CHEMTURA NOVEMBER 2012 PROGRESS REPORT

Well the pumping wells have again done their thing! Why if they can do it now were they totally unable for years at a time to maintain both the on and off site pumping rates their own modelling indicated was necessary? The next question of course is when is their pumping going to be back in the dumpster? And why? What excuse of the month will they come up with?

Table A.3 is titled "Supplementary Sample Analytical Results". It lists a variety of chemical detections found in the shallow aquifer pumping wells. Keep in mind that this Upper Aquifer pumping system has been in operation since 1997 ie. fifteen years. look at some of the concentrations found in UA500I namely :
Toluene 110,000 ppb.
2-MBT 12,000 "
Aniline 6,900 "
BT 240 "
Carboxin 18,000 "
Chlorobnzne 3,300 "

Clearly we have free phase LNAPL (light non aqueous phase liquid) present as indicated by the massive Toluene concentrations. This would be the never cleaned up LNAPL released from Building 15, decades ago. Chemtura insist that they clean up wastes (solid & liquid) when they come across them but clearly they've had to make serious attempts to avoid these wastes since we were advised of them seventten years ago.

Table C.2 deals with surface water detections of Uniroyal chemicals in the Canagagigue Creek that runs through their property. It also uses a statistical method to determine if there are significant increases in chemical concentrations downstream . ie. differences between upstream of their property and downstream which would indicate discharge from their shallow aquifer. What I do is simply look at the absolute difference between upstream and downstream results to tell me what at a minimum is discharging into the creek. This month the usual suspects have indeed been identified in the Canagagigue namely NDMA, NMOR and Toluene. Looking at the quantity of Toluene in the groundwater in the second paragraph certainly makes that understandable.

Overall the current pumping is up to standard but the overall "cleanup" remains horrendous. Promises have been made by Chemtura/CRA but it's hard to have confidence in a company who are long on promises and short on delivering.