EPA gives update on White Swan Superfund work

WALL TOWNSHIP — The White Swan Cleaners Superfund site was the subject of a work update presentation from members of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last Tuesday night, Sept. 17 at township hall.  The old dry-cleaning shop was located near Route 35 and Sea Girt Avenue, behind a currently existing Bank of America ATM.

White Swan Cleaners has been determined to be a source of area-wide volatile organic compound (VOC) contamination in soil and in groundwater. Contaminated groundwater extends from the general area of Sea Girt Avenue and Route 35 in an eastward direction to the Atlantic Ocean, and extends as far north as Hannabrand Brook and Wreck Pond and as far south as Judas Creek and Stockton Lake, according to the EPA.

EPA representatives Mazeeda Khan, Olivia Cappo and Jonathan Gorin described the remedial cleanup plan for groundwater extraction treatment and gave progress updates on the work that started in April of last year.

“The site was initiated because two independent dry cleaners (the other one being the Sun Cleaners site at the Manasquan Circle) contributed to the contamination of dry cleanup solvent PCE,” Khan said.

The contamination affected both the groundwater and the soil in the area. The EPA’s initial sampling of the area at the White Swan cleaners site revealed a VOC contamination level of 75,000 parts per billion (PBE) PCE. Khan said last Tuesday that the VOC number has since decreased to approximately 800. In August of 2018, over 7,000 tons of soil was removed and disposed of offsite from the White Swan location.

Khan also reported that the EPA has a sub slab depressurization system in homes. EPA installed 40 soil depressurized systems and 49 vapor intrusion long-term monitoring homes that were labeled for continued assessment.

She said of the long-term monitoring properties, “Those are properties we discovered are close to a certain criteria that the EPA has set…and yearly, we go into those homes and monitor them.”

EPA is currently doing attenuation, or reduction, of water from roughly 60 locations around the White Swan site, testing the contaminates. Once the EPA has treated the highest contaminated areas, natural attenuation of the soil and sand will essentially clean up the rest of the groundwater system, Khan said.

Nobody in the community is currently using groundwater for drinking purposes, leaving little risk from ingesting the contamination that EPA is finding in the groundwater, Khan said; the only other way that one could be potentially exposed is through vapors.

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