Cleanup resumes at illicit toxic dump in Sweden

Source : http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20100222/ROCEARTH04/302220009

More than a decade after a prolonged and costly cleanup at the biggest illicit toxic dump site ever found in the Rochester region, workers have returned to the site in the town of Sweden this month to do still more work.

Now a grass-covered field about three miles south of Brockport, the site was an unauthorized burial ground from which more than 2,500 drums and bottles of industrial waste were removed in the 1990s. More than 2,000 tons of contaminated soil was treated on-site to remove toxic chemical residue.

Cleanup of the site, known as Sweden 3-Chapman, cost at least $8.5 million — all of it coming from state coffers. Though dozens of companies were believed to have furnished the wastes that were buried on the property by a former owner, the owner denied any knowledge of the mess and none of the companies accepted responsibility. State officials decided a decade ago they were unlikely to prevail in court.

A Department of Environmental Conservation lawyer told the Democrat and Chronicle several years ago that he could not remember a toxic dump site in this part of New York where the state had spent so much money and recovered nothing from potentially responsible parties.

The DEC now will spend an additional $700,000 in taxpayer money to remove 1,200 cubic yards of soil that remains contaminated with volatile organic chemicals such as tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethene.

The burial site was so large, officials said, that their sampling at the time couldn't find everything.

"The contamination being removed now is located in a small concentrated area of the site that was not detected in the original sampling," said DEC spokeswoman Maureen Wren. Cleanup was needed because on-going monitoring showed groundwater still contains unacceptable levels of those chemicals. To address that, the DEC will inject the groundwater with a relatively harmless chemical compound, potassium permanganate, which will promote degradation of the organic industrial chemicals.

The agency also will install two more monitoring wells to track the contaminated plume of groundwater.

Underground water flows northeastward from the original dump site, located north of Beadle Road and east of Redman Road. Wren noted there are no drinking-water wells in that direction.

"DEC conducts periodic testing of well water from the residents outside the plume area and has not detected any chemicals in the water samples above state standards," she said.

The cleanup plan is a scaled back version of one that was put forth four years ago; after more exploration at the site, DEC officials now believe the scope of the problem is smaller.

Site preparation is already under way at the location, with cleanup work to be done by late spring. Groundwater monitoring will continue and should show whether this second cleanup was adequate.

"If additional work is needed to address the contamination, DEC is committed to performing it," Wren said.

SORR@DemocratandChronicle.com