NORWICH – The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is currently performing more soil tests on the ground near Lee Avenue where a chemical spill took place in the mid 1990s.
URS Engineering Corporation, sub-contracted by the DEC, has hired Nature’s Way Environmental to perform soil borings and install monitoring wells in the neighborhood near the railroad and east of a factory that was previously home to Gee Wiliker’s Kid’s Clothing. The building now houses The Label Gallery.
The company will be continuing previous testing to determine if there are heightened levels of trichlorethylene in the area. TCE has been used as a metal cleaning solvent, a paint stripper and an adhesive solvent.
“URS is currently performing soil borings and installing monitoring wells to determine the extent and direction of the contamination,” said Diane Carlton, a media relations representative at the DEC.
Several monitoring wells were installed in the three-acre site area during previous rounds of testing. Nine wells will be put in at this time, according to Bob Henchel of URS, as well as several in the neighborhood areas east of the railroad track spill location.
According to Henchel and Carlton, the testing should be finished within the next week, but it will be at least one month before the data is received and another month before the results are compiled for the report.
Neither the DEC nor the engineering company could say exactly where the wells were being installed, but Nature’s Way has been seen drilling wells on Lee Avenue and on Waite Street.
Prolonged exposure to TCE at high levels can have negative affects on the central nervous system. However, the levels of TCE found near the site previously were found to be much lower than those that would cause such problems. There has been no determination of adverse effects from exposure to low levels of the contaminant.
More information on the chemical spill and mitigation actions can be found at the Guernsey Memorial Library.