Jeff Montgomery

The News Journal

City of New Castle shut down 2.700 customer water supply because of contamination

Bill to fix contaminated water wells could top $1 million, official says

Results of well testing around the suspected source and New Castle Airport are expected later this month.

Costs for managing toxic contamination found last month in all three city of New Castle public water wells could top $1 million, city officials say, with concern over the same groundwater pollutant growing around the region and country.

Most suspicions in the New Castle cases have focused on long use of fire-fighting foams at the nearby Delaware Air National Guard Base at New Castle Airport. The foams contain long-lived perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), one of the Environmental Protection Agency's "emerging" health concerns for public drinking water supplies nationwide.

Artesian Water Co. shut down two commercial wells in the same area in June after detections of the same chemicals. An Artesian official said last week that PFCs also had been found in other local supply wells, although at levels lower than the Environmental Protection Agency's "guidance" limit for drinking water.

Around the country, more than 100 current or former Air Force fire training areas might have released PFCs of the type that led to the shutdown New Castle's 2,700-customer supply, according to a defense agency briefing document issued in November. Other military and civilian uses and ties to well pollution are under scrutiny nationwide, even as use of PFC-containing foams continue.

"We're talking about some fairly large numbers," for temporary and permanent treatment needed before resuming use of the city's three wells, said Pamela A. Patone, general manager for the Municipal Services Commission for the city of New Castle. "We have been working with a permanent solution number from $350,000 to upwards of a $1 million, depending on how we do it."

"We do have a [financial] reserve and we're fortunate that we have that in place. It's certainly not something that we wanted to have happen," Patone said, "and we're hoping that the investigation comes up with some kind of answers" about the source and liability for the pollution.

Costly activated carbon filter plants rank among the most-direct and reliable solution for PFC compounds like perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Both are in a class of chemicals used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products for non-stick, non-stain and film-forming features. All have been under study for more than a decade because of their tendency to accumulate and linger in living tissues and because of potential connections to cancer and other health problems.

Although no firm drinking water limits exist, the EPA in 2009 set a .40 parts per billion "guidance" level for PFOA in public supplies while the study continues, with a .20 parts per billion mark for PFOS.

Levels found in water source near Wilmington Manor were more than 11 times the EPA's guidance limit for PFOS. Results of well testing around the suspected source and New Castle Airport generally are expected later this month.

PFCs are so durable and their uses so widespread that they are believed present at low levels around the world and throughout global human and wildlife populations, including albatrosses and elephant seals in the Antarctic.

A 2012 report released by the Delaware River Basin Commission found PFOAs in river water just south of the Delaware Memorial Bridge at nearly 20 percent of the EPA's recommended limit for drinking water, although concentrations appear to be falling. The same compounds also turned up in tissues of fish taken from the Delaware.

"The first thing is to resolve the issue and get treatment in place," said Joseph A. DiNunzio, Artesian's senior vice president. "The EPA and state seem to be actively trying to sort it out and determine if there is an distinct source and therefore a responsible party.

"From our perspective, that is appreciated because this is not inexpensive," DiNunzio said, "and we find it unfair that our customers would be bearing the expense and burden."

In Old New Castle, longtime resident James O. Vincent said he started using a household water filter about a decade ago, long before PFCs became a neighborhood concern.

"I worked for DuPont for 42 years and I know what chemicals are," Vincent said. "I know that a good policy is, if you don't need to get them on you or drink them, don't. It's only smart."

Vincent said that he was aware of the PFC controversy, and if suspicions are correct, city officials should "send the bill to the Air Force."

DuPont was itself embroiled for years in costly disputes over PFC contamination and hazards. In one case, the company eventually agreed to pay $235 million for medical monitoring over a wide area as partial settlement in a damage case tied to spills, river pollution, drinking water contamination and human exposures linked to a Parkersburg, West Virginia, plant.

In late 2005, DuPont agreed to pay $16.5 million in fines and compensatory spending to settle EPA charges the company failed to report PFOA releases and human exposures, and information about possible toxic effects. The terms required the company to spend $5 million studying how a wider variety of related chemicals and consumer products behave and break down in the environment.

For a time the company shipped PFC wastes to its former commercial wastewater plant operation in Deepwater, New Jersey, near the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Some 10,000 pounds went to Chambers Works in 1999, with virtually all believed to have passed through the plant and into the Delaware.

Last week, EPA officials took part in a public meeting on a similar PFC water pollution concern in the Warminster and Horsham, Pennsylvania, area after detections of chemicals traced to fire-fighting foam use at the former Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster.

Nearly 40 public and private wells were tested in the area, with eight private use supplies found to have concentrations above the federal limit. Bottled water supplies were set up in homes with the highest levels, Bonnie Smith, spokeswoman for the EPA's Philadelphia regional office, said.

The same issues surfaced earlier this year at the closed Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire. In Michigan, PFCs were found in fish tissues near the closed Wurtsmith Air Force Base at nearly 50 times the EPA's drinking water limit.

Tracy Carluccio, a member of the Delaware Riverkeeper conservation group, said that the federal government needs to take a more active and aggressive approach to identifying and mapping PFC contaminants.

"The problem is, unless there's a water supply system within a certain distance of a contamination site, that contamination could be there and nobody would know about it," Carluccio said. "If you don't have a connection already established because of a water supply or well that's already been impacted, you're just sitting there like a sitting duck, waiting for the pollution to get there."

Information on groundwater conditions under Delaware's largest military site, Dover Air Force Base, was unavailable.

Thousands of South Jersey residents, meanwhile, have received or turned to bottled water because of concern over water contamination traced to leaks and spills from industrial sources, particularly in Salem and Gloucester counties.

Contact Jeff Montgomery at (302) 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.