off Dugan Lane near the Garden State Parkway, has been plagued by pollution problems stemming from a plume of contaminated ground water from the nearby Reich Farm Superfund site.
State Sen. Andrew R. Ciesla, R-Ocean, said he hopes the wells can be put back into service before peak summer demands.
Whitman set a June 9 deadline for the filtration system to be up and running. She ordered its installation last fall, after trace amounts of trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, were found in well 29 last summer.
Testing also showed small amounts of styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical compound related to plastics production. The trimer's health effects are not known, but toxicity testing on the compound is being conducted.
The trimer was previously found in wells 26 and 28, which are already treated with air strippers as well as carbon filters to remove it, along with volatile organic pollutants like trichloroethylene.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: May 21, 1999
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