Source: Connecticut Post, August 21, 2012
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
Federal regulators working to detoxify the town’s decades-old Raymark Superfund site are finalizing a new proposal to address the 500-acre pool of severely polluted groundwater buried beneath about 100 homes along Housatonic Avenue.
The Environmental Protection Agency is set to unveil a feasibility study sometime this autumn outlining potential solutions to clean up the groundwater, which releases toxic gas that permeates the soil and disperses into the air.
The contaminated water pool here is not used for drinking. But the toxic gas it releases can enter homes through plumbing gaps and cracks in the foundation. When trapped within four walls, the toxins become concentrated and potentially hazardous to breathe.
Temporary safety measures similar to radon machines are in place at all but 16 homes above the groundwater pool to prevent residents from breathing in contaminates.
“We know where the groundwater contamination is, we know what the contaminates are, we know what levels of contamination we’re working with,” said Jim Murphy, a community outreach coordinator for the EPA. “We are lining up all the possible technologies that could address the issue, and we’re going to pick the one we think works best.”
Residents and town officials will then have an opportunity to review and either critique or endorse the remediation plan at a public forum.
The source of the waste at the town’s Superfund site is Raymark Industries, a now-bankrupt automotive manufacturer that dumped asbestos, carcinogens and other hazardous chemicals on hundreds of properties in town during most of the 20th century.
More than $200 million has been pumped into cleanup efforts, but less than 10 percent of the total acreage polluted by Raymark has been remediated. Less than $22 million in funding designated for cleanup remains.
Regulators this year had previously focused their efforts on determining whether a new, asbestos-neutralizing technology could detoxify unaddressed soil waste at Raymark dump sites. Unaddressed soil waste is buried on several commercial and town-owned properties, as well as 14 residential parcels.
The technology, called thermochemical conversion, neutralizes polychlorinated biphenyls and chrysotile asbestos — two major components of Raymark soil waste — through a heating process. But it cannot neutralize lead or copper, toxins that are also prevalent in soil waste at the Raymark site, according to environmental officials who studied the technology. In fact, thermochemical conversion has never before been used to neutralize automotive brake pads, fragments of which are known to exist in Raymark waste.
The EPA has told the developer, Seattle-based ARI Technologies, that its team would need to fund a $100,000 bench test and a $1 million to $3 million pilot project to demonstrate that the technology works on the site’s unique blend of toxins before the government will consider fronting money for a full-scale project.
Murphy said the developer has not said whether it’s willing to spend millions to test the viability of the technology in Stratford.