AN EPIPHANY MOMENT: COULD WE HAVE VAPOUR INTRUSION IN ELMIRA?

In the last year and a half plus I've written articles and presented them at public CPAC meetings as well as here in the Elmira Advocate (since last May), dealing with "other" sources of contamination to the Municipal Aquifer. For many years my understanding was that the Municipal Aquifers flowed mostly southerly in Elmira and the Upper Aquifer (UA) flowed to and discharged into Canagagigue Creek. Although technically correct what has since become clearer is that the UA has a groundwater divide. In other words as the surface of the ground dips and slopes towards the creek so does the underlying UA. Further away from the creek the UA also flows in a southerly direction as does the deeper aquifers. The significance is that if Varnicolor or Borg or any other sources south of Uniroyal (Chemtura) have contaminated the deeper Municipal Aquifer (MU) they've firstly contaminated the shallower UA. This shallow contamination with solvents of many kinds is what can possibly cause vapour intrusion into the basements of homes or businesses.

Cambridge literally has several hundred homes with this problem, all downgradient in the shallow aquifer (UA). There the culprit is Trichloroethylene (TCE) which is a very volatile solvent. Here we did have TCE in the groundwater courtesy of Varnicolor Chemical. Whether all the other solvents from Varnicolor or possibly Borg could volatolize into a gas and then move through the soil into basements would need to be tested. The fact is that we have many shallow wells south of Uniroyal and Varnicolor but they are NOT routinely tested. I've recently examined the Annual Monitoring Reports for 1996 (A.M.R. #15), 2000 (#19) and 2009 (#28). None of these have had the shallow wells from Howard Ave. south or southwest tested.

My conclusion is that when we finally get around to this testing, if indeed there are solvents in the shallow aquifer, then the obvious next step is to take air/gas readings in the basements of businesses and houses nearby. Maybe we'll get lucky, maybe not.