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Report: Raytheon Not Responsible For All Of Well Pollution

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By MARK DOUGLAS

News Channel 8

Published: September 2, 2008

A new report by environmental consultants working for Raytheon says the defense company is not responsible for some of the polluted irrigation wells near its plant in St. Petersburg.

Arcadis environmental consultants say three polluted private wells located south of the Raytheon defense plant are not connected to an underground plume originating at the plant site.

The Arcadis report says those wells are polluted with excessive amounts of trichlorethene and are outside of the designated plume zone.

The report says TCE "is one of the most common contaminants found in groundwater in the country." It also suggests that TCE would not travel that far from the source, and says that chemical hasn't traveled beyond Lynnwood Avenue.

The report by Arcadis environmental consultants became public Tuesday and shows 40 contaminated irrigation wells outside of the zone that Arcadis has designated as the plume containing chemicals of concern.

Some of those wells are located up to a quarter mile outside of what Arcadis says is the plume's perimeter.

Raytheon has been working under a consent order with the Department of Environmental Protection since 1995 to assess and cleanup underground pollution.

State records show the industrial waste started moving offsite in 1999.

Tests show that chemicals such as TCE, vinyl chloride and dioxane have spread half a mile or more under surrounding residential neighborhoods and polluted dozens of private wells used by homeowners to irrigate lawns and gardens.

Nineteen of those wells have contamination that exceeds state standards for groundwater, and dozens more have measurable traces of contamination that do not exceed state limits.

Consultants say they have traced dioxane contamination in a drainage ditch along Farragut Drive to a leaky storm sewer at the Raytheon plant site. Workers have already made temporary repairs to stop the leakage and say a permanent repair of the storm sewer will take a week.

The latest Arcadis report says recent testing confirms previous findings of pollution and includes risk assessment data showing that no one in the neighborhood faces a health risk from the underground chemicals.

Raytheon is working on an interim cleanup plan to pump and treat highly contaminated groundwater directly under its property.

A permanent cleanup of the surrounding neighborhood probably won't begin until next year. Raytheon managers say it would be miraculous if they could remove all of the pollutants form the neighborhood in less than five years.

The Department of Environmental Protection said they just received the report Friday and are still reviewing it.

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