Ozone Park soil contamination to be removed

From the Queens Chronicle:

Work started this week on the controversial project to remove toxic chemicals from a former industrial site in Ozone Park.

The work along 100th Street between 101st and 103rd avenues will clean eight bays under the former Ozone Park LIRR station that were once used for storage by Ozone Industries, an aircraft parts manufacturer that operated out of an adjacent factory until the late 1990s.

Ozone Industries placed drums in the ground below the bays that contained a chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, a substance linked to some forms of cancer and problems of the central nervous system. The chemical is used in aircraft manufacturing.

For the past decade, End Zone, the successor company to Ozone Industries, has been working with the city and the state to remediate TCE contamination. The eight bays where the work will be done has been labeled a state Superfund site.

John Durnin, a representative from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, spoke to Community Board 9 about the status of the project that had been scheduled to begin last month. Durnin did not say what caused the delay, but did detail what kind of work will be done.

He said the concrete floor of the bays will be removed and the soil will be excavated.

“The contamination is in the soil,” Durnin explained. “It will be trucked away in sealed trucks.”

Air monitors will be placed around the site and workers will be assigned to shifts to make sure no dangerous level of the chemical is recorded.

“The work is going to be done inside the closed bays,” Durnin said. “There will be no outside work done. The contaminated soil will not be exposed.”

Some of the contamination will be vented into the air, but only trace amounts that the DEC says is not dangerous.

Of course not.