PCBS on Loeffel family property
Chemical tank, tainted pond found five miles from Superfund landfill
A man whose name is synonymous with Rensselaer County’s worst toxic landfill apparently was dumping those same chemicals where he lived.
Acting on a tip, federal investigators last month found PCBS, carcinogenic industrial solvents and other chemicals contaminating the family property of Dewey Loeffel, who ran a nearby landfill during the 1950s and ’60s that still leaks dangerous toxins.
The discoveries by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the Loeffel property at 5525 County Route 203 included a buried 10,000-gallon chemi
cal tank as well as a Pcb-tainted pond and trichloroethylene (TCE), a human carcinogen, in ground water.
According to town assessment records, the 8.8-acre property near Sweets Crossing Road, which includes the Loeffel home, is owned by Carol Loeffel, the 79-year-old daughter-in-law of Dewey Loeffel.
When a reporter tried calling a telephone number listed for the residence, the line would ring and then disconnect.
In addition to the family home, the property includes several maintenance buildings used by Loeffel to run his trucking firm as part of his landfill operation, which was in business between 1952 and 1968.
“This is where Mr. Loeffel would rinse out his trucks,” said Nassau Supervisor David Fleming on Thursday. “I guess this disproves the old country saying that a pig doesn’t crap where it sleeps.”
As complaints mounted from neighbors about dead fish and cattle near the landfill, the state ordered the 19-acre dump closed in 1970. It was sealed by the state in 1984, but continued to leak dangerous chemicals into nearby Valatie Kill and Kinderhook Lake.
EPA officials went to the Loeffel family property acting on a tip received last summer, according to agency spokesman Elias Rodriguez. Investigators went to the Loeffel property last month. Ground-penetrating radar revealed the buried chemical tank.
“The pond is a mess with PCBS, and there are volatile organic compounds all over the place,” Fleming said.
A drinking water well was found to be contaminated with TCE, Fleming said. He said tests of water wells for more than a dozen neighboring homes on Rudat Road, Maple View Avenue, and Brookside Drive found water there was safe to drink.
A grassroots activist who has been demanding for years that the landfill be excavated and disposed of said she was not surprised by EPA’S findings at the Loeffel residence.
“This is something that was raised to the state Department of Environmental Conservation many years ago. Guess they never found anything,” said Kelly Travers-main, a member of founder of UNCAGED, a grassroots advocacy group formed in 2000 to push for a dump cleanup and an accounting of potential health risks to people who live or lived nearby.
She credited Fleming for “keeping this thing moving” and EPA officials for finally locating pollution on the Loeffel property.
Fleming said there will be “months of investigation” at the new Loeffel site to determine the extent and location of pollution, including soil sampling, and testing of wetlands and drainage. “We have to ask how many more such sites there might be like this.”
Over 16 years, Loeffel buried about 46,000 tons of industrial waste in his unlined landfill off Mead Road, about five miles from his home. Since the landfill had no liner system, it allowed chemicals to leak into the ground unchecked.
Most of the waste came from General Electric, but Schenectady Chemical and the Bendix Co. also dumped there.
The dump has been a persistent environmental headache. Its cleanup was first ordered by the state in 1968 to be done by Loeffel.
After a dozen fruitless years, the state took over the project in 1980 after striking a deal with GE known as “Seven Sites” agreement.
Under the agreement, which covered Loeffel and six other Pcb-tainted sites upstate, GE put up $30 million to handle all cleanup costs, and the state agreed that the company would not have to come up with any more cash — ever. Part of that money paid for the cap placed over the Loeffel dump in 1984.
Three decades later, with the dump still leaking chemicals, EPA assumed control and installed a treatment system for rainwater passing into the ground and through the dump.
Many millions of dollars have been spent by the state and federal government on the landfill beyond what the Seven Sites agreement provided.
While Loeffel made few, if any public comments about his dump, he was sued in 1991 by a housing developer who said the dump had made his nearby property worthless.
While testifying under oath, Loeffel said he could not recall details of his operation of the dump and of contact from Rensselaer County and state health officials who were concerned over the safety of dump operations.
Fleming said the town wants the dump dug out and the chemicals properly disposed of. “Otherwise, this will be leaking forever,” he said.
PCB and other pollution has spread to nearby Valatie Kill, Nassau Lake and Kinderhook Lake in Columbia County. Pcbtainted fish from those bodies of water have been listed by the state as unsafe to eat since 1980.
Fleming said 26 private wells were tested in the area of the new contamination, and the preliminary results found none have dangerous levels of chemicals such as PCBS, which was the contamination found at the Route 203 site.
Three wells were found to have the chemical TCE present, but levels were low enough for safe human consumption.
Rensselaer County provided bottled water to residents when testing began March 18, as well as backup water supplies at the Nassau ambulance facility.