Source: http://www.timesunion.com, April 15, 2015
By: Brian Nearing

Walgreens is under state pressure to fund removal of pollution

The state is planning steps to compel Walgreens, a national pharmacy chain, to support a state-proposed $500,000 cleanup of underground chemical pollution from a former dry cleaners at a busy Loudonville intersection.
Walgreens has owned the property, a vacant one-acre lot near Kimberly Plaza at the corner of Osborne and Albany Shaker roads, since 2008. It wanted to build a pharmacy at the site.
In February, the state Department of Environmental Conservation released a plan to clean unsafe levels of a dry-cleaning solvent — tetrachloroethene (PCE) — and its harmful byproducts, trichloroethene (TCE) and dichloroethene (DCE). DEC had found the chemicals in 2003, long before Walgreens bought the property.
The site was once home to Cleanerama, a dry cleaners that operated from 1960 to 1995. Under the state Superfund pollution cleanup program, tainted properties are the responsibility of the current owner, even if that owner was not responsible for the pollution.
Under Superfund, cleanups are paid for by taxpayers should an owner be unable or unwilling to support it, and the state then can pursue the owner legally to recover expenses. Walgreens has so far declined to support the cleanup costs and DEC is preparing legal action, which is pursued by the state attorney general, according to a DEC official.
A call for comment to Walgreen’s public relations office was not returned. The company that sold the property to Walgreens for $2 million, Osborne Road Associates LLC, has also declined to support the cleanup, DEC said.
The dry cleaning chemicals are now in a groundwater plume that has continued leaking vapors up through the ground despite removals of tainted soil in 2003 and 2007, according to DEC.
Exposure to PCE likely increases cancer risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Primary effects from chronic, long-term inhalation exposure are neurological, including impaired cognitive and motor neurobehavioral performance, according to EPA. PCE exposure may also “cause adverse effects in the kidney, liver, immune system and hematologic system, and on development and reproduction.”
A 2011 DEC investigation of the Cleanarama property found hazardous vapors leaking through the soil and into a nearby, unidentified building. An air pressure system was added to that building’s basement in 2012 to keep vapors from accumulating inside.
Leaking vapors have not spread to other nearby buildings, which include a children’s nursery, a 2014 DEC investigation said.
The proposed DEC cleanup plan calls for injection of a chemical into the ground to break down PCEs and its byproducts. Iron would be spread through soil at the eastern side of Albany Shaker Road to break down PCEs and byproducts in groundwater that is flowing under the street.
This is the third polluted former dry cleaning property in Albany County this year to be targeted for clean-up by DEC.
This month, DEC proposed a $1.4 million plan to draw dangerous vapors from soil at Loudon Plaza.
In January, DEC said it would investigate a toxic underground chemical plume beneath a former Central Avenue dry cleaner that is moving toward Colonie homes and businesses.