The federal “removal action“ at O’Sullivan’s Island Recreational Park in 2008 and 2009 only focused on PCBs on the south side of the property, so assessing the entire park is needed if Derby wants to get a handle on what’s in the ground, an environmental planner told the Board of Aldermen Jan. 22.
The crews from the Environmental Protection Agency were not on O’Sullivan’s Island in 2008 and 2009 to deal with contamination — arsenic, oil, lead — that had already been identified as being in the ground in the area used for generations as a firefighter training facility on the north side of O’Sullivan’s Island.
Based on that information, the Aldermen said Wednesday O’Sullivan’s Island will remain closed until the 10-acre park gets a full environmental assessment.
“Until further notice, it’s closed,” said Barbara DeGennaro, president of the Board of Aldermen. “Until we get the assessment, figure out what it is going to cost, what the remediation is going to be, I think this board acted in the proper manner.”
The need for additional testing at O’Sullivan’s Island was an issue Rick Dunne at the Valley Council of Governments had been pushing since 2010, according to six memos sent to former Mayor Anthony Staffieri, former economic development director Sheila O’Malley and former corporation counsel Joseph Coppola.
However, the information was never shared with the city’s legislative body until Mayor Anita Dugatto took office.
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O’Sullivan’s Island, off limits to the public for decades, was opened as a public park in 2009 after the EPA removed almost 14,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil and almost 100 drums of toxic waste that had been buried on the south side of the property.
The EPA said the property was safe for passive recreation — that is, people were able to stroll along the property, as long as protective layers of soil were not disturbed.
But, does the protective cover the whole property?
Derby is not sure.
“It was indicated they put clean fill over the whole area that they worked in. They didn’t work on the entire peninsula,” Art Bogen, an environmental planner who works with VCOG, told Aldermen. “They worked more in the area past where the fire training facility was, (and) toward the top and alongside the bank of the Housatonic River.”
And what about the non-PCB contamination on the north side of O’Sullivan’s Island?
“The real difficulty we have is that we don’t know,” said Dunne, VCOG’s executive director.
Dunne, answering a question from Alderman Art Gerckens, said he hasn’t stepped foot on O’Sullivan’s Island since the 2009 ribbon-cutting because of his concerns with the park.
“There’s no reference in any sort of detail to the fire training facility in the EPA removal report. They focused on PCBs, they removed PCBs, they didn’t remove all of them, and they didn’t deal with the fire training facility. I think the big question is — did they actually put cover on the fire training facility? It’s not indicated in (the EPA) report.”
Former Mayor Staffieri told the Valley Indy Jan. 21 that he relied on the EPA’s guidance on O’Sullivan’s Island, and that the property was fine for passive recreation. He said he did not want to second-guess federal environmental officials.
An EPA spokesman told the Valley Indy Jan. 22 that the EPA’s mission was to deal with PCBs on the south side of the property.
The non-PCB north side of the property “was not the area we were addressing,” Jim Murphy, the spokesman, said.
“EPA’s focus was narrow, important and very effective,” Bogen said. “It was on PCBs. They are not, under that (removal action) program, dealing with anything else that might be on the island.”
Previous studies on the north side of O’Sullivan Island detailed pollution, albeit probably not as dangerous as the PCBs and toxic waste illegally dumped on the south side of the island.
Dunne and Bogen said the north side pollution, including lead, arsenic and a variety of petroleum products, may still be there — or they may not.
They may be there at small levels — or they may not.
The city may need to exhume more polluted dirt — or it may not.
They could have been carried away by the major flooding O’Sullivan’s Island has seen since 2009 — then again, maybe not.
The only way to start to get answers is to test and assess, the VCOG officials said.
Next Steps
VCOG will now search for the funding needed to start assessing what’s what at O’Sullivan’s Island.
In addition, state health department officials and officials at the Naugatuck Valley Health District are in receipt of various O’Sullivan Island environmental reports.
They will be prepping information to advise the public, Bogen said.
VCOG and Derby are still hoping to actually receive more than $300,000 in grant money that was supposed to be used to build a pier, walkway and boat ramp on the property.
But to do that, they have to prove to state environmental regulators that O’Sullivan’s Island is clean.
