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Air To Be Tested In St. Pete Area Affected By Raytheon Chemicals

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 10, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - The state will test air quality inside homes and apartments where groundwater contamination is heaviest from the Raytheon plant site in St. Petersburg, officials said.

Raytheon announced the tests in a posting July 2 at a special Web site it set up for people living around the plant, which is the source of a groundwater contamination plume.

The posting also noted that contamination has been detected in 13 of 272 irrigation wells tested in the area of the plant. An estimated 700 irrigation wells are within a mile of the plant, none of them used for drinking water.

At a community meeting attended by about 200 people Wednesday evening, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection asked Raytheon officials for more testing that will better define the distance and depth of the groundwater plume.

Additional tests to determine why the chemical dioxane is flowing down a creek near a plant are also needed, DEP district director Deborah Getzoff said at the meeting.

Raytheon has 90 days to come up with a cleanup plan that "meets the department's regulations and statutes," Getzoff said. Officials with the defense plant said it will begin to pump and treat some of the pollution within the next few weeks.

On May 30, Raytheon's environmental scientists told a crowd of about 700 people that there is no threat to public health and that the risk of developing cancer from exposure to the plume is less than one in a million.

The toxic plume first was identified by workers building the Pinellas Trail recreation path 17 years ago, but most residents in the area did not find out about the contaminated groundwater until March from news reports.

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