| Whitewater family worried about drinking water |
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GazetteXtra.com By KAYLA BUNGE Monday, Dec. 28, 2009 This former gas station on S. Janesville St. in Whitewater is allegedly the cause of nearby groundwater pollution. WHITEWATER — The Channing family doesn’t drink the water at their house. They still cook with it. They still bathe in it. But they don’t dare drink it. Joe and Kathy Channing, 531 S. Clark St., learned in spring that leaking tanks at an old gas station up the street had contaminated their groundwater. But the couple was informed the problem was going away and that the state needed to close the case. They were puzzled: Why hadn’t anyone told them the water they had been using was contaminated with an unsafe amount of benzene, a carcinogen, for the 10 years since the gas station closed—or longer? “We have so many questions,” Kathy said. “But the part that gets me is if they would have told us, we would have had the opportunity to move.” The Channings, who moved into their house in 1983, are concerned about their long-term health and well being as a result of exposure to benzene. They also are concerned about the apparent secrecy with which state officials have handled the case. “I don’t know what’s true,” Kathy said. “I don’t know what to be afraid of. What are we supposed to do? We live here. We’re caught.” ‘Nobody told us’ The Channings received a letter stating groundwater contamination that originated at the former Five Points One Stop gas station at 503 S. Janesville St. had migrated onto their property. The letter said the “groundwater contaminant plume,” or area of polluted groundwater, was receding and would continue to degrade over time. It also said the state Department of Natural Resources was satisfied with cleanup at the site and wanted to close the case. Things didn’t seem right from the get-go, Kathy said. “I read through it and thought, ‘This is wrong,’” she said. The letter arrived via certified mail April 16, 2009, but it was dated March 16. It was typed strangely, like it was supposed to be printed on letterhead even though the paper was plain. It was signed by Elizabeth Meyer, the wife of the former gas station owner, Stan Meyer. Kathy called a DNR official whose address and phone number were listed in the letter. The official said he was going to close the case, so Kathy called other DNR officials. They routinely sent her back to the man she originally contacted. Still, she didn’t stop trying to get answers. “I started calling every office I could,” she said. “I didn’t care who I was talking to, I was just begging for help.” Kathy also started doing some research. She consulted a family friend, who is a hydrogeologist and has knowledge of groundwater contamination cases. Kathy believes the state has insufficient information to close the case. “These people think we’re idiots,” she said. The Five Points One Stop opened in 1932. It went out of business in the late 1990s, when Stan Meyer became ill. The gas pumps were removed in July 1998 and the gas tanks were removed in January 2000. “We didn’t think anything of it,” Kathy said of the gas station closing. “I thought it was because (the owner) was sick … I didn’t think anything about them closing because (the groundwater) was contaminated. Nobody told us.” An environmental consultant in 1999 installed several monitoring wells and in 2003 conducted some cleanup at the site, excavating about 270 tons of contaminated soil, according to a bid request sent out by the Petroleum Environmental Cleanup Fund Award Bureau. The bureau is a division of the Department of Commerce, which handles gas station rehabilitation and cleanup. In late 2001, benzene concentration near the gas station site was 1,440 parts per billion. By late 2008, it was 320 ppb, according to a chart from the consultant, which monitored the area using the wells. Kathy believes the DNR cannot know for certain the contamination is dissipating—at least not near her home. The data the DNR has is outdated, she said. The monitoring wells were broken in 2006, when Clark Street was reconstructed, and they never were replaced, she said. The last known benzene concentration near the Channings’ house was 776 ppb in late 2001. Kathy believes even if the contamination is going away, she and her neighbors should have been warned about it from the start. ‘Not usually a risk’ John Feeney, a hydrogeologist at the DNR who handled the Five Points case, said the state department usually only notifies people of groundwater contamination if it poses a health risk. “Our procedure is not to go around knocking on doors to tell people there’s contamination at a gas station near their house,” he said. “If there’s a health problem we would do that, but in this case, we didn’t think there was a health problem.” Feeney said environmental officials did not know until recently that chemical vapors at low concentrations were a “pathway for concern.” But, he said, officials still are not as concerned about petroleum chemical vapors at low concentrations because they do not pose a real risk until they are at a high enough level to produce an odor of gas. “If there are no odor complaints, there’s not usually a risk,” he said. Feeney said the DNR never received complaints from people in the Five Points neighborhood about odor. Kathy told officials she never noticed a smell of petroleum near her house but was concerned the vapors could come up through the floorboards of her house. (The Channings’ house does not have a basement, only a crawlspace beneath the living room. Under the floorboards is dirt.) Feeney said officials did not believe there was a risk to indoor air based on the data they had regarding the concentration of contamination in the groundwater. But Kathy asked the state health department to test the air in the house anyway. Tests of the air in the crawlspace under the Channings’ house revealed “no concentration of concern,” he said. The DNR on Nov. 19 closed the Five Points case. “The concentrations of contaminant showed a clear decreasing trend,” Feeney said. “And natural attenuation will remediate any residual contamination in a reasonable amount of time.” The houses in the Five Points neighborhood now are listed in a database of closed environmental remediation sites, which essentially lets future property owners and construction companies know there might still be some contamination in the area and that they must take caution in drilling wells or handling soil. Kathy Channing continues her crusade. She’s contacted federal environmental officials for help. She’s even contacted a lawyer for advice. But she’s been hesitant to ask her neighbors about the issue because she doesn’t want to “scare” them. “The people around here … deserve to be told the truth,” she said. “I don’t think that people should be alerted 10 years later that … their investments (homes) are gone because of a lie. I’m baffled by it. “I want them (state environmental officials) to come out with the truth.” Published at: http://www.GazetteXtra.com/news/2009/dec/28/whitewater-family-worried-about-drinking-water/ |
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