SOURCE:
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/bethpage-park-contamination-northrop-grumman-jrogxmr9
By Joseph Ostapiuk - December 13, 2024
State officials have called on Northrop Grumman to propose a more stringent plan to investigate the extent of contaminated soil at Bethpage Community Park, the former dumping grounds of Grumman Aerospace.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation action comes weeks after the agency accused the Town of Oyster Bay of causing delays to the prolonged cleanup.
At issue is Northrop Grumman's proposal to search for contaminants in the soil at the park where 22 chemical drums were uncovered earlier this year.
Oyster Bay and Northrop Grumman are at odds over the scope and size of the plan to ultimately remove PCBs — toxic human-made chemicals — from the 18-acre property. The town is pushing for a more extensive cleanup, which the DEC now appears more open to exploring. Northrop Grumman's goals are more closely aligned with a 2013 agreement to remediate the park, which, DEC officials said, set a standard used for park cleanups across New York.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
In a letter to Northrop Grumman, the DEC said the company needed to make "enhancements" to its soil sampling plan to yield "more substantial progress" in the remediation of Bethpage Community Park.
DEC officials urged Northrop Grumman to include an option for achieving "unrestricted use," or the highest level of cleanup at the park.
In September, the DEC had accused the Town of Oyster Bay, and not Grumman, of causing delays to the cleanup plan.
Before it can remove the contaminants, Northrop Grumman contractors must test the soil to determine their prevalence. The company's proposal fell short because it did not include an option for achieving the highest level of cleanup, known as unrestricted use, the DEC wrote in a Nov. 27 letter to the company. Also, the DEC said, the proposal should better probe what metals may be mixed in the soil, particularly hexavalent chromium.
Oyster Bay and Northrop Grumman must agree on a removal plan and submit it to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for approval, according to the DEC.
Northrop Grumman is the corporate successor to Grumman Aerospace, which from the 1940s to the 1990s manufactured aircraft and spacecraft on a 600-acre property in Bethpage. The company disposed of solvent-soaked rags and discharged toxic wastewater sludge on what is now the park grounds, contributing to a vast groundwater plume that continues to move south on Long Island.
The park’s former ballfield is on land Grumman donated to Oyster Bay Town in 1962. Officials discovered contamination at the site and closed it in May 2002. It has been closed to the public ever since.
The DEC's letter represents a shift in the agency's approach to moving forward with the park cleanup, experts and town officials said.
"The fact that the DEC changed its position is somewhat surprising because they stuck with the old position for so very long," Sarah Meyland, a retired NYIT professor who taught environmental technology and remediation, said. The DEC "finally shifting to a more publicly acceptable solution to that site is both good news and an indication that they have relented to the demand to do the right thing."
Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Farmingdale nonprofit Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said Northrop Grumman "needs to be pushed as far as possible" to clean the park.
There is "no reason for the DEC to capitulate on this and allow a substandard remediation," she added.
Northrop Grumman did not respond to requests for comment about the DEC's letter.
2013 agreement
In a statement, Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino said: “We’re encouraged by the DEC's acknowledgment that Grumman must conduct further investigation and sampling to support a comprehensive cleanup that enables the unrestricted use of Bethpage Community Park.”
The DEC recently had sided with Northrop Grumman in its dispute with the Town of Oyster Bay.
In September, the DEC accused Oyster Bay of delaying the park cleanup and refusing to negotiate, Newsday has reported. Oyster Bay has wanted Northrop Grumman to expand the scope of the contamination investigation, including in areas outside the park's ballfield.
The cleanup was planned in 2013, more than a decade before contractors detected buried concrete-encased drums this past spring. Even before the drums were discovered, Oyster Bay was advocating for a level of cleanup necessary "if the park were to be used for agricultural purposes to grow food for human consumption," interim Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Sean Mahar wrote to town officials in September.
At the time, Mahar said the town's requests for a greater level of cleanup were "well beyond what is necessary to protect public health and environment in a public park."
But in the Nov. 27 letter, the DEC said it had “anticipated receiving a more robust sampling plan” from Northrop Grumman. Sarah Johnston, a project manager for the agency, said the DEC "believes that enhancements to the sampling plan are necessary."
She called on Northrop Grumman to investigate the extent of the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, a group of compounds commonly used in the manufacturing of metals and stainless steel, according to the National Cancer Institute. Grumman used hexavalent chromium in its old manufacturing facility and disposed of it in Bethpage.
Saladino said the DEC's recent letter represents an "enormous shift" in the discussion around cleaning the park to the level of unrestricted use.
The point of soil sampling is to provide "a clear picture of how widespread the dumping and the contaminants are. It gives us a clear picture of how deep they are," Saladino said in an interview. "The DEC is seeing things the way we have seen them."
The DEC said in a statement that it is "working in close coordination with the town of Oyster Bay and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency" to better understand the contamination at the park "so that a PCB excavation plan can be developed by Northrop Grumman and the town."
Delays, legal battles
In 2013, the state DEC required Northrop Grumman to clean the site. In September, the company's contractors started the second phase of a process known as "thermal remediation." That technique targets volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, by using electrical currents to heat metal rods drilled into the ground to vaporize pollutants and water in the soil. Then, a vacuum pulls the contaminants to a treatment system at the surface before the treated air is released.
For the next step of the cleanup, the EPA needs to approve an application to excavate PCB-contaminated soil from the park’s former ballfield and surrounding areas.
Northrop Grumman's "data gap sampling plan" goes beyond the requirements of the 2013 agreement, the DEC acknowledged in its letter. But the agency said Northrop Grumman should also provide an option for bringing the cleanup to the standard of an unrestricted use.
Oyster Bay and Northrop Grumman are embroiled in a costly legal battle over the scope and pace of the cleanup, Newsday has reported. On Nov. 11, the town in federal court filed a request seeking to stop Northrop Grumman from reburying soil dug up as part of its investigation into the chemical drums. Grumman said in court filings that its current plan meets the standards for the park to be opened for public use and accused the town of causing delays in the overall cleanup.
Judith Enck, a former regional EPA administrator, said regulatory agencies sometimes call for increased testing "when there is solid science" to support the request. Enck said Northrop Grumman has the resources to conduct more comprehensive soil sampling. She said it’s typical for municipalities to seek a greater level of scrutiny before signing off on a final cleanup plan.
“Asking for more testing and a more comprehensive cleanup is not uncommon,” Enck said. "It's not a big deal to do more comprehensive sampling. The company has the resources to do that, and they should."
