Navy waited too long before telling DEC about toxic plume near Bethpage well, state says

The state Department of Environmental Conservation wrote a strongly worded letter to the Navy this month, criticizing the military branch for waiting months before formally informing state authorities about elevated levels of a potential carcinogen it found underground near a public-supply well in Bethpage.

In the Nov. 5 letter, Robert Schick, director of the DEC's Division of Environmental Remediation, wrote that the state agency was "somewhat surprised" by the high levels of trichloroethylene the Navy found hundreds of feet underground in a monitoring well it drilled near a public-supply well, north of Hempstead Turnpike.

While the Navy first discovered levels of the solvent, also known as TCE, as high as 4,600 parts per billion in the monitoring well in March, the DEC said the branch didn't formally inform the state agency of the results until October -- a delay Schick called "unacceptable."

"We are very concerned that the Navy did not immediately bring this to our attention rather than wait until October, when the initial sampling in March identified the problem and the levels were then confirmed by the June sampling," the letter read. However, a Navy document on the contamination issued this month indicates the branch informed the DEC of the findings in August.

The Navy will be required to give a plan to the DEC by early January outlining its plans to collect and treat the groundwater to contain the hot spot. It also will be required to hold monthly conference calls with the DEC to update the state agency on its progress, Schick wrote.

TCE, an industrial solvent considered a potential carcinogen, was used at the former defense plant in Bethpage that once housed Northrop Grumman and Navy operations.

The Navy has been monitoring the groundwater and treating it to remove the solvent.

Tom Kreidel, spokesman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Mid-Atlantic, the entity overseeing the Navy's cleanup in Bethpage, declined to comment specifically on the DEC's letter, saying the agency was "still working to answer the DEC's concerns."

But, he said, "We are continuing to study the magnitude of the issue, including the 'hot spot' contamination to determine what the correct response will be."

The Navy also is drilling more borings and monitoring wells in an effort to determine the correct response, Kreidel said.

The elevated TCE levels were found about 1,700 feet from the Bethpage Water District's deepest active public-supply well -- a fact that has alarmed the district's representatives and engineers. The district also has a shallower well in the vicinity.

Michael Boufis, superintendent of the water district, said in a statement that the DEC's action, which he called "long overdue," was "an important step forward in containing deeper levels of contaminants."

The 33,000-customer district treats drinking water through a series of systems to rid it of contaminants, such as TCE, before it is delivered to the public. The federal and state drinking-water standard for TCE is 5 parts per billion, but Bethpage treats the water to the point where TCE levels are undetectable, according to the district's engineering firm.

There are two known plumes of contamination emanating from the Grumman Naval site -- a shallow plume found in 1986 and a deeper one found 23 years later under Bethpage Community Park, on a site where Grumman had legally dumped chemicals decades ago.

The TCE findings were discussed publicly at a community meeting in Bethpage held by the Navy earlier this month.

Jeanne O'Connor, co-founder of the Bethpage Cancer Project, a community group organized around concerns about illnesses and the underground contamination, said she hadn't been expecting the contamination to be so high in that area of Bethpage.

"It was shocking to see how high the levels were," she said.

But O'Connor called the DEC's letter "good news."

"It's nice to see they're following up on this and taking more stringent measures," she said. "We want to see as many resources as possible thrown at this."