By Will Collette
They’re bringing in the experts from URI to talk to
residents about their concerns about well water quality, water testing and how
to prevent contamination.
When it comes to the quality of your drinking water, remember what Ronald Reagan said (and I can’t believe I’m quoting him),
“Trust, but verify.”
Though most well water problems in town are probably either
mechanical or due to septic system issues, Charlestown is not as pristine as it often
appears. We have had significant hazardous waste problems from the Navy’s
decades of use of Ninigret
Park
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| Commemorative plate from United Nuclear |
Some cleanup jobs were fairly superficial. For example, only
$2 million was spent for the cleanup of the Kenyon Sand Plain Road site, mostly to
remove old, corroded – and empty – barrels of toxic waste and then cap the landfill.
I spent ten years working on toxic waste problems and know
from experience that the only legitimate attraction of capping a landfill is to
make the problem seem to disappear for cheap. Capping a site means adding tons
of fill and topsoil on top of the site, which often simply pushes the toxic
material off the site and into people’s wells.
When I worked extensively on hazardous waste problems, $2
million barely covered the cost of the preliminary cleanup study, and certainly
not anything resembling a site cleanup.
Little work was done at all on the Narrow Land
And Ninigret, like most former military airfields, was a
cesspool of toxic chemicals (spilled fuel, lubricants, solvents, etc.) that
were simply tossed into pits.
You can ask the URI experts for their advice on whether they
think you need testing (although you need to make up your own mind what you
need to do for peace of mind), where to go for reliable testing and how to get
it done.
For a little more information on Charlestown ’s hazardous waste sites, click on
the following links:
- Kenyon landfill on
- Ninigret Naval air station landfills
- Narrow Lane landfill
- Ninigret Park Lead Cleanup (which doesn’t appear to haveever actually been cleaned up)
- United Nuclear
In most instances, these sites have been declared
“remediated” and no further work is being done. But “remediated” is not the
same thing as “clean.” I know from visiting hundreds of such sites that unless
the site has been completely excavated and the toxic material removed, the odds
are high that it’s still there.
And excavation and removal is the last thing that federal, state or local officials want to do
because it is the most expensive option.
