[Pharmwaste] The dirt on groundwater (NY)

[Tenace, Laurie]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liwate0714,0,5253413.story?co
ll=ny-top-headlines

it's not just PPCPs - 


The dirt on groundwater
LI's drinking supply, though considered good by experts, is vulnerable since
it's pumped from aquifers
BY JENNIFER SMITH
Newsday Staff Writer

July 14, 2006


As Long Islanders spill gas at the pump, kill weeds in their backyards and
even take showers at home, they contribute to an ever-growing suite of
contaminants polluting a fragile and ancient source of drinking water deep
beneath the ground.

The recent drinking water contamination in West Hempstead, along with an E.
coli bacterial scare on Fire Island and a brewing political battle over
drilling into the deepest and purest of Long Island's aquifers, all served as
fresh reminders of the water supply's vulnerability.

 Although the quality of the drinking water is considered good and is
constantly tested, scientists are eyeing an emerging group of potential
contaminants: medications and personal-care products whose effect on human
health -- after they are flushed down drains into septic systems and then
into groundwater -- is unknown. And some environmental advocates say the
groundwater is poorly protected by a patchwork of federal and state
regulations they say address some hazards -- such as leaking petroleum
storage tanks -- but fail to look at the big picture.

What Long Island needs, says state Sen. Carl Marcellino (R-Syosset), chair of
the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, is nothing less than a
"water czar" to coordinate the various agencies that regulate the region's
water.

"Things like MTBE, those are tough problems," said Henry Bokuniewicz, a
professor at Stony Brook University's marine sciences research center and
director of the university's groundwater institute. "Pollution and
contamination are not problems that are going to go away. But I think as we
become more and more sophisticated in handling how the contamination happens
and the pathways in which it's getting to the groundwater, we're going to be
better at living with it."

The water here is vulnerable because the water flowing out of our taps
doesn't come from protected reservoirs in the Catskills. It's pumped up from
an underground aquifer system whose layers trap and filter precipitation as
it slowly trickles down thousands of feet through the ground.

As water testing technology improves, traces of previously undetectable
substances have been found -- pharmaceutical by-products that people ingest
and then excrete that can work their way into the water supply in unsewered
areas.

"Caffeine, nicotine, Prozac -- all these things are starting to show up, and
you can't control those like you control a tank at a gas station,"
Bokuniewicz said. "We need to find out where they come from, and find out if
they're a health threat. The unknowns are legion."

The new contaminants of concern join a list of usual suspects -- pesticides,
chemicals and nitrates from fertilizer and human waste.

MTBE, a now-banned gasoline additive that moves swiftly through groundwater,
continues to show up in private and public supply wells and is expected to
persist as contaminated plumes from unreported gasoline leaks and spills make
their way deeper into the groundwater.

Some fronts may be improving. State and local health and environmental
officials say the threat from pollutants such as industrial solvents is
waning. And they say progress in regulation and cleanup of pollutants over
the past decades have decreased levels of many contaminants in public supply
wells.

"Overall groundwater quality is improving, not getting worse," said Tom
Maher, Nassau's director of environmental coordination.

But some environmental advocates disagree. They say Long Island's groundwater
is in serious trouble that can't be solved by simply drilling deeper for
clean water and that more attention must be paid to safeguard the source of
the water -- not just that which flows from the tap.

"Groundwater is the last national resource that there is no comprehensive
federal law to protect," said Erik Olson, a groundwater expert and director
of advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's a very precious
resource, and once it's contaminated it's almost impossible and extremely
expensive to try and clean up."

The fragility of Long Island's groundwater is a function of the structure of
the aquifer system, which is less like an underground bathtub than it is a
porous geological parfait. As rain moves from the surface through the ground,
it travels down and laterally through layers of gravel, sand and clay that
rest on top of sloping bedrock.

The layers form a lopsided wedge, thin in northwestern Nassau and Queens, but
extending some 2,000 feet deep along eastern Suffolk's South Shore. As it
moves lower, groundwater also moves slowly toward the ocean, eventually
discharging into Long Island Sound or the Atlantic Ocean. Estimates of how
much water is stored in the various layers range from 10 trillion to 70
trillion gallons.

Historically most drinking water was pumped from the shallow layer known as
the Upper Glacial aquifer. But as contaminants increasingly fouled wells
there, water suppliers began moving deeper, tapping into the Magothy aquifer
-- the biggest and most important source of Long Island's water -- and even
into the Lloyd aquifer. Capped by thick clay that slows groundwater's
progress to a crawl, the Lloyd aquifer takes the longest to recharge and, in
its deepest points along the South Shore, contains water that is thousands of
years old.

The health of groundwater depends largely on what happens on the surface
above it, especially in areas such as the pine barrens, whose porous, sandy
soils are the main recharge areas for the Magothy and Lloyd aquifers.

While geologists regard the different aquifers as part of a unified water
system, generalizations about pollution levels in Long Island's groundwater
are difficult to make. The mix of contaminants has changed over time, and
what you find depends on where and at what depth water is sampled.

Perhaps the most comprehensive recent review of the quality of the water
below us is to be found in a 2003 report on Long Island groundwater
commissioned by the state Health Department in conjunction with Nassau and
Suffolk.

The report found that nitrates, which seep into groundwater from cesspools,
agricultural fertilizer and lawn care products, have historically been a
water quality issue across the Island. In recent years, sewering in Nassau
County has diminished the discharge of nitrates to the Upper Glacial aquifer.

But nitrate contamination remains a concern in Suffolk County. There, many
heavily developed areas rely on cesspools and local sewage treatment plants
to process human waste. Pesticides also have been found in shallower Suffolk
groundwater in agricultural and heavily landscaped areas such as golf
courses, and to a lesser degree in Nassau.

Sewering has put a dent in the amount of volatile organic compounds such as
industrial solvents discharged to Nassau's shallower groundwater, and overall
concentrations in Suffolk remain relatively low, the water assessment report
found. But volatile organic compounds -- many of which are known carcinogens
-- continue to be found in deeper groundwater, as plumes and spills from past
years descend. During the past 25 years, volatile-organic-compound
contamination has resulted in the abandonment of 24 public supply wells in
Nassau County, according to the report, which noted that it "continues to be
a potential threat to drinking water supplies in Nassau and Suffolk
Counties."

MTBE remains an Islandwide problem, although experts, officials and
environmental advocates disagree on its severity. MTBE was found in the raw
water at 7 percent of Nassau public supply wells in 2000 and in about 6
percent of those in Suffolk in 2001. Last month's health alert in West
Hempstead, when 32,000 residents were told not to drink their tap water
because it was contaminated with MTBE, marked the first time on Long Island
that levels in public drinking water exceeded the state drinking water
standard of 10 parts per billion. 

Laurie J. Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 4555
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2400
PH: (850) 245-8759
FAX: (850) 245-8811
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us  
 
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