He also said regulations on mulching facilities to prevent groundwater contamination would be released next week.
“One of the main environmental issues which is emerging is the quality of the drinking water,” Cuomo said at the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology at the Stony Brook University Research and Development Park.
Cuomo was flanked by both county executives, state elected officials and the acting environmental commissioner.
Contaminated groundwater was high on the list of issues to tackle, and Cuomo talked about lead issues in Flint, Michigan, in upstate New York and in Nassau County.
He mentioned an ongoing issue faced by water districts and residents near Bethpage, home to a complex plume traced to aviation manufacturing operations run by the U.S. Navy and what is now Northrop Grumman.
At the end of January, Cuomo ordered Northrop Grumman and the Navy to give the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Massapequa Water District access to monitoring wells that track groundwater plumes flowing from a former Bethpage manufacturing site.
The move came after Massapequa Water District requested access in November to five to seven wells to conduct a type of analysis that could essentially fingerprint the contamination, with a focus on the carcinogenic solvent trichloroethylene.
The Navy and Northrop Grumman officials responded, saying sampling at more wells would give a better picture of contamination. They also had questions about the science behind the testing.
Cuomo said that response made people nervous and he ordered testing conducted by an independent lab. “When the federal government said you can’t test, it made everyone suspicious, understandably.”
He also said New York doesn’t need permission to do the work.
“We will find out exactly what is in the plume,” he said. “Once we know what we’re dealing with we can come up with an intelligent plan for remediation.”
Sampling at the sites was expected to begin Thursday and take two days. Results will be available within weeks, then testing at additional wells will occur.
“Within a couple of months we’ll have a really good sense” of the contamination, state Department of Environmental Conservation acting commissioner Basil Seggos said later.
The aquifers beneath Long Island are designated “sole source” because they provide the only supply of water to the area. But those waters are also some of the most contaminated in New York. More than 250 state and federal Superfund sites are in Nassau and Suffolk counties, a legacy created by chemicals seeping through the sandy soils from landfills, aerospace manufacturing, industrial operations and dry cleaners. Contaminated water has been documented at nearly 90 percent of those sites and groundwater plumes are evident at one-third of all sites, according to a Newsday analysis.
“We are now suffering from, literally, the stain of the manufacturing era,” Cuomo said.
The Bethpage plume, which has been traced to aviation manufacturing operations run by the Navy and what is now Northrop Grumman, is one of the most complex. Contamination dates to the 1940s, and the sites were added to the state Superfund program in the 1980s. Several cleanup plans have been issued and multiple plumes are being treated, tracked and delineated. Contamination from the site has stretched more than three miles, past the Southern State Parkway.
Water officials and local politicians say the plumes emanating from Bethpage put the drinking-water supplies of 250,000 people at risk. Ongoing treatment is in place for some affected water supplies in Bethpage, South Farmingdale and Levittown, though districts have complained that handling of the cleanup has been slow. Wells in Massapequa have not been hit by the contamination, but it inches closer each day.
©2016 Newsday Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
