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RADIOACTIVE WATER SPARKING FEARS IN CAMDEN COUNTY
Date: 020405
From: http://www.courierpostonline.com/
By Lawrence Hajna, Courier-Post Staff, April 5, 2002
The Camden County freeholder board will ask a federal court to temporarily block a plan that would allow water tainted with low levels of radiation from a Gloucester Township Superfund site to travel through county sewer mains.
Freeholder-Director Jeffrey Nash on Thursday said there is a "groundswell of concern" among officials and residents along the proposed route and hopes public meetings can be held to discuss the plan in more detail.
"This may be a safe plan and very responsible, but I feel uncomfortable, based on the information I have, bringing the water through sewer lines under the county," Nash said. "The worst thing you can do is something the public doesn't understand."
The freeholders will likely file a motion to intervene in U.S. District Court in Camden next week. The motion will seek to hold up the transfer of water under the GEMS Landfill to the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority plant in Camden.
The CCMUA planned to begin discharging the water into the Delaware River this summer, after it has been significantly diluted by other effluent in its sewer system. The water would travel via mains under Gloucester Township, Runnemede, Bellmawr, Mount Ephraim, Gloucester City and Camden.
In addition to industrial chemicals, the water contains low levels of radium and uranium that federal officials say is likely caused by sand or gravel under the landfill that naturally contain radioactive elements. The CCMUA treatment plant can remove industrial chemicals from effluent, but is not equipped to treat water contaminated with radiation.
Bellmawr Mayor Frank Filipek Sr. said residents "are very nervous. They don't know what's coming through the town. They're just afraid it's radioactive and it could harm them."
That's not the case, according to CCMUA officials who agreed to take the water at the request of the state Department of Environmental Protection. The CCMUA has stressed that the public will be shielded from radiation by 10 to 20 feet of soil between the sewer mains and the land surface.
DEP spokeswoman Mary Helen Cervantes said, "We definitely support giving the public an opportunity to have input on this."
Filipek and Bellmawr sewer director George Coleman raised questions about the risk of radiation contamination if a spill ever occurred from the main. They also questioned whether radiation could escape from vents along the route.
Filipek criticized the CCMUA, saying it failed to alert the public to its plan. The CCMUA placed a legal notice in the March 7 edition of the Courier-Post that solicited written public comments on a permit to allow the operation as part of the GEMS cleanup. The cleanup is being funded by a trust made up of about 300 past users of the former municipal landfill. An attorney for the trust did not return a call Thursday.
A story and editorial about the proposal have appeared in the Courier-Post within the past week. "If we didn't read (the story) in the paper, we couldn't have even known this was going to happen," Filipek said.
Freeholder-director Nash defended the CCMUA, saying it has done a "good job" handling the situation. But Sharon Finlayson, chairwoman of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, believes the CCMUA did not want the public to know about the plan.
"They had to know that this was going to be an enormous issue and would have great impact. The fact that they did not hold a public hearing or have any public outreach says to me that they did not want public discussion," she said. CCMUA deputy director Andrew Kricun defended the plan Thursday, saying it's much better than letting polluted groundwater remain beneath the landfill. "I expected people would see the (legal) notice, and I was hoping that it was written clearly enough that they would see that this is not a problem, that it's actually a good thing," Kricun said.
The CCMUA says millions of gallons of effluent from other points in its system will significantly dilute water from GEMS so that it will not pose a threat to the public, its workers or the environment.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency approved the plan, which is believed to be the first of its kind in New Jersey. The plan is needed to halt the migration off the GEMS site of water contaminated by industrial chemicals that could result in contamination of drinking water supplies in the future.
EPA Superfund section chief Bob McKnight said wastewater would be checked for radiation at 12 locations between GEMS and the sewage treatment plant.
Copyright 2002 Courier-Post
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