While residents in the area of the former Keystone Metal Finishers Plant on Humboldt Street will have to wait for the air sampling report from the state to breathe easier, they got good news at council committee meeting Wednesday. A report from Richard Welsh, a toxicologist retained to assess possible health risks due to contamination spreading under residential homes, determined that exposure limits residents currently face fall well below standards set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Welsh works for the PMK Group, an engineering firm retained by the city.
While Welsh could not tell residents if their exposure in the past had put them at risk for getting cancer or some other disease due to contamination, under current conditions he saw very little evidence anyone would be at risk today.
“Even using the most conservative estimates of risk, residents exposed to these chemicals would not exceed levels that the EPA considers a risk to health,” Welsh told the 20 people who had come to hear his report.
Town officials discovered vast contamination problems on the Keystone property after the owner was found dead over a decade ago. In 1991, when the EPA came into Keystone, chemical contamination was much more acute, with numerous threats from soil and from open containers of dangerous chemicals. At the cost of $600,000 to the federal government, the contaminants were removed, except for contamination that had eased into the water beneath the property. In 1996, town officials looking into cleaning up the property discovered these chemicals had leeched off the property and under homes in the area.
While Welsh could not comment on reports of current air contamination found during recent tests until the state issued its report, he said the chemicals discovered in the air are so commonly used in New Jersey that they might likely be found anywhere in any local community.
As for people’s exposure to the water, Welsh said it is not likely, and said he had checked pathways – which is the means people might come into contact with contaminants – and determined very little chance of people getting enough of the contaminants to negatively affect them. While people might have come into contact with contaminated water drawn from wells and used in gardening, he said it would take a person drinking two liters of water a day to reach minimum levels of risk. Even if people were to swim in the water, it is not likely they could absorb that much, he said.
The plume may be shrinking
While residents of the area still had concerns about tests showing low levels of contaminants in the air – a matter that will be addressed at a special meeting once results from the state are issued – they got plenty of other good news as officials from PMK Group, the engineering firm assigned to clean up the contamination, gave a progress report.
Injections of a chemical cleanup agent done during July and August appeared to have significantly reduced the overall contamination, especially in the most contaminated parts of the contamination plume. PMK’s efforts off the Keystone site were hampered by residents who refused to allow injections to take place on their property. Out of 20 homes targeted for the cleanup action, only four residents gave the company access.
Despite this, PMK managed to inject 20,000 pounds of the chemical into the ground in other areas, and tests done since show significant cleanup, from 40 percent in some areas to 99.5 percent in other areas. One area that showed contamination at 7,000 parts per billion was tested after the injection and showed one part per billion. PMK reported the overall plume seems to be shrinking and becoming less intense.
According to Mayor Dennis Elwell, the cost of the cleanup will be borne by taxpayers.
“The Town Council has agreed to spend up to $700,000 to clean up the site,” he said.
The town has spent about $500,000 in cleanup costs so far. Of this, $200,000 was for additional soil removal and $300,000 for the injections. If necessary, PMK will do another round of injections next spring and summer.
While costs associated with investigating the contamination are being taken on by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Elwell said the town had to present the state with a redevelopment plan that would allow the property to be put on the tax roles in the future.
“We haven’t discussed what we will do with the property officially,” Elwell said. “We will have divided it up into 50 by 100 foot lots.”
These will likely be auctioned off in the future to help defray the cleanup costs. Using the recent sale of the former DPW site as an indicator, Elwell said the lots would likely sell for about $150,000 each.