Community Corner

EPA Announces Plan to Clean Peninsula Boulevard Contamination

Agency will pump water polluted with dry cleaning chemicals out before treating and disposing it.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that it would pump water polluted with dangerous dry cleaning chemicals out of a site near in Hewlett and clean the contaminants, the agency said.

The on Peninsula Boulevard is contaminated with the volatile organic compounds tetrachloroethylene and tricholoroethylene, which are used in dry cleaning, the EPA said.

“Volatile organic compounds can pose serious health risks — especially in drinking water — and EPA’s plan to remove them from ground water at the Peninsula Boulevard site is the best way to protect the health of people who live and work in the area,” EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck said in a release. “After considering public comments, EPA has selected a final cleanup plan for the Peninsula Boulevard site that provides a clear course of action for protecting the environment in Hempstead.”

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The EPA held a at a few months ago, where residents were invited to comment on four options the agency laid out to clean the waste. An agency spokesperson said then that cleanup may take 15 years.

The government agency will use pumping wells to remove the contaminated water and treat it before the water is disposed of at a public wastewater treatment facility or sent back into the surface or ground water, it said.

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The chemicals found in the water can “easily evaporate into the air and many are known or suspected to cause cancer,” the EPA said. Factors such as the level and length of exposure can affect the health impacts.

Long Island American Water, which provides the Five Towns and surrounding areas with water, operates a well about 1,000 feet north of the superfund site, the EPA said. However, the agency did not detect any contaminants above “acceptable levels” in LIAW’s ground water during an investigation.

The pollutants from the Peninsula Boulevard site may have impacted one of LIAW’s well fields, the EPA said, but a treatment system was installed there in 1991 to ensure that any contaminants reaching the well field are removed.

A series of investigations in the 1990s by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation at the site of the former Grove Cleaners found extensive contamination in the ground water extending north and south of Peninsula Boulevard, according to the EPA. Woodmere Middle School sits on the west of the site’s boundary.

The site was added in 2004 to the superfund list, which are the most hazardous wastes site. EPA stepped in with its own probe from 2005 to 2010, and identified the contamination as tetrachloroethylene and low levels of other volatile organic compounds.


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