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Chemical Exposure
EPA crews at work on clean-up at California dry cleaner site (#1868)
2010-08-26
After more than a year of studies and tests, crews with the Environmental Protection Agency are at work cleaning up the former Nuway dry cleaners site in Old Town.
The city-owned property was found to have very high concentrations of toxic chemicals, with vapors turning up in neighboring buildings that could cause cancer and other serious health problems after prolonged exposure.
“The overall objective of the remediation is to control the vapor migration and intrusion into nearby homes and businesses and to improve the air quality in the neighborhood,” Dan Shane, on-scene coordinator for the EPA, said Wednesday.
The EPA ordered the clean-up work earlier this year, after results from site soil surveys showed the cleaning solvent trichloroethene, or TCE, at concentrations up to nearly 17 times above approved screening levels. And every single soil probe turned up the dry cleaning chemical tetrachloroethene, or PERC, a preliminary report states, with concentrations ranging from 405 to nearly 54,000 times the acceptable screening level.
California outlawed PERC in 2007 and the state ordered dry cleaners to phase out the chemical by 2023.
Nuway Dry Cleaners operated on the corner of 8th and C streets for more than half a century until 2001.
Victorville purchased the site and demolished the building in 2008, as part of its plan to redevelop Old Town with a mix of commercial and residential buildings.
Though Victorville secured a grant for the EPA to study the site, Shane said the city is left footing the bill for the estimated $500,000 clean-up effort.
Within the next couple of days, workers will flip the switch on a vacuum system recently installed under the nearby Victor Elementary School District administration building, to suck out the contaminated air coming up from the soil. Once that system’s on, Shane said, the quality of air will immediately improve.
The EPA is still waiting on results from air samples taken in eight homes behind the school administration building.
After more than a year of studies and tests, crews with the Environmental Protection Agency are at work cleaning up the former Nuway dry cleaners site in Old Town.
