Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- Tests of monitoring wells that help track groundwater contamination from the Reich Farm Superfund site indicate polluted water is being drawn away from a United Water Toms River well, a Union Carbide Corp. official said.
At the monthly meeting last night of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, Craig A. Wilger said no contaminants were found in one monitoring well and only traces of pollutants were found in a second well in samples taken Nov. 28.
"This is good news," said Wilger, Carbide's project manager for the Reich Farm site.
On Nov. 2, Wilger asked United Water to turn off its Well 44 after trace amounts of pollutants, including trichloroethylene, trichloroethane and tetrachloroethylene, were found in the two monitoring wells. One of the wells is about 315 feet north of Well 44, which is located in United's parkway well field.
No pollutants were found in Well 44 itself.
The chemicals found in the two monitoring wells are believed to come from a contamination plume originating at Reich Farm, off Route 9. In the early 1970s, drums of chemical waste from Carbide's Bound Brook plant where dumped at Reich Farm, a former chicken farm located about a mile north of the well field.
Researchers were surprised to find traces of the plume in the monitoring wells because the contaminants indicated that the plume had migrated farther south than anticipated. Only about one-tenth part per billion of each of the three chemicals was found in the monitoring well water, far below the maximum amount allowed in drinking water.
But because of heightened concern about contaminants in the water in Dover, Wilger has said, he decided to ask the water company to shut down Well 44 until researchers determined why the groundwater plume had shifted so far south.
Wilger said last night scientists believe that when the parkway well field was shut down for about six months during winter 1996 and early spring 1997, the contamination plume shifted to the south. The well field was shut down as a precaution after a previously unknown chemical compound, styrene acrylonitrile trimer, was found in parkway wells 26 and 28.
Those two wells capture most of the Reich Farm contamination plume, and, since spring 1997, the water from those two wells has been treated with a carbon filtration system to remove the trimer and other pollutants from the water. The water is also treated with an air stripping system and is then pumped onto the ground and not placed back into the drinking water system.
Wilger said shutting off Well 44 appears to have helped to shift the pollutant plume back to the north, where it is being drawn into wells 26 and 28. He said another sample from the monitoring wells was taken two weeks ago, and results should be available shortly.
Published on January 30, 2001
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