"Tainted water probe widens in Plumstead"

By Christopher Ruvo, Intelligencer, July 30, 2010:

At least four homes have wells that are contaminated, and officials are concerned more wells might have been affected.


The Department of Environmental Protection believes more private wells that provide water to homes in Plumstead need to be tested for contamination after tests showed at least four homes have tainted water and two additional residents reported possible pollutants in their drinking supply.

Folks in homes with fouled wells suspect the contamination occurred when pollutants traveled in runoff water from a neighboring industrial building that was destroyed by fire on June 29.

DEP says it's too soon to say how the infiltration happened, but officials are concerned that more wells in the area might be affected.

"We will be getting more involved with coordinating sampling water from wells over a wider radius," said DEP spokeswoman Deborah Fries.

How many wells might be at risk and over how large an area testing will occur remains to be seen.

"We want to delineate the plume of contamination that may exist in the groundwater and you do that by sampling in a widening radius until you find private wells that are not impacted," said Fries.

So far, four homes on Ann Drive, just off Stump Road near the Plumstead Municipal Building, tested positive for E. coli and total coliform and at least one private well has unsafe levels of a metal used in fire retardants and a cancer-causing chemical found in oil.

Full test results on all homes are not back yet, and two additional residences, both on Stump Road, might have affected water, said Fries. The two wells on Stump Road will be tested, she said.

While the contamination probe is poised to broaden, officials are not yet sure who will test the wells.

DEP could perform the tests or could have Dennis Rice, owner of the industrial building that was destroyed, hire a private consultant to take care of the work.

Fries said Rice has already agreed to provide bottled water to residents with affected wells and to have two ponds at the industrial facility on the 5000 block of Stump Road tested for contaminants.

Nonetheless, officials say that does not mean they have concluded that the well water contamination resulted from the fire at Rice's building.

"We do not have enough data at this time to attribute the contamination in the wells to the June 29, 2010, fire," said Fries.

Benzene and antimony were among the pollutants found in the drinking water at the Ann Drive home of . . . [one resident, who] says the water at his home turned nasty within a day of the fire. He believes runoff water from the firefighting effort and subsequent rains carried pollutants from the industrial site to his well, which continues to send odorous, foaming, discolored water out of his taps.

Health officials initially said wells and waterways were not contaminated, but . . . [he] didn't buy it.

"It's taken a month for them to see what we've said all along," he said. "What took so long?"

Exposure to unsafe levels of benzene can lead to cancer, anemia, excessive bleeding and weaken the immune system. Antimony oxide is added to textiles to prevent them catching fire.

Antimony, a metal, is often mixed with alloys and used in solder, sheet metal and more.

It took an estimated 3 million gallons of water to put out the fire that destroyed Rice's building. The blaze continued to flare up over the course of about a week and firefighters were at the scene time and again to extinguish the hot spots.

The Bucks County Fire Marshal's Office ruled the cause of the fire could not be determined because the damage was too extensive. Still, there were indications that the blaze began with an electrical issue.