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ANNETTE LEIN file photo

Water runs down from an underground spring on a hill forming a pond near Modock Road in Victor. By some accounts, New York is at the cutting edge on a hot-button environmental concern. Others say it was tardy and has years of work to do.

Vapor intrusion may be crucial test for DEC

Steve Orr
Staff writer

(December 16, 2007) — By some accounts, New York is at the cutting edge on a hot-button environmental concern. Others say the state was tardy and has years of work to do.

At issue is vapor intrusion, a phenomenon in which chemical vapors can rise from underground contamination and accumulate in buildings, putting occupants at risk.

Under the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s program, hundreds of sites around the state are under study for evidence of vapor intrusion.

To date, more than 1,200 homes or other buildings in New York have needed measures to alleviate toxic vapor intrusion. Nearly half are in Endicott, Broome County, where the vapor intrusion issue rose to prominence in 2003.

Six are in Victor, where the DEC continues to explore groundwater contamination found in 1990.

But the program, begun soon after the extent of problems in Endicott became known, remains a work in progress. Studies have been completed at only about 20 percent of the old waste disposal sites that New York set out to examine.

Hundreds more sites, including dozens in the Rochester area, await a DEC assessment to determine whether building occupants have anything to fear from below-ground vapors.

Those efforts should have begun sooner, some say.

“It’s really just a huge mistake on the agency’s part,” said Anne Rabe, a longtime environmental activist who is a campaign coordinator for the Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

“Under Governor (George) Pataki, there was a political determination to cut back on looking at off-site contamination. It was a more industry-friendly program. They cut corners, and they created these Endicott sites — by not investigating vapor intrusion.”

Denise Sheehan, the DEC commissioner in the last two years of the Pataki administration, said experts in New York and elsewhere did not recognize the threat posed by toxic vapors until a few years ago. “You have to respond to the science. Over the years, the science has changed,” she said.

Current DEC commissioner Pete Grannis, appointed in April by first-year Gov. Eliot Spitzer, said he is not sure the agency was late getting to the issue.

“Should they have been more aggressive sooner? Possibly,” said Grannis, who dealt with environmental issues as a member of the state Assembly. “I’m a big believer in us being ahead of the curve, (but) I don’t think anybody truly understood the breadth of and the concerns about vapor intrusion.”

Today, he said, the DEC has “the most far-reaching and aggressive vapor intrusion investigative program in the country.”

Lenny Siegel, an environmental activist in California who advises groups about vapor intrusion, praised New York’s program as “leading edge” at a recent public forum in Albany.

Issue developed slowly

For years, experts in New York and elsewhere had known that vapors from chemicals in the soil or groundwater could infiltrate buildings. Public health concerns at Love Canal in Niagara County in the late 1970s were based partly on fear of toxic vapors, and neighborhoods around Kodak Park in Rochester had extensive vapor-intrusion testing in the late 1980s.

During the 1990s, however, vapor intrusion remained a low-profile concern at New York toxic spill and dump sites.

That ended around 1999, when officials at the DEC and the state Department of Health took note of new findings in other states. This research held that vapors, especially from the industrial solvent trichloroethene, or TCE, were much more likely to rise through soil than had been thought. Research also showed that the method used to evaluate sites for vapor intrusion potential was inaccurate.

TCE, once widely used for metal degreasing and other purposes, may cause cancer and other health problems in people exposed to high-enough doses.

The vapor intrusion issue hit the headlines in New York in February 2003, when officials announced that testing had found TCE vapors seeping into the basements of homes and commercial buildings in Endicott from spills at a former IBM Corp. facility.

Later in 2003, the DEC and Health Department launched their major program to look for vapor intrusion at waste disposal sites, including 421 older sites where cleanup decisions had already been made.

DEC officials began poring through records of older waste sites, some of them uncovered two decades ago, to assess the possibility of vapor intrusion. Field testing often followed.

Evaluations have been completed at 89, or 21 percent, of the 421 older sites, according to a summary provided by the DEC Thursday. Work is under way at 66 percent of the sites and hasn’t started at 13 percent.

Findings at more than 20 of the sites led to installation of ventilation systems to collect vapors from below basement slabs before they can enter the buildings.

Decisions about ventilation systems are based largely on field testing, which New York relies on more than some states. Vapor tests are done beneath the building foundation, in the basement and on the first floor.

In total, work to address vapor intrusion has been done at 1,240 structures in New York, according to a recent Health Department summary. Sub-basement ventilation systems have been installed at 972 homes or other residential buildings and at 32 commercial structures.

A first round of vapor testing was completed this fall at a Gates neighborhood where groundwater is contaminated with trichloroethene. The TCE came from a leaking storage tank discovered at a factory two decades ago.

Six homes in the neighborhood required ventilation systems, the DEC concluded, and more testing is planned.

“I’m not unduly worried,” said Bill Winchell, who had nothing but praise for the state workers who plan to install a ventilation system under his basement.

“Having been here for 12 years, I never detected anything unusual, so it all came as a surprise that there’s possibly a problem. That’s what they’re doing — they’re saying there’s a remote possibility there’s a problem, so let’s fix it.”

SORR@DemocratandChronicle.com