Date: Fri 01-Aug-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

gas-spill-pollution-lease

Full Text:

Town Approves Lease For Gas Spill Clean-Up

BY KAAREN VALENTA

A special town meeting on Thursday morning, July 31, approved a proposal to

lease a small piece of property off Cemetery Road to the company whose tanker

truck crashed on Route 302 in Dodgingtown last year, spilling about 9,100

gallons of gasoline.

The five-year agreement leases 1,090 square feet of land at Flat Swamp

Cemetery to Island Transportation Company of North Haven Company for the sum

of $5. The site will be used for the installation, operation and maintenance

of equipment designed to remove traces of the chemical MTBE, a gasoline

additive, from the groundwater in the area.

A multi-million-dollar clean-up operation began last October after a tanker

truck crashed and burned on Route 302 in front of George's Pizza & Restaurant.

Gasoline washed over the restaurant's parking lot, down an embankment into the

historic cemetery. The truck driver, David Wagnblas, 28, of Stratford, was

killed.

A temporary remediation system was quickly installed to remove MTBE from the

groundwater but has not been enough to stop a plume of contamination, which

has been slowly moving toward Lime Kiln Brook. So the state Department of

Environmental Protection approved a permanent system that will include the

installation of eight more shallow recovery wells to augment two already

existing wells. Water pumped from these 10 wells will be treated by a device

called an air stripper and also filtered with activated carbon to remove

traces of the pollutant. The cleaned water then will be discharged into Lime

Kiln Brook.

The new wells will pump water at the rate of 25 gallons per minute, a

significant increase from the 8-10 gallon-per-minute rate of the existing

wells, according to William Warzecha, an environmental analyst for the

Department of Environmental Protection, which is overseeing the clean-up.

Mr Warzecha said workers now will begin to focus on the cemetery itself, using

probes and soil borings to determine whether any gasoline exists in pockets on

the water table beneath the cemetery.

Some contamination did seep down through the soil near the restaurant parking

lot before that soil was removed last year, he said. That contamination then

entered cracks in the underlying bedrock, but it should eventually disappear.

"We often say the solution to pollution is dilution and that's what should

happen in this case," Mr Warzecha said. "It will have to run its course.

What's gotten past [the recovery wells] eventually will clear itself."

The lease approved at the special town meeting includes an option to renew

annually after five years, if necessary, at a cost of $1 per year.

"This is not a short-time operation," said Kevin Gumper, an attorney who

represents Island Transportation. "We will be on this site a minimum of two

years, maybe seven or even ten."

The clean-up is being financed by Anderson Mulholland Associates, Inc, of New

York City, a company that provides catastrophic insurance.

Wells at homes near the spill are being monitored. Carbon filtration systems

were installed after the spill at the restaurant and in some of the

residential wells. Traces of MTBE were discovered in two of the residential

wells, both recording amounts at, or slightly above, the level requiring

action, but these have been decreasing in the months since the spill.

"There is a large safety factor built into the system," Mr Warzecha said. "No

one wants to drink contaminated water so there is an established level at

which we take action. It is not what I would describe as hazardous, however."

"[The spill] was an unfortunate accident," he said. "But everyone involved

with the clean-up is doing everything they can, as quickly as they can."