South Hill Toxins Database/Maps

Ithaca Journal TCE Archive

DEC ISSUES JUNE 2009 "SOUTH HILL UPDATE"
We are very grateful to Gregg Townsend of the Syracuse DEC office for passing along this update. It appears that we may have a Public Meeting in September to review the plans for remediating the neighborhoods known to have been contaminated by delivery of toxins from the Morse Chain plant through the City sewers. They DEC notes that the remediation steps taken at the South Hill Business Campus site have left toxins levels "somewhat static" in many of the test wells.

Four homes in the Phase VI home vapor-intrusion testing area have been offered mitigation systems.  The next area (Phase VII) for home testing, likely to begin in the fall, will be on Columbia Street, between South Aurora and Hudson Streets.

FIRST REPORT OF AXIOHM POST-REMEDIATION TESTS RELEASED
The first tests (January 2009) of air and groundwater at the former NCR/Axiohm site (now called the South Hill Business Campus) have been released. The report is 1.9MB and is here. The results show lower toxins levels at many of the test points are lower, some significantly. Results in seven wells "do not yet show a significant decrease in VOC levels." Test wells along the storm sewer adjacent to the Main Building still show high levels of TCE:
IOW-1: 2700 ug/m^3 TCE
IOW-3: 1200 ug/m^3 TCE
MW-7: 2800 ug/m^3 TCE
The report suggests that seasonal variations at this site are considerable, so we'll need to wait for the release of the April 2009 tests to see how different they are. Thanks to Karen Cahill of the NYSDEC for providing an electronic copy of this information.

SUMMARY REPORT OF “AXIOHM OFFSITE” VAPOR INTRUSION STUDIES RELEASED
Though the title suggests a report dealing with the former NCR/Axiohm site (now called the South Hill Business Campus), the report contains surveys of the sewer lines all over South Hill and results of studies performed with soil vapor test points near many of the sewer lines, as well as vapor intrusion tests performed in structures around those sewer lines.  We are very grateful to Karen Cahill of the NYSDEC for providing an electronic copy of this large (1447-page) document.

A quick analysis of this report and links to the many sections of this document are in our “Sewers” 2009 section.  Roux Associates was hired by Borg Warner (former owner of the Emerson site) to help point fingers at NCR and Therm for the role those sites have played in contributing to the toxins found in the area sewers.  Details on their study are also in the “Sewers” 2008 section. 

ITHACA JOURNAL ARCHIVE OF TCE ARTCLES UNAVAILABLE
As a result, MANY of the links to their articles in these pages no longer work.
We hope that access to the articles will be restored soon, but for now, this access seems to be a casualty of cost-cutting efforts within the Gannett organization and The Ithaca Journal.  We still consider the Journal to be our area’s “newspaper of record”.  We have great respect for the excellent reporting by Krisy Gashler and the management provided by Bruce Estes, as well as for the history and perspective provided by their articles.

We apologize for this problem and hope we'll be able to restore access to fine reporting contained in the Journal’s TCE archive.

STILL WAITING FOR PROPOSED PLANS FOR EMERSON OFFSITE CLEANUP
While there was a Public Meeting on March 5, 2009, to discuss the proposed Amendment to the 1994 Record of Decision on the Emerson site, the changes discussed pertain only to the plant site itself – NOT to remediation of the neighborhoods in which we live.  The meeting and documents presented are in our “Meetings” section.  Though the Amendment document discusses (on page 6) the residual contamination of the Turner Place and South Cayuga Street sewers and acknowledges the adverse impact on air quality in neighboring homes, no solutions or proposed remedial steps are presented.  The document states:
"Remedial actions to address the off-site migration of contaminated soil vapor will be selected by the NYSDEC following EPT's evaluation of the investigation results and completion of an alternatives analysis."
In other words, real remediation of the toxins "off-site" - in our neighborhoods - is left for discussion some time in the future, even though the "final" SRP/Alternatives Analysis report was released in September 2008.

DETAILED TOXINS MAPS RELEASED

As reported in the New York Times, Walter Hang, President of Toxics Targeting, has made a combination of powerful mapping tools and his firm's toxins data available (for free) at the company web site. These maps allow detailed review of specific addresses and neighborhoods and their proximity to reported toxin sites throughout New York State. Walter and his firm deserve both a "Wow!" and our thanks for making this impressive capability available.

NEIGHBORS CARING FOR NEIGHBORS AND FOR ALL OF US
Clinton West Plaza
Clinton West is the center of many concerns from neighbors about the wide variety of toxins which have been found in groundwater and soil vapor tests on and around the plaza.  Many of these are attributed to the dry cleaning operation housed there, but the list of toxins found is very familiar.

Investigations into these problems are being supervised by staff from the Kirkwood office of the DEC (rather than the Syracuse office which monitors the Emerson site), so the people involved are different, but the problems faced and the process for investigation and proposing remedial actions are very similar.  A Remedial Investigation / Feasibility Study Work Plan was released about a year ago by Fagan Engineers of Elmira.  A Public Meeting on this work and related concerns was held last August.

Documents and maps related to these efforts and concerns are available at the Cleaner Clinton web site.

Gas Drilling Madness
We all understand the pressing needs to reduce energy consumption and waste.  We understand the many problems of depending on fossil fuels, especially those from foreign lands.  While the US considerable reserves of natural gas, the techniques currently being used to access that gas carry staggeringly high environmental costs.  The damage being done now in the name of “energy independence” is huge and long-lasting.  The revelation that Cayuga Heights was accepting water discharge from drilling sites and releasing the ineffectively-treated, chemical-laden water into the southern end of Cayuga Lake is very distressing.  This process has been stopped temporarily, but we need to stop it permanently. 

A well-written article on the damage done by drilling appeared in a recent issue of The Ithacan.