Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Consultant urges increased monitoring of wells
TOMS RIVER -- A consultant studying Dover Township's former landfill has recommended that monitoring wells be tested twice a year for the next six years to make sure ground-water contamination at the site does not affect the surrounding area.
Daniel A. Nachman, a senior project manager and senior hydrologist for Dan Raviv Associates Inc., a Millburn-based consulting firm hired by the township, told the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster that his firm did not recommend any cleanup work at the landfill in a report submitted in March to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Instead, the cleanup remedy Raviv Associates recommends is "monitored natural attenuation," which means allowing natural processes to gradually clean contaminants found in ground water beneath the former dump.
"They are not migrating any further," Raviv said of pollutants discovered in ground-water monitoring wells located on the landfill. "They have not left the landfill property."
The DEP has not yet commented on Raviv's final report.
Raviv Associates began studying the 33-acre landfill in 1997, to determine the extent of ground water contamination emanating from the former dump. The landfill, located at the intersection of Bay Avenue and Church Road, has been closed since 1980.
Hazardous substances, including benzene, dichlorobenzene and chlorobenzene, were found in ground water near the landfill property in 1985. Independent trucker Nicholas Fernicola has said he dumped about 2,000 drums of chemical waste from Union Carbide Corp.'s Bound Brook plant at the landfill in the spring of 1971.
In May 1997, Dover officials signed an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Protection to have that agency oversee cleanup of the landfill. At the same time, the township settled a lawsuit filed against Carbide; the lawsuit had accused the company and Fernicola of threatening public health by dumping chemical wastes at the landfill.
As part of the settlement, the township and Carbide agreed to split the costs of investigating the site. So far, the work has cost about $1 million, although Dover officials have said they expect the township's insurance to cover most of the township's bills.
Nachman said that two rounds of testing of ground water in and around the landfill found few areas of contamination. Benzene and chlorobenzene, at levels higher than drinking-water standards, have been found in monitoring wells on the landfill property, Nachman said.
The highest concentration of benzene found was 23 parts per billion in a monitoring well under the landfill. The drinking-water standard for benzene is 1 ppb, Nachman said.
The drinking-water standard for chlorobenzene is 50 ppb, and a monitoring well located at the northeast corner of the landfill showed 97.9 ppb in the water.
Trace amounts of styrene acrylonitrile trimer also have been found in monitoring wells. That chemical compound, related to plastics production, has been found in several wells in United Water Toms River's parkway well field that have been affected by a plume of ground-water pollution from the Reich Farm Superfund site, off Route 9.
But water testing at the landfill has not turned up any of the chlorinated solvents found at Reich Farm, such as trichloroethylene or tetrachlorothylene, Nachman said.
As part of their investigation of the site, Raviv Associates added 24 monitoring wells on and around the landfill property and also took dozens of "hydropunch" samples, which involves driving hollow pipes to a certain depth, then extracting water samples to help characterize the flow and quality of the ground water.
"We feel that with this network of monitoring wells and hydropunch samples, that the impact of the landfill is pretty well characterized," Nachman said.
Published on May 16, 2001
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