After backlash from town officials on Friday, and a very intense meeting on Monday, Shore Regional Health has decided to delay injecting a chemical detergent into the aquifer at Chester River Hospital—the same aquifer that provides 50 percent of Chestertown’s drinking water.
The proposed chemical injections are a silver-bullet attempt by the hospital to shed $50,000 in annual expenses to remediate a 25-year-old oil spill. A system of wells and pumps has kept an underground oil plume from migrating 1,500 feet towards the town’s drinking water since the early 90s.
“The current system has been 100 percent effective at preventing the contaminants from moving for over two decades,” said Chestertown Utilities Manager Bob Sipes in an interview with the Spy on Wednesday.
“No actual injection is planned to occur until the Town’s questions are answered in full,” said Chestertown Town Manager Bill Ingersoll after a meeting with hospital officials and Maryland Department of the Environment on Monday.
The delay is to give town officials more control and input in the decision process, Ingersoll said.
“We pledge to work cooperatively, with open communication with the Town, MDE, and other experts through resolution,” said Kenneth Kozel, CEO of UM Shore Regional Health.
But town officials have been left in the dark on previous decisions and recently hired an environmental lawyer to file an injunction if there is an impasse over the procedure that has never been attempted in the US in such close proximity to a town’s drinking water supply.
In Monday’s meeting with hospital and MDE officials, Sipes said he asked the hospital why they would shut down a system that has protected the drinking wells for over 20 years.
Sipes said the hospital’s engineer, Dane Bauer, replied with the pronouncement that the hospital would not continue to operate the current system for another 20 years.
Sipes responded to Bauer that the hospital most certainly should maintain the current system if it is necessary to protect public health.
In July of 2012, the current system was turned off after the hospital lobbied MDE that they had captured 83,000 gallons of heating oil—but the system was reactivated when oil migrated south of Brown Street.
The spill was estimated at up to 150,000 gallons.
The chemical, Ivey-sol®, will liquefy the oil so it can be more easily pumped out of the aquifer but the process could make oil that is not recovered move faster towards the drinking wells.
Sipes said the hospital plans to shut down the remediation system after four consecutive quarters of test results that are negative for contamination.
“We do not have a complete plan of what they will test for immediately after the procedure.” Sipes said. “And the testing frequency may not be adequate because we don’t want to wait three months to find out that oil is moving again. If the oil is liquefied, we don’t know how fast it could move towards the drinking wells.”
Sipes also said that the compounds in Ivey-sol® remain secret because of a patent, which will make it difficult to determine if future contamination was caused by the procedure.
Eliott Fuhrman says
Editor,
This is a new one on me. Having 30 years in commercial r’e’ never heard of title company transferring clean title when on going environmental remediation without an escrow account put up by buyer or seller to make sure it continues. Where is tank and why was it not closed down or removed unless it is under building Therefore when they re did parking lot why not replace it and put it under parking lot?