State environmental officials are looking to remediate contamination from a dry cleaning chemical found in elevated levels in 14 Burlington homes before winter.
At a joint fiscal committee meeting on Monday, lawmakers approved a request from the Department of Environmental Conservation to spend up to $150,000 from the environmental contingency fund for the work.
Meanwhile, the state is looking to recoup costs from the two dry cleaning companies that have been identified as responsible for the contamination.
In August 2017, an Elmwood Avenue property owner was doing indoor air sampling and reached out to the state after detecting elevated levels of chlorinated solvents. The next summer, the state and EPA did soil gas sampling in the area, determining that there were elevated levels of the solvents perchloroethylene (PCE) near breaks in a sewer line under the street.
The contamination was linked back to a former dry cleaning business at 222 Elmwood Ave. that ran from the 1940s to the 1990s. The chemicals contaminated air in between soil particles, which can then seep into basements.
“We believe that in the past there would have been PCE that went down the drain into the sewer line,” said Kim Caldwell, hazardous site manager for DEC’s sites management section.
PCE, which is used in dry cleaning and as a metal degreaser, does not break down easily in the environment. Long-term exposure to PCE can increase the risk of developing certain kinds of cancer, as well as harm the nervous system, reproductive system, liver and kidneys.
The DEC determined that 14 homes on Elmwood Avenue and Spring Street had PCE levels above the state’s indoor air standard of .63 micrograms per meter cubed. The elevated levels detected inside the homes ranged from just above that level to 19 micrograms per meter cubed in the basement of one home, said Caldwell.
“Installation of mitigation systems is a step that the Agency needs to take immediately and is concerned with respect to continued exposure over the winter months where there isn’t the ability to adequately ventilate the house,” states a DEC memo from October about the spending request.
DEC has been working with a contractor to develop specific remediation strategies for each home, which could range from a sub-slab depressurization system to sealing up any cracks in a basement. The state still needs to further investigate possible contamination under the former dry cleaning business and whether it would be possible to excavate around the sewer line to remediate contamination, said Caldwell.
So far, both Gadue’s and Lennie’s Dry Cleaning, which formerly operated the dry cleaning business, have not agreed to pay for the remediation work, said Coppolino. DEC is working with the businesses and their insurance companies to seek to recover the costs from the remediation.
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, asked Patricia Coppolino, environmental program manager for DEC, during the meeting why the state was not also looking to recoup costs from the City of Burlington for the faulty sewer line. Coppolino responded that the DEC has determined that the dry cleaning businesses were responsible for the PCE contamination.
“It is our normal policy to focus our cost recovery efforts on the party responsible for the discharge of hazardous contaminants into the environment,” said Matt Chapman, general counsel for the state Agency of Natural Resources, in an email on Monday.
Aline Gadue Stirling, president of Gadue’s Dry Cleaning, noted that the company had operated a dry cleaning business at the Elmwood Avenue site only from 1985 to 1990.
“In line with our ongoing commitment to a safe and healthy community, Gadue’s has been an active participant throughout the investigative process and will continue to provide any information and assistance we can to DEC,” said Gadue Stirling in an emailed statement.
She added that Gadue’s was the only dry cleaning company in Chittenden County to transition away from PCE.
