Official ‘unimpressed’ by planned remediation
NASSAU, N.Y. » Town Supervisor David Fleming said after hearing from officials from the EPA about contamination from the Dewey Loeffel Toxic Landfill, he is not pleased with the proposed remediation project.
The EPA recently held a community update in Nassau on plans to once again remediate a tributary to the Valatie Kill, known as T-11A, that has been dramatically impacted with contamination from the Dewey Loeffel Toxic Landfill.
This stream was previously “remediated” by NYSDEC more than 15 years ago, which cost millions of dollars, a news release said.
The Valatie Kill is a Hudson River tributary. The small stream is a vital habitat for small fish and the Valatie Kill. Contamination from this tributary is a source of ongoing contamination to the Valatie Kill and related waters. Current contamination in the stream after the first remediation, in some areas, is 100 to 1,000 parts per million. The release said 0.5 parts per million is a defacto standard.
According to a recent EPA community update fact sheet online, the removal action will be performed by GE under the EPA’s oversight and will consist of the excavation and off-site disposal of PCB- contaminated soil and sediment, followed by the placement
of clean backfill and restoration of habitat in the tributary.
Officials said this action is being taken to address contaminated soil and sediment in Tributary T11A while the long-term comprehensive study of the site continues.
“I’m currently unimpressed with the scope of this remediation project as outlined by EPA,” said Fleming in a news release. “The principal boundaries reviewed for remediation start at the 50 year flood limits. With Hurricane Irene and other storms, Nassau has declared States of Emergency at least two times in the last several years with flood water exceeding 100 year flood stages.
“I remain unconvinced that the work, as proposed, will sufficiently clean this waterway. Without a comprehensive cleanup of this stream and full remediation of the toxic cocktail that is the Loeffel Landfill, agencies involved in the Loeffel Superfund Site appear to follow their usual actions of putting Band-Aids on bullet wounds.”
The EPA community update fact sheet also states that officials intend to create a community advisory group so that the commu- nity can more actively participate in the process.
For years, the town has called for a halt to potentially unsafe discharges from the Loeffel Superfund Site. Between 1952 until 1968, an estimated 46,000 tons of toxic industrial waste were dumped at the site. EPA has already outlined that these wastes in- cluded industrial solvents, waste oil, PCBs, scrap materials, sludge and solids. Since 1980 until the site was added to the federal Superfund list in 2011, numerous investigations and cleanup actions were performed at the site by the polluters and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.