Sayreville residents shocked to find what's been seeping into their homes

SAYREVILLE – Herve Blemur's youngest son was born with a respiratory illness he still struggles to overcome.

Now that his son is 11, Blemur can only wonder if his child's health and developmental difficulties were caused by the house that his family has called home for the last 16 years.

State officials two years ago confirmed that the Scott Avenue home and three others next to it tested positive for elevated levels of the cancer-causing chemical tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, which was used in dry cleaning and industrial metal degreasing.

Long-term exposure to PCE, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, can cause a host of neurological, developmental and reproductive problems, as well as cancer, and have adverse effects on the kidneys, liver and immune system.

A residential property should not have PCE levels higher than 1 part per million, according to state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) standards. But DEP testing in 2013 of the neighborhood homes found levels as high as 76 ppm, the agency said Friday.

The discovery was a shock to homeowners and state officials because the single-family houses were not built on a known contaminated site, even though it was once the site of a welding factory and a tank-cleaning operation before it was used for carnival storage.

Now the state is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and could be paying thousands more every year for the next decade, to reduce contamination levels of these homes.

In the 1970s and '80s, the state passed a series of environmental regulations to keep track of contaminated properties and to ensure that former commercial and industrial properties be cleaned up to certain standards before homes could be built on those lands.

But two lawmakers representing Sayreville in Trenton believe the Scott Avenue property might have been grandfathered into previous regulations, escaping the more stringent reporting rules and allowing homes to be built there from the mid-'70s to late-'80s.

"This property fell through the regulatory cracks. Today, this wouldn't happen," said Assemblyman Craig Coughlin, who, along with Assemblyman John Wisniewski, expect to introduce a bill that would allow the state to purchase such contaminated homes to preserve as open space rather than spend the money on remediation.

"After you do all this work, it's a house that nobody wants," Wisniewski said Friday during a visit of the same neighborhood he grew up in.

The DEP has budgeted $400,000 for this remediation project, which began in March. Workers have removed and replaced as much as 4 to 5 feet of soil from the ground and basements, and installed ventilation systems. Blemur's property is the worst, and workers on Friday were still installing four wells around the house that will pump contaminated water and vapors from the ground. The water will be filtered through tanks contained in an 8-by-16-foot shed built in the backyard before being released into the sewer.

The electricity needed to run the wells will cost the state an estimated $2,000 a month. A DEP spokesman on Friday could not say how long the remediation would last, but unofficial estimates include at least five to 10 years.

"Right now the house is worthless" and the news has left him "very frustrated and very stressful," said Blemur, 53, a real estate agent and network engineer. "The problem is we've been breathing this stuff in for years. I feel like I failed as a dad to protect our children, and all I did was buy a house."

The contamination was discovered after a series of events following the 2011 Virginia earthquake felt in New Jersey. Blemur said that after the light tremor, he noticed more moisture in his basement. Then after Hurricane Irene that year, he had to install an extra pump to remove water that was coming into his basement at levels he had never seen before.

Eventually, he decided to get his tap water and the pump water tested. The result from the lab showed the pump water contained a "cocktail of chemicals," including PCE, he said. Blemur called the EPA, which referred him to the state Department of Health and the DEP, which confirmed the PCE levels.

The DEP offered to relocate the family during the construction work, but Blemur said he declined because his youngest son has extreme difficulty adjusting to new routines.

"I have six children, but I worry about the two babies," he said. His second-youngest is 14. "They don't have data on what these chemicals do to embryos. (My children) have been living with this since before they were born."

Staff Writer Sergio Bichao: 908-243-6615; sbichao@mycentraljersey.com