Hazardous waste discovered buried in Long Island park adds to ongoing cleanup woes

BETHPAGE, Long Island (PIX11) -- It had been rumored for years and has now been proven to be true, barrels of hazardous materials have been discovered buried under a public park on Long Island. 

Now that they've been found, many more questions arise.  

Among those questions are whether there are more barrels to be unearthed, and if work that had already been underway to clean up environmental problems at the former aerospace manufacturing site needs to be reconsidered.  

It all stems from a discovery days ago of six 55-gallon drums of hazardous waste buried underneath part of Bethpage Community Park.  

The area where the finding was made is near what had been baseball fields. They were shut down 22 years ago when possible cancer-causing chemicals were confirmed to be in the soil. Now, the ongoing story to try and get that soil cleaned up has taken a new, toxic turn with this latest discovery.  

The Oyster Bay Town Supervisor, Joseph Saladino, who oversees Bethpage as well as about a third of Nassau County, held a news conference on Wednesday morning to provide information on what had happened, and to talk about the next steps.  

"They were drilling a sentinel well, a test well," Saladino said, describing what workers on the site had experienced days ago, "and they hit something." 

"Their drill went through the concrete, and punctured one of the drums," Saladino said, explaining that the 55-gallon drums had been encased in concrete vaults about six to seven feet below ground.  

Their discovery comes six years after a whistleblower came forward to say that they'd remembered burying barrels of hazardous materials at what's now the Bethpage Community Park.  

A state investigation at that time was inconclusive, but this latest discovery is clear, and it sparked a strong reaction from the town supervisor.  

"I’ve had it," he exclaimed, raising his voice. "I’ve been working on this for 20 years." 

There's been a decades-long dispute over environmental hazards on and in the land that's now Bethpage Community Park. It had been an aerospace manufacturing facility operated by the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman from 1937 to 1996.  

The company turned over the land to the Town of Oyster Bay in the late 1990s, but there had been complaints in neighboring towns about tainted groundwater and other hazards in the area that had come up as early as the 1970s. After the park was created, and the area got even more use, the number of reported cases of cancer in the area increased.  

It was discovered that a plume of carcinogenic water was spreading out in an area about two miles from the site. 

The town and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation pursued action to get Northrop Grumman to remediate the land. Ultimately, the DEC entered a $104 million cleanup agreement with the aerospace corporation.  

That cleanup plan allows the area's soil to be superheated to help clean the groundwater. The cost of the current action is far lower than a more than $500 million plan the state had originally proposed.  

With this latest discovery, however, the current cleanup activity faces new scrutiny, and may very well need a whole other approach, according to the town supervisor.  

"One of the 55-gallon drums" that had been discovered and tested, Saladino said, "can ignite at 80 degrees [Fahrenheit]. At 80 degrees, and yet the DEC has allowed them to heat up the soil to 210 degrees!" he exclaimed.  

"Now, " he continued, "we're pushing for underground radar, to search underground in the entire park, to find more."  

He said that the town suspects that more barrels are buried in vaults underneath the ones that were just discovered.  

In a statement, Northrop Grumman said that it's been fully cooperative regarding the cleanup effort, and management of the Bethpage Community Park site.  

"We promptly notified NYSDEC and other relevant stakeholders," the statement began, referencing the Dept. of Environmental Conservation, "and we are working with NYSDEC to assess and address this situation as quickly as possible. We remain committed to protecting the health and well-being of the community and to continuing our partnership with NYSDEC and other government regulators to address environmental conditions in the area," the company said.  

For its part, the DEC also issued a statement, that said, in part, that it "continues to strictly oversee the cleanup of the Bethpage Community Park in the town of Oyster Bay. The ongoing remediation of the Navy-Grumman groundwater plume is a priority for DEC and New York State."  

It went on to talk about the discovery of the 55-gallon drums, saying that they "show no visual signs of a release of contamination to the environment. Preliminary analysis of the drums’ contents found chlorinated solvents and waste oil/petroleum. These compounds are consistent with known historic operations of Northrop-Grumman and the U.S. Navy at this location and the contamination that is the focus of the ongoing remedial action." 

The state agency went on to say that it "will continue to oversee cleanup activities at this location, including use of geophysical techniques, such as ground-penetrating radar, as well as subsurface drilling and sampling to determine the full nature and extent of contamination and the presence of any additional drums buried deep beneath the site. The discovery of the drums presents no immediate threat to public health and safety at the site. DEC will update the town and community regarding confirmatory samples taken around the encased drums as information becomes available. DEC will continue to hold Northrop Grumman accountable for the cleanup of Bethpage Community Park."