[CPEO-BIF] Havertown PCP and TCE sites, Pennsylvania

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

A History of The TCE, Superfund Site

Opinion by Dr. Michael H. Levin
Haverford-Havertown Patch (PA)
May 12, 2011

From 1947 - 1991 National Wood Preservers (NWP) operated a wood  
preservation facility at a site east of the gum factory site that  
Haverford acquired by condemnation through Eminent Domain. About nine  
(9) different chemical compounds were mixed with diesel oil and  
impregnated into wood in a pressurized charge vessel.

The preservatives themselves, as well as diesel oil, spread onto the  
soil and settled into the ground water beneath the site then flowing  
generally east with groundwater toward West Chester Pike in the  
valley of Naylor’s Run beneath about 77 houses in the vicinity of  
Rittenhouse Circle.

...

Now - nearly three decades - after the EPA began remedying the  
Havertown PCP Site, another site has slowly come into existence  
conterminously with the PCP Site at the very nearly the exact same  
location, only this site has not yet been approved, nor even  
nominated, as a Superfund Site but is known as the TCE Havertown Site  
for another principal chemical component, trichloroethylene ...

At the federalized Haverstown PCP site, EPA recently disclaimed  
responsibility for the presence of trichloroethylene which it states  
is not a wood preserver compound or for removing it from the water  
which carries it, although the agency will test for it beneath and in  
some houses above the Superfund Site. In the event it is found in air  
samples the Agency will supply a TCE vapor venting system, which  
operates similarly to a radon removal system, venting basement sub- 
slab gases before these enter the air within the house. Permanent  
maintenance and electrical operation of the system would be the  
homeowner’s responsibility.

...

For the entire column, see
http://haverford.patch.com/articles/a-history-of-the-tce-superfund-site

--

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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