Environmental Protection Agency To Conduct Five-Year Review Of Old Denzer & Schaefer Superfund Site

Chances are, most residents who live in the new developments that now dot Hickory Lane don't know that there was once a active Superfund site in their Bayville neighborhood.

The Denzer & Schafer X-Ray Company operated a silver reclamation facility on a five-acre site at 186 Hickory Road from 1974 to 1981. Caustic chemical solutions were used to strip silver from X-ray films, according to an federal Environmental Protection Agency fact sheet.

The state Department of Environmental Protection ordered the discharge stopped in 1981 and had the company owners install monitoring wells to sample the groundwater.

The monitoring wells showed that the underlying shallow aquifer was contaminated with volatile organic compounds and metals. The EPA added the site to the National Priorities List of Superfund sites in 1983. It was removed from the list in 1998, the fact sheet states.

But every five years, the EPA conducts a review to confirm that the past massive cleanup of the site continues to protect the public and the environment and is working as designed.

The results of the 2016 review will be released this fall.

Cleanup activities included demolition and the disposal of the company building, evacuation of the septic system removal of several thousand gallon tanks of caustic solutions, abandonment and removal of an underground storage tank, removal of 15 gallons of sodium thiosulfate, 200 drums and containers of photographic chemicals, hydrochloric acids,flammable liquids, etc. In addition, tons of shredded and stripped photographic film base which was stockpiled behind the plant was removed, along with the contamined soil beneath it.