OLEAN — Industrial contamination from decades ago has been found in a small section of east Olean once thought to have been sufficiently cleansed of hazardous, cancer-causing substances.
Late Wednesday afternoon, officials with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced recent tests to the ground underneath an Alcas Cutlery Corp. manufacturing facility showed the presence of harmful substances found in paint, solvents, automotive products and disinfectants, among others. The EPA is proposing an update to the 31-year-old plan to clean the 1.5-square-mile section of the Olean Well Field Superfund Site where Alcas is located.
According to a copy of the update posted online, environmental authorities plan to inject chemicals into the soil to break down contaminants found in the groundwater into less harmful compounds, such as water and carbon dioxide. Along the Alcas facility’s southern portion, the EPA plans to add nonhazardous compounds into the groundwater, such as lactate and vegetable oil, to help speed up the breakdownA disruptive discharge through insulation. If plain dielectricThe insulating material between the plates of the capacitor. The material is chosen for its ability to permit electrostatic attraction and repulsion to take place across it. The material will have the property that energy required to establish an electric field is recoverable in whole or in part, as electric energy. In other words, a good dielectric material is a poor conductor of electricity while being an effective supporter of electrostatic fields. films are used, this is usually catastrophic. If metallized films are used, self-healing should maintain the capacitor's integrity. of contaminants. Environmental authorities will then routinely testtest is test groundwater for contamination. Should the proposed environmental remediation method be found ineffective, the EPA will excavate the contaminated soil.
The EPA is hosting a public meeting on the proposed cleanup at 7 p.m. Aug. 5 at Jamestown Community College’s CUTCO Theater in Olean.
Mayor Bill Aiello said he received a copy of the EPA’s report on the newly discovered contamination and its proposed remediation.
“I really hope that people who are concerned about this turn out for this public hearing and make their opinion known,” he said. “I know the EPA has been monitoring that area for a while now.”
The mayor said he did speak with Mary George, the city’s Community Development coordinator, who has been in contact with the EPA regularly about the well field cleanup.
“She told me that there is no threat to drinking water because there was work previously to connect houses in that area up to city water lines,” he said.
The Times Herald was unable to reach an EPA spokesperson by press time.
The well field is not unlike the 500 acres of brownfields in north Olean where industrial contamination dating back to the 1800s has impeded redevelopment
The area includes 53 water wells, homes and manufacturing facilities. The Allegheny River and Olean and Haskell creeks also flow through the site.
In 1981, local and environmental authorities found several chemicals — primarily trichloroethylene (TCE), a substance used as an industrial degreaser — contaminating the ground and water within the site. An EPA study identified four properties — including those owned by AVX, Alcas, the former McGraw Edison now Cooper Industries Inc. and the former Loohn’s Dry Cleaners and Launderers property.
Environmental authorities put the 1.5 square-mile site, which spanned the eastern section of the city into the town of Olean, into a superfund in 1983. The classification meant that those found responsible for the contamination would pay to have the land and groundwater cleansed of hazardous substances.
During the years that followed, AVX, Cooper and Alcas took action to remove contamination from their sections of the well field area.
