Officials tour Nassau Superfund sites

Federal, state and local officials Monday toured two Nassau sites representing opposite ends of the federal Superfund law: one that was removed from the list of polluted locations and another that has about 10 to 15 years of cleanup to go.

Both sites threatened to contaminate groundwater, a source of drinking water on Long Island. Contaminated water puts the health of residents at risk, said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), whose district includes seven Superfund sites.

"Our drinking water is one of our best assets and we have to make sure it stays clean," she said, standing in front of a pumping station near Roosevelt Field mall in East Garden City that opened in December to treat groundwater contamination.

Tests since the 1970s at the site -- an aviation field between 1921 and 1951 and later home to the mall -- found high levels of tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene, chemical solvents that have been linked to cancer in high exposures.

"The sad thing is there are no shortages of Superfund sites in the United States and here in New York," said Judith A. Enck, administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2, which includes New York. "This is one of many, many toxic sites on Long Island."

The Superfund program, enacted in 1980, investigates and cleans contaminated and abandoned hazardous sites. New York has 107 such sites, second only to New Jersey with more than 130. A third of New York's Superfund sites are on Long Island, with 18 in Nassau County and 16 in Suffolk County, EPA officials said.

As of March 15, 28 sites in New York and 359 nationally had been deleted from the Superfund priority list. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority District 2 police building and parking lot in Hempstead -- the other site officials toured Monday -- is one of them.

The former home of Pasley Solvents and Chemicals Inc. on Commercial Avenue stored oils, solvents and chemicals in above-ground tanks.

"We think there was a lot of spilling," EPA project manager Sherrel Henry said.

Operations closed in 1982 and, in 1997, federal officials installed a series of extraction and air injection wells to evaporate the pollution. The cleaned site was taken off the Superfund list in September.