Midtown chemical site cleansed
by B. William Poole on Apr. 19, 2006, under Local
A two-year cleanup will start this week at a midtown site contaminated decades ago with dry-cleaning chemicals, the state Department of Environmental Quality said.
From the 1950s through 1989, 300 E. Seventh Street was home to dry-cleaning businesses that left behind soil contaminated by leaking underground tanks used to store tetrachloroethylene, known commonly as PCE.
The building was destroyed by fire in 1989 and the tanks removed in 1991, but monitoring wells show the chemical seeped into groundwater 170 feet down.
Trichloroethene, commonly known as TCE, was also found in the groundwater The cleanup will include machinery to extract soil vapor that has carried the chemicals into the groundwater.
Crews will install the equipment over the next two weeks, the agency said in a news release.
The risk of human contact with the chemicals is low because the nearest drinking-water well is more than a half- mile from the site, which is now a parking lot on the south side of Seventh Street at Arizona Avenue, the agency said.
“No one is known to be drinking contaminated water at this site; therefore no one is known to be exposed or at risk of exposure to the contaminants,” the agency said in a fact sheet published in January.
The agency asks anyone using a private water well in the area to call project manager Sherri Zendri at 770-3361.
PCE and TCE can cause cancer and liver problems after long-term exposure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said.
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Arizona Department of Environmental Quality
www.azdeq.gov/
