Contaminated soil continues to haunt water project

MILLERTON — The soil that borders the town’s highway garage on South Center Street — a heap measuring roughly 4 feet high and 150 feet long — is contaminated. There’s no disputing the fact, according to Millerton Mayor John Scutieri.

“There’s no ‘possibility’ about it,� he said. “It is contaminated.�

The issue is how that soil impacts the new 10-inch water main that now sits underneath the soil, which serves as a big loop running through the village, with service lines feeding out onto the rest of the water district.

“If gasoline or petroleum is anywhere in the soil or water line, what are the standards of the Department of Health?� the mayor asked, wondering how far the contaminated soil is allowed to be from the water line. “We don’t know the answer to that yet. I will be in touch with the Department of Health to find out if the dirt around the pipes has to be removed again and refilled.�

Although he would have liked to have those answers earlier, he said they should be available by this week, as the holidays have slowed the lines of communication somewhat. Regardless of the results, Scutieri did want to reassure water district users that their water is not in danger of becoming contaminated.

“The new lines that were installed were all sanitized and pressure tested. There is no concern with the water in there now,� he said. “The concern is what will happen 50 years from now. Can the soil penetrate the pipe? Can it deteriorate the seams where the pipes are joined together over the passage of time?�

“The concern is that they’ll bury this for the next whatever years,� said resident and water customer Dave Shufelt. “If that soil contaminated the seals that attach the pipe with what could be affected by it, and if they got seepage, that could be dangerous. I don’t know enough about it, but I think they need to get the health department in there.�

That’s exactly what the mayor is doing. He’s been in close contact with the county’s Department of Health (DOH), as well as the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which determined the soil is contaminated with a petroleum-based product. The DEC was also the agency that gave the village the OK to finish the work on the water line.

It did, however, suggest the water be tested with the DOH; the  village is now waiting for those results. A certain level of contamination is permissible by the DOH, according to Scutieri — the question is if Millerton’s sample surpasses that level.

Responsibility for  the contamination and how to deal with it falls upon three entities: the village, the town and the engineers. The village owns the water system, the town owns the property and the engineers are administering the project.

“It’s a three-way effort to make this right,� Scutieri said. “We want to make sure when we’re done it’s the absolute perfect way.�

There is a cost to the project. Soil was removed from the site before the water line was installed and the soil was not replaced; instead, sand was used as fill for the water line. Roughly two dump trucks full of the extracted soil were then hauled to property owned by John Heck of Northeast Muffler, who thought he was getting clean fill for his site. Once crews realized there was an odor to the fill, and later that it was indeed contaminated, arrangements were made to have that soil removed (although that has yet to happen). To haul the contaminated soil to Albany, where it can be processed and the petroleum burned out of the dirt, there’s a price tag of $5,000 to $8,000.

The village has considered using excess funds, if available, from the Community Development Block Grant it received for the initial project. However, the mayor said the village would rather put any additional funds toward the South Center Street municipal parking lot project.

Some Village Board members have suggested because the contamination is from a gas leak generated in the town the town should be responsible for the cost of removing the soil. Additionally, the town just settled litigation favorably with the Azon Corp. and therefore has some funds it could dedicate to the contaminated soil’s cleanup. Scutieri added that he believes the two issues are “related� as they both deal with remediating contaminated sites, and that using funds from one to cleanup the other would be an appropriate option.

Meanwhile, there will be a meeting to address the issue, or in fact, may have been one already. The village is waiting to get its answers from the DOH first before scheduling that meeting and pursuing the matter further.

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