Agency holds meeting with Montgomery and Rocky Hill residents to address their concerns on the GammaTech cleanup process.
By: Jill Matthews
MONTGOMERY In an effort to address concerns and answer questions of area residents, the federal Environmental Protection Agency held two informal meetings on the Princeton Gamma-Tech cleanup process Thursday.
A large number of questions raised by residents in the affected area centered on whether they should cap their private wells, something the EPA is asking them to consider. The EPA would pay for the cost of capping the wells, which would take only about a week and a half. Although residents are now serviced by Elizabethtown Water Co., some use their old wells for lawn watering.
Residents were also interested in what the cleanup system would look like and how much noise it would make, among other things.
Concern about the site began in 1978, when it was discovered that trichloroethylene (TCE), a volatile organic compound stored in tanks and buried on the grounds of Princeton Gamma-Tech on Route 518 east of Route 206, apparently leaked into the aquifer over a period of years. 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.
Though the EPA has seen a decrease in TCE levels in the area, it has identified two hot spots within the plume that still have TCE levels of greater than 100 parts per billion. The standard TCE limit for drinking water is 1 part per billion.
One of the hot spots, located under the Bloomberg office at 1377 Route 206, just north of Montgomery Shopping Center, is about 600 feet in diameter. The other hot spot, located at Princeton Gamma-Tech, is about 600 feet by 300 feet.
"We’re really going after the hot spots aggressively," said Kim O’Connell, head of the EPA’s Southern New Jersey Remediation Section.
Currently, the EPA is constructing a water purification system at the Bloomberg hot spot that will include a metal building 30 feet wide, 50 feet long and 20 feet high which will house two carbon-filtration tanks. It should take about six years for this site to be cleaned, said Rich Puvogel, an EPA remedial project manager.
At the Princeton Gamma-Tech site, the EPA will construct a trailer-sized building that will house two filtration tanks. This site should be cleaned up completely in 20 years, said Mr. Puvogel.
The water purification trailers will pump up water, clean it and send it to a stream in Montgomery. The EPA began construction on the project a few months ago and expects to start pumping water in September.
EPA officials assured residents that the cleaning systems will create noise no louder than the pumps of a backyard pool and that residents should not be disturbed by any sounds.
Ms. O’Connell estimated that the $14.2 million awarded to the EPA in a lawsuit against Princeton Gamma-Tech will cover 91 percent of past and future cleanup costs of the site.
The EPA works on the project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which retained Camp Dresser and McKee Inc. for the design of the cleaning system and Cape Environmental to cap the wells.
Additional documents on the Superfund site are available at the township clerk’s office, the Mary Jacobs Library or at the EPA’s Web site www.epa.gov/superfund.