Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- The residents who gathered around the table in Gabrielle and Paul Munzelle's Sterling Street home on a recent day all had at least two things in common.
Every one of them had concerns about the quality of their drinking water, which comes from private wells. And every one of them was angry.
The Munzelles lifted the lid of their toilet tank to show the stained porcelain, discolored by tea-brown water tainted with sulfides. But it's what they cannot see that scares them the most.
"What they are saying is healthy water, we are saying is not acceptable," said Paul Munzelle, who said state environmental officials have told residents the water is not contaminated.
The high mineral content of the water is responsible for the discoloration, but what the Munzelles and their Windsor Park neighbors fear more is the possibility that mercury and volatile organic contaminants may be present in the water they drink.
Only a short distance away from the Munzelles' house, and a bit farther from Linda Metzler's Baron Street home, the state Department of Environmental Protection has found mercury and some volatile organic compounds in private wells.
About 80 homes in the area will receive public water, but the Munzelles' home and Metzler's house are not included.
Neither is the Windsor Avenue home that Richard Pelati purchased about 15 months ago, nor the nearby house on Windsor where Thomas Kenney has lived for more than two decades, or the house on Windsor where Thomas's son, Edward, lives.
To the Windsor Park residents who live outside the known contamination zone, the DEP's decision on where to draw the line seems arbitrary and unfair.
The DEP has entered into a contract with United Water Toms River to extend water lines to the area of Veeder, Windsor and Beachwood avenues, where low levels of mercury, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, all possible or known human carcinogens, have been found in testing conducted since 1996.
Twenty-one drinking water wells were found to be contaminated with mercury and/or volatile organic compounds.
"The contamination can move, and it can affect us," said Thomas Kenney, who lives at 3248 Windsor Ave.
"Why should we have to wait until our well is contaminated before we get city water?" asked his son, Edward, who lives at 3251 Windsor.
DEP officials say they have a limited pot of money and can only pay to extend water lines to homes determined to be directly affected by contamination.
"We're restricted by regulations," said DEP Section Chief Rocky Richards, who is supervising the Windsor Park project. "You have to be within 1,000 feet of four other homes that have contamination in order to get connected."
Richards said the DEP has done "a lot of sampling" in the area and officials are convinced that the homes that will receive public water are the ones directly affected by the contamination.
"You end up stopping at some point," he said. "We've done eight or 10 rounds of samples out there and we find that there is an area where we're not finding contamination anymore. That's where we draw the line."
Richards said, however, that once the water company places mains in the area, it will be easier -- and cheaper -- to extend public water lines in the future to homes that still rely on well water.
He said the DEP plans to contin-ue monitoring wells in the area and could pay to extend drinking water mains if more wells become polluted.
This is not much solace to resi-dents who live outside the known contamination zone.
"There is no doubt that we are surrounded by contamination," Metzler said. "Eventually it's go-ing to reach us."
Pelati said water company offi-cials told him that water mains could be extended farther if at least 50 more homeowners agreed to pay for installation. The cost was estimated at $2,800, al-though Pelati said it could be higher than that. Many residents of Windsor Park do not have that much money to spend, he said.
The state will pay $800,000 to $1 million to extend water mains to about 80 homes in the area. Mon-ey for the work will come from funds raised through corporate business taxes.
United Water will extend the mains, and the township will be responsible for extending pipes from the street to individual homes.
Township Engineer Lawrence P. Cagliostro said Dover will also seal about 80 private wells to prevent them from being used again. The water company has already started work on the pro-ject, and the township will likely begin its work in mid-November, Cagliostro said.
Between 300 and 400 homes in the Windsor Park area still rely on private wells for drinking wa-ter in an area that has been plagued by groundwater contami-nation for years. Cagliostro esti-mated that 1,500 to 2,000 homes in Dover still use well water.
The investigation of groundwater contamination in the area began in the early '90s, when seven residential wells in the area of Veeder and Beachwood avenues were found to contain mercury concentrations above the state standard of 2 parts per billion in drinking water.
Those polluted wells were found when the homes were being sold. Ocean County Health Department regulations require homes with private wells to be tested for con-taminants before they are sold.
The DEP became involved in De-cember 1996 and began collect-ing water samples. Samples were taken throughout 1997. In Febru-ary 1998, 21 wells were found to contain mercury and/or volatile organic pollutants.
As a short-term solution, the DEP supplied water filtration systems to homes with confirmed contami-nation.
Richards said the DEP has not been able to find the source of the Windsor Park pollution.
"Mercury, we find all over South Jersey," he said. "We know it's man-made, but it may even be from individual homeowners."
DEP officials say any additional homes that show contamination can be outfitted with filtration systems.
Published October 30, 2001
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