Cleanup action to begin at nearby ‘Superfund’ site

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation recently announced the beginning of remedial actions to address contaminated soil around the former C&D Power Systems site located at 403 Route 209 in Deerpark.

The site is listed as a “class 2” location in the NYS Registry of Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Sites, meaning it contained a “significant threat to public health or the environment,” requiring remediation work. The cleanup will focus on contamination in the soil and sediment. This work is expected to begin this month, and last for about a year, at an estimated cost of $9,390,575, per the DEC.

Remediation work will require the excavation of lagoon soils containing the chemical PCB, otherwise known as polychlorinated biphenyl, at more than 50 parts per million (ppm). In addition to PCBs, the site has been found to contain metals such as lead and cadmium. The contaminated soil will then be removed and disposed of off-site. Additional excavation work will also be performed to stabilize and contain what the DEC describes as “on-site soils exceeding a commercial use standard,” as well as floodplain and tributary sediments “exceeding unrestricted use standards for beneficial re-use onsite.” The work will include the restoration of tributary and nearby wetland areas to unrestricted use, as well as the installation of an engineered cover system to support commercial use of the site.

The DEC also shared the history of the site, and how it earned superfund status. From 1959 to about 1970, the facility was owned and operated by the Empire Tube Company, which made black and white television tubes. Hydrofluoric acid was used in the manufacturing process to remove carbon and potassium silicate from the inside of the tubes. During this period, industrial wastewater was discharged to a lagoon adjacent to the northeastern corner of the plant building. After that C&D Technologies Incorporated operated at the facility, manufacturing industrial lead batteries from the mid-1970s to 2006. From the mid-1970s until around 1982, C&D reportedly discharged “non-contact cooling water” into the lagoon.

Additional details regarding this project and the DEC remediation plan can be found on the DEC website: dec.ny.gov/data/DecDocs/336001.