News

Seepage is not a threat to Oakdale Lake

Hudson-Catskill Newspapers

HUDSON — An orange-colored groundwater seep from the Columbia County Department of Social Services building at 25 Railroad Ave. is not a threat to public health, according to an investigation by Crawford & Associates Engineering.

The tests were provided to the Register-Star by Mayor Rick Scalera, who obtained them after reading about the seep in Thursday’s edition.

Scalera suggested the most dangerous leaking is from county officials themselves, anxious to provide support for their plan to move DSS from 25 Railroad to the former Ockawamick School on Route 217 in Claverack. But Board of Supervisors Chairman Art Baer, R-Hillsdale, said the county has questions about contamination in the parcel that have led them to want to move elsewhere.

Plans to acquire the $1.5 million, 77,000-square-foot Ockawamick building on 24 acres were announced in February; the county is in the midst of doing due diligence prior to completing the acquisition.

Thursday’s story said county officials were waiting for the results of tests of the seep at 25 Railroad Ave. to be completed by Anthony Concra, owner of the building, and had been waiting since they requested them in April. County Public Works Commissioner David Robinson was quoted as saying the seep left the Concra property and migrated into city-owned wetlands at Oakdale Lake.

Scalera was disturbed to read the article because swimming was already open at Oakdale, with lessons due to start in a week.

“I was alarmed — I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “We could have headed this off a month ago.”

Baer said Scalera had been sent a letter from county Public Health Technician Jack Mabb about the situation April 28. Scalera said he was on vacation in Myrtle Beach, S.C. at the time.

The mayor’s aide, Carmine A. Pierro Jr., told Scalera he had not received the letter, but did receive a phone call from Mabb, who described a “rustlike” seepage, but didn’t say it was going into the wetlands, Scalera told the Register-Star.

After reading Thursday’s story, Scalera got on the phone with a number of people.

“In a nutshell,” he said, “county officials are using scare tactics to further their plan to move to Ockawamick.”

He said he called the state Department of Environmental Conservation and learned that department representatives had met with county officials and people from the county Health Department in early April.

“Everybody was there except city officials,” he said.

According to Scalera, the DEC representatives found nothing out of the ordinary; they told him the discoloration was either rust from something underground, or “a natural situation that often happens in soils.”

The mayor then met with Concra and got the test results.

In a June 2 letter to Concra, Crawford geologist Errol O’Brien said the surface had been sampled and analyzed for volatile organic chemicals, semi-volatile organic chemicals, RCRA-8 metals and total iron. RCRA-8 refers to eight hazardous metals regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act: Arsenic, Lead, Barium, Mercury, Cadmium, Selenium, Chromium and Silver.

Neither VOCs nor semi-VOCs were detected, O’Brien said. The only RCRA-8 metal detected at the levels above the reportable limits of the equipment used was barium. However, the amount of barium, .306 milligrams per liter, was well below the groundwater standard of 1 milligram per liter.

Iron was found to be at a level of 30.2 mg/liter, 100 times the groundwater standard of .3 mg/liter, but O’Brien said, “Iron levels of this magnitude are not considered a health threat unless they are encountered in drinking water.”

“I’m glad,” Baer said when informed of the results. “I’m sure the Health Department will get a copy of that.”

Scalera criticized county officials for waiting for Concra’s results.

“For two months, they were waiting for Anthony Concra to respond,” he said. “[Public Works Commissioner] David Robinson didn’t want to spend any taxpayer money on the tests, but he didn’t mind spending $70,000 removing contaminated soil from Ockawamick. If you had real concern about your employees, I suggest they would have done the test themselves, and billed Concra.”

“Concra sent the letter back and agreed to do the testing,” Baer said. “I don’t know why we’d test twice. We specified which tests were appropriate — I’m not sure what more we can do, except inform the mayor’s office.” Which, he said, was done through the Health Department.

Scalera said he also had George Topper of the Water Department test Oakdale for bacteria, as a precaution, and the test was negative.

He went on to say the county has been too quick in ruling 25 Railroad Ave. out as a site.

“I want to know once and for all if that site has contaminants that would prohibit them from expanding on that location,” the mayor said. “They need to clear the air. Do the bore testings, have them come back and say yes or no, it’s a clean or dirty site. That’s the only way we’re all going to know.”

He added that he was confident Concra would undertake the tests, as they would be in his own best interests.

Baer responded that the seepage results may be negative, but, “We have a lot of data on the site beyond that issue, which has to do with expanding the building into other areas of the site where there are additional environmental problems. The building does not lend itself to a huge further investment in renovation or upgrading, which is not appropriate given the conditions.”

To contact reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.

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