Record Article 12/22/02

Silence on MTBE faulted in Ringwood

JAN BARRY
RINGWOOD - Nearly a year passed before residents were informed of a gasoline leak into groundwater near a neighborhood service station last December.
How could that happen, riled-up neighbors of a Mobil station on Skyline Drive are asking municipal and state officials. A state inspector looking for the source of MTBE, a gasoline additive, in the water supply at the Ringwood Shopping Center had found the leak Dec. 18, 2001.
Subsequent testing by a consultant for Tosco Corp., which owns the station, found low levels of MTBE in wells at 11 homes and the Ambulance Corps building on Alta Vista Drive. At the shopping center's well, the chemical registered between trace amounts and levels exceeding the state safety standard for human health three times in a year. A carbon filter system was installed on that well in September to remove the chemical.
But a public meeting to inform neighborhood residents of the spill investigation and the results of well testing was not held until Dec. 3. Upset residents said they are worried that they and their children may have been drinking and bathing in gasoline-tainted water for months without warning.
Some were upset to find out from samplings of their wells that measurable amounts of MTBE were found. Others were angry because their wells were not tested, even after they heard from neighbors that some wells in the neighborhood were being sampled because of a pollution problem.
"Neighbors were not told what was being tested for and they were not given the results," said a woman who moved into a new home near the gas station and then learned of the pollution problem. "We are very upset that we were not told about this."
Since then, interviews of the government agencies involved found an absence of any set procedure of communications to the community at large - something borough officials have vowed to change. Local officials also said they received only fragments of information from the state and still did not have a complete picture they could convey to the public until the Dec. 3 presentation.
MTBE has been linked to cancer and neurological problems in animal studies, the federal Environmental Protection Agency found. Minute quantities of the chemical can leave water with a bitter taste and odor. State Department of Environmental Protection officials say MTBE found in the home wells was at levels significantly below the state's safety level of 70 parts per billion. Residents worry that even low levels might be harmful, especially to children.
Pressed by residents for information on what was going on, borough officials called a community meeting on Dec. 3 as an information session addressed by DEP officials who oversee investigation and cleanup of hazardous spills. The local officials maintained that handling such spills is a state responsibility and out of their control.
But a DEP spokesman said it is up to local government to alert residents when an environmental hazard is found.
With roughly 40,000 hazardous substance spills annually, the DEP has its hands full alerting local police departments and municipal managers of each incident in a given community, said the spokesman, Fred Mumford.
"The towns are notified," Mumford said of the DEP's procedure for calling police departments about local spills, followed by a letter to the municipal manager. "We rely on the towns to disseminate information to residents."
Ringwood officials counter they didn't get enough information until recently to convey an adequate alert.
"We have very little information," Borough Administrator Walter Davison said late last month, after three residents complained at a Borough Council meeting that they had just learned about the groundwater contamination after moving into new homes near the gas station. Tests of their wells showed MTBE at low levels.
Borough Health Officer Chris Chapman said he knew about the gasoline leak investigation and ongoing monitoring of the shopping center well, but did not get results of state-ordered tests on nearby home wells until last month. Those tests were conducted by a Tosco consultant from April through October, but the "Ringwood Health Department did not receive notice of the tests" at the time and only got results on Nov. 20, Chapman noted in a recent report to the council.
On behalf of the ambulance corps, Captain Dominic Ingraffea wrote to the DEP on Aug. 29, asking for results of tests at the ambulance corps building, several weeks after multiple tests were done by a Tosco consultant. According to Chapman's report, the results of the tests at the ambulance corps well were provided in November. They showed that MTBE was in the water at varying levels, the highest of which was 43 ppb in August.
DEP officials say they don't understand why this spill case has become an issue in Ringwood.
"The health officer is copied on all potable well results," said Mumford. The results may take awhile to be produced because they are double checked, he said. Meanwhile, he added, the DEP contacts property owners whose wells are tested.
"The residents get letters when their wells are sampled," said Mumford, "and they can call us if they have questions."
One of the residents who lives near the gas station is Borough Attorney Richard Clemack. He said the request that came to his house to test water in his well didn't specify the reason.
"We were not aware of MTBE," Clemack told a group of upset neighbors at a recent council meeting.
Looking to turn the experience into a lesson for government agencies to communicate more effectively with residents about potential health hazards, Mayor Allen Van Eck said "We need to get a plan in place so this never happens again."
Jan Barry's e-mail address is barry@northjersey.com

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