| Testing for groundwater pollution begins near Bay Pines plant |
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By MARK DOUGLAS | News Channel 8 TBO.com A team of workers from the Pinellas Health Department has started gathering irrigation well samples in the Bay Pines Estates neighborhood in response to a public health threat first identified nearly 18 years ago. They're looking for arsenic, cyanide and a dozen other poisonous chemicals that were spilled or dumped at a nearby industrial site formerly owned by APF Industries. Test results are expected in late December. APF, a metal plating company and materials testing laboratory, went bankrupt in 1990 but left contamination that authorities worry might have spread in the groundwater to nearby residential irrigation wells. Pinellas Health Department workers are gathering samples from 20 private irrigation wells, working under contract with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Seventeen of the wells are in Bay Pines Estates, a quarter-mile or so west of the former APF site; two are in the same industrial park as APF; and one is a community irrigation well to the east in an adult mobile home community known as The Harbor Lights Club. One of the wells belongs to Lee Harris, a Bay Pines Estates homeowner who has filed a class action lawsuit against the polluted site's current owner. Harris' lawsuit says the owner, a trust operated by Darrin and Collette Horst called 4800 LLC, had a duty to notify neighbors about the spreading underground chemicals and to "contain and cleanup those chemicals." Monday morning, Harris turned on his irrigation pump so health workers could obtain water samples to determine whether any of the pollutants from the APF site had reached the water table under his home about two blocks away. He said he's worried about the depreciation of his property if the tests come back positive for vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene, cyanide, lead, arsenic or any of the other 14 "contaminants of concern" on the state's testing list. "What's going to happen when we want to move to a different house?" Harris said. "How's that going to affect it and what questions are they going to ask when I'm showing the house and how am I going to answer them?" Danny Wendt, who owns Wendt's Welding just across the street from the former APF site, says he's also worried how the tests on his irrigation well will turn out. "Yes, I'm concerned," Wendt said. "I hope they can resolve the issue." Ron Noble serves as attorney for 4800 LLC and said "we anticipate and hope that the test results ... show there are not any impacts to offsite wells." Noble acknowledges that previous tests have shown that polluted groundwater from the APF property has already moved beyond the property boundaries, but he doesn't believe it is affecting surrounding residential areas. Reporter Mark Douglas can be reached at (727) 451-2333 |
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