[CPEO-BIF] Five-Year Review in Woburn, Massachusetts

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

EPA provides details for neighborhood water testing


By Linda Kush
GateHouse News Service/Woburn Advocate
January 27, 2011

Woburn, MA - Another brewing snowstorm couldn't keep 30 people away from 
Woburn City Hall Jan. 26 for a meeting with the Environmental Protection 
Agency. The subject was a new round of air and water testing in the 
Dewey and Olympia Avenues Neighborhood.

...

The tests grew out of a Superfund site safety review that the EPA 
performs every five years. Last summer, EPA officials installed 14 new 
monitoring wells in addition to more than a dozen already on the site to 
measure levels of PCE in the groundwater. Tests showed that two 
purification systems were doing a good job: PCE levels have dropped 
considerably over 20 years. But they still exceeded the federal limit 
for drinking water, 5 parts per billion, in 16 wells.

The residents don't drink water from the site, but there is a danger 
that PCE could enter their homes as vapor through the foundation. 
Certain volatile chemicals migrate from the water table, through the 
soil and into the air where the sun breaks them down. But they tend to 
build up under foundations until they eventually leach through and are 
trapped in the enclosed building.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.wickedlocal.com/woburn/features/x536396405/EPA-provides-details-for-neighborhood-water-testing

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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