Officials Demand That Massapequa Water District be Allowed to Test Contaminated Wells

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer called on the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman to share data from their monitoring wells with all affected Long Island Water Districts on Monday.

In November, the Massapequa Water District requested access to the wells in order to perform an isotope analysis on water from the Superfund site in Bethpage in order to test whether the contaminated water had the same chemical composition as the water in the monitoring wells.

As of December, the Navy and Northrop Grumman were still reviewing the Water District’s request, according to a press release from Schumer’s office.

“The responsible parties continue to show a lack of urgency in remediating and preventing additional impacts to public supply wells,” Massapequa Water Commissioner Raymond Averna said. “In the Navy and Grumman response letters to Massapequa Water Districts CSIA sampling request, they continue to deflect responsibility and place an added financial burden on the water suppliers and tax payers.”

Schumer said that the Massapequa Water District should be allowed to access this data, especially because the plume is slowly making its way towards Massapequa.

“Once again, the Navy and Northrop Grumman have made things even more difficult for the Long Island Water Districts and ratepayers,” he said “Every day they fail to promptly share critical information is another day when this plume could creep closer to drinking water supplies. These impacted communities need and deserve timely information about the extent and content of the plume, and they need the Navy and Northrup Grumman to do more to remediate this toxic threat.”

He asked for “more transparency and information sharing” between the U.S. Navy, Northrop Grumman and all Water Districts affected by the plume.

“The U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman must stop stonewalling and start sharing when it comes to information about potentially carcinogenic chemicals like TCE that show up in nearby monitoring wells and potentially threaten Long Islanders’ precious drinking water supply,” Schumer said. ”They must be more forthcoming when it comes to information needed to help remediate the Bethpage plume and they need to be more proactive in cleaning up the mess they made”

“As part of our effort, we work with the Departments of Environmental Conservation and Health to determine what data to collect and all such data is publicly available,” Vic Beck, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman told Newsday.

Senator Schumer was joined by New York State Assemblyman Joseph Saladino, who has consistently championed the issue of protecting ground water from the plume and passed legislation forcing the NYS DEC to prepare the data needed to effectively contain and clean up these dangerous chemicals.

At the press conference Saladino said, “It is obvious that the foot-dragging is an attempt by the responsible parties to stall the cleanup process and avoid the financial responsibility of removing the plume. Each day this plume moves, increasing in size and contaminating uncontaminated portions of our precious and finite water supply.”

There are at least two plumes within the Bethpage community caused by the U.S. Navy’s decades-long operation of a Naval Weapons Production Facility.

While there have been efforts to mitigate the effects of the plume, these efforts have continued to fall short, said Schumer.

Specifically, elevated levels of a potential carcinogen, trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent used at the former defense plant, was found in the area.

The U.S. Navy operated a Naval Weapons Production Facility for decades beginning in the 1930’s , which has resulted in at least 2 plumes containing chemicals classified as carcinogens.

Since 1976, when contamination concerns were first identified, the plume has spread and is currently threatening over 20 additional public drinking wells that serve over 250,000 Nassau County residents in Bethpage, Levittown, Massapequa, South Farmingdale and Wantagh.

Currently, there are at least two plumes within the Bethpage community, and contaminants were detected in five of the eight wells operated by Bethpage Water District, according to the press release.

The first plume originated from the Grumman Aerospace Corporation and Navy manufacturing facilities, and the smaller plume is associated with the Bethpage Community Park where Grumman and the Navy disposed of wastes.

The Bethpage Water District currently has 8,800 customers.

Hot spots were recently discovered between Bethpage Water District Plant 6 and the GM 75 hotspot, according to Schumer.

Elevated levels of a potential carcinogen, trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent and was used at the former defense plant in Bethpage, which was operated by Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy, were found in the groundwater 1,700 feet away from a Bethpage drinking water well, according to Schumer.

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