Published in the Asbury Park Press
JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- United Water Toms River will agree to seek funding for an alternate water supply that would enable it to shut down the parkway well field, as part of an agreement that would settle the final portion of Dover Township''s litigation against the company.
Under a settlement proposal expected to be discussed by the Township Committee tonight, the committee would drop its contention that United Water no longer has a valid franchise to operate in Dover.
In return, the water company would try to develop a supply to replace shallow wells, some of which have been contaminated. Specifically, parkway wells 22, 24, 26, 28 and 29, as well as Well 20, located off Indian Head Road, could be shut down. Dover officials also would agree to support United''s efforts to seek funding.
Dover and water company officials have agreed that the cost of replacing the parkway wells should not be borne by United Water customers, the company''s shareholders or the township. The utility in the past has mentioned seeking money from the state, an option that seems unlikely given the current belt-tightening in Trenton.
Some of the shallow parkway wells'' water has contamination from the Reich Farm Superfund site, located a mile to the north. The shallow wells, about 125 to 200 feet deep, tap into the Cohansey aquifer, and are more susceptible to groundwater contamination than deeper wells.
Wells 26 and 28 capture and treat the groundwater pollution plume. Those wells are treated with carbon filters and an air stripping system to remove contaminants. Water from the two wells only rarely has been used in the drinking water system since November 1996, when styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a previously unknown chemical compound related to plastics production, was found in the two wells.
The toxicity of the trimer is not yet known, and toxicity studies are not expected to be completed for several years. In 1999, the state paid $1.5 million to install carbon filters on wells 22 and 29, after traces of the trimer were found in Well 29.
Well 20, which is not located in the parkway field, has been out of service for most of the past six years because it contains elevated levels of naturally occurring radiation.
In December, United Water unveiled a plan to close the shallow parkway wells and replace them with two wells 1,600 to 2,000 feet deep, tapping into the Potomac-Raritan-Magothy aquifer and making use of that aquifer''s storage and recovery system.
Under that system, water would be pumped from the Upper Magothy aquifer during low water demand periods, in the winter months, and then injected into the deeper well for storage. The stored water can then be drawn back up and used during the summer, when demand increases, water company officials have said.
The two new wells would produce about 6 million gallons a day, replacing the output of the parkway field''s shallow wells.
United Water officials have estimated the cost at $6 million, which would include building a small iron removal plant, since water from the Magothy aquifer has a high iron content. They expect the work would take about two years.
Litigation dates to 1997
The settlement would end litigation that started in 1997, when the township asked the state Board of Public Utilities to rule on whether United had a valid franchise to operate in Dover. The company''s original 50-year franchise to operate in the township, granted in 1897, expired in 1947. Township and company officials can find no evidence that the agreement was ever renewed.
The question about the franchise was part of a petition the township filed with the BPU, claiming United Water had failed to provide an adequate and safe drinking water supply. The utility serves more than 95,000 people in Dover, Berkeley and South Toms River.
As part of a settlement of a portion of the litigation, which was reached in 1999, United agreed to drill three new wells and build two new storage tanks during the ensuing three years, work that has been done.
Union Carbide Corp., now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, has taken responsibility for the contamination at Reich Farm, a former chicken farm where independent trucker Nicholas Fernicola dumped more than 4,000 drums of chemical waste from Carbide''s Bound Brook plant in 1971. The company paid for the Reich Farm cleanup, as well as the installation of filtration systems on wells 26 and 28.
But Union Carbide has not been willing to pay to replace the parkway well field, because water drawn from the well field meets all state and federal drinking water standards.
Still, township officials agree that the public has lost confidence in water drawn from the well field, especially after an epidemiological study of families of children with cancer found that exposure to contaminated drinking water from the well field was associated with past elevated levels of leukemia in girls.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 2/20/02
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