As Floods Recede, Superfund Neighborhoods Fear Contamination ...

Since last month?s storm, Juan Falcon says he has been cutting through the wallboard in the basement of his two-story house to let the walls breathe and to block the advance of mold. The walls in the basement apartment occupied by his 29-year-old son are still damp from the four feet of water that flooded the neighborhood.

Mr. Falcon lives in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, near Newtown Creek and surrounding parcels that are undergoing a federal Superfund cleanup for pesticides, heavy metals, PCBs and other contaminants.

Scores of New Yorkers have had it bad since the storm. But for residents and businesses on the industrial waterfront and near Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal, New York City?s two Superfund sites, there?s an extra layer of worry. Did the flood waters spread contamination that poses a lingering risk?

?I?m wearing surgical gloves and a mask,? said Mr. Falcon, a 57-year-old retiree who formerly loaded trucks for Domino?s Sugar. ?Anytime I see a hole in the gloves, I throw them out.?

Officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency in New York say that agency officials are assessing Superfund cleanup sites in both New York and New Jersey but ?do not believe that any sites were impacted in ways that would pose a threat to nearby communities.?

The agency said that it had taken water samples from one home near the Newtown Creek Superfund site but that test results were not yet available.

Sampling in the Gowanus Canal area indicated that the flood waters contained bacteria consistent with sewage that was released into waterways when treatment plants were damaged or left without power, officials said. Toxic chemicals were present in some samples but in levels that did not pose concerns, they added.

New Jersey fared less well. Near the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund site in Sayreville, N.J., where lead, arsenic and copper were found, four samples taken from a public playground area and a beach showed enough lead to warrant an official warning against recreational activity. The E.P.A. said it was continuing sampling in the area.

A different concern in New Jersey extends to the Arthur Kill, the navigational channel between New Jersey and Staten Island. Cleanup crews working in coordination with the Coast Guard have been? using oil skimmers, vacuum trucks and a containment boom to remove diesel fuel that spilled out from at least one bulk fuel tank at the Motiva oil tank facility in Woodbridge Township.

State officials said the was dislodged Hurricane Sandy, spilling about 378,000 gallons of fuel, most of which reached the waterway. But the officials said a major environmental disaster was averted by the quick response: around 100,000 gallons have been recovered and an unknown amount of the fuel has dissipated in both the Arthur Kill and Raritan Bay, the governor?s office said.

The E.P.A. has posted safety precautions for flood cleanups and mold on a Web page dedicated to the storm. But some community groups are also asking for soil and sediment testing as well.

Community advocates? have long worried about the contamination risks posed by storm surges and rising sea levels to residents near industrial waterfront in areas like the South Bronx, Newtown Creek, Sunset Park and Red Hook. Groups like the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance have been pressing the city to meet with waterfront businesses to conduct a thorough inventory of their chemical contents and make sure their storage and business practices are floodproof.

?Learning from Sandy, we need environmental health and safety information for flooding that is specific for Superfund and relevant to the industrial business community,? Kate Zidar, executive director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, wrote in an e-mail.

Ms. Zidar argues that storm drains need tide gates and that the eroded shoreline needs bulkheads and wetland restoration to keep the water at bay.

For now, David Finkel, chief operating officer of Davis & Warshow, a plumbing and heating supplies company whose headquarters is on Maspeth Creek, a tributary of Newtown Creek in Queens, said his company was moving critical equipment to higher floors while cleaning up the flooded areas in four buildings on an 8.5-acre site.

Cleanup crews are wearing protective gear, including high rubber boots and gloves, ?and handling the site as if it were contaminated with toxic waste as the company awaits the results of its own testing.

?We?re treating it as if there?s really bad stuff,? said Mr. Finkel, who said the company?s inventory losses in the flooding ran into millions of dollars. ?We?re steam-cleaning floors and walls.?

Mr. Falcon said he hoped it was all plain old seawater. He mused about whether the city should put up seawalls, while trying gamely to make light of the flood waters that ruined wiring and appliances like a stove, refrigerator, boiler and water heater.

?I used to swim in the East River,? he said, ?and I?m still here.?

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/as-floods-recede-brooklynites-fear-contamination/

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