Council members request written guarantee municipal well water will remain at safe level.
By: Jill Mathews
ROCKY HILL The Borough Council expressed frustration Monday with the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s response to its requests regarding the cleanup of the Princeton Gamma-Tech Superfund site.
The EPA’s cleanup plan calls for water purification trailers to be placed around the perimeter of the site. The trailers would pump up water, clean it and send it to a stream in Montgomery. The EPA began construction on the project a few months ago but has not yet started pumping the water.
Concerned about the effects of the treatment process, particularly the potential loss of municipal well water, the borough requested further information and guarantees from the EPA. The borough’s requests included: a written response to concerns about the system and its effects on the borough; a guarantee that the EPA will not proceed with the plan until borough concerns are addressed; a public hearing on the system held in Rocky Hill; protection against potential loss of the borough’s water; and a reimbursement of borough funds expended to clean up the well and maintain it.
The EPA’s three-and-a-half page response to these concerns was not well-received by the council.
The EPA agreed to install, at its own expense, a water-monitoring device at the municipal well, which was something the borough wanted to see happen, said Mayor Brian Nolan. But the rest of the letter provided a "lack of meat," he said.
"There really isn’t much here that addresses our concerns," said Councilman Martin Engelbrecht. He also referred to some of the EPA’s responses as a "dance of nothing."
The EPA said in the letter that it believes the treatment system will not adversely affect the quantity or quality of municipal well water. The letter also says the EPA "may proceed to stop pumping in all or a portion of the recovery wells in order to determine if this is the cause of the impacts on the municipal well."
"We are willing to modify our pumping if necessary and we are willing to work with Rocky Hill," said Kim O’Connell, head of the EPA’s Southern New Jersey Remediation Section. "It’s not as simple to say, if it goes down we will stop pumping, because that is happening now."
Ms. O’Connell said the well-water level in Rocky Hill already fluctuates, but the EPA would halt its pumping if it is determined to have an adverse effect on the water supply in the borough.
Council members said at the meeting they want a written guarantee that if the water level drops, the EPA will halt pumping.
Borough officials also took issue with what they described as the EPA’s inability to recognize that Montgomery and Rocky Hill are separate municipalities and that Rocky Hill wants the EPA to hold a separate public hearing for its residents.
Ms. O’Connell said that the EPA will hold a joint availability session for both the township and borough in Montgomery, and would also be willing to arrange another meeting in Rocky Hill.
Council members also said the borough will need to investigate its options for reimbursement for the funds it used to build its water purification system over 20 years ago.
Ms. O’Connell said the EPA’s legal team has informed the borough that the EPA cannot legally reimburse it from the money it received in a lawsuit against Princeton Gamma-Tech, and that if the borough wanted to recoup its costs, it would need to take legal action against the company responsible.
In February, state and federal officials jointly announced a $21.5 million settlement with Princeton Gamma-Tech, which would pay for past and future Superfund site cleanups in Montgomery and Rocky Hill.
Trichloroethylene, a volatile organic compound stored in tanks and buried on the grounds of Princeton Gamma-Tech, apparently leaked into the aquifer over a period of years before being identified in 1978. The leak formed a plume, or area of concentration, that expanded slowly beneath Route 206 east toward the Millstone River, north to Sycamore Lane and south to Route 518.
By 1983, when the Rocky Hill and Montgomery sites were placed on the Superfund National Priorities List, the Rocky Hill Borough Council had installed a water-treatment system at its own expense and returned to supplying residents with water from its municipal well.