Groundwater plumes beneath an office complex at 1111 Marcus Avenue in Lake Success and a neighboring property in New Hyde Park “represents a significant threat to public health or the environment,” according to a report released by the state Department of Environmental Conservation last Thursday.
“Volatile organic compounds” including “dichlorothene, trichloroethene, tetrachloroethene” have been found in the underground groundwater plume of the complex, a state investigation found.
Exposure to trichloroethylene has been found to cause liver and kidney cancer in animals, according to the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Exposure to tetrachloroethene and dichlorothene has been found to cause irritation to the skin, heart and liver, as well as cause drowsiness, nausea, vomiting and cardiac arrhythmias.
A groundwater plume beneath 400 Lakeville Road, the home of Long Island Jewish Medical Center’s Women, Infants and Children Center, contains Freon 22, the state also found.
Exposure to Freon-22 can cause dizziness, loss of concentration, depression and/or cardiac arrhythmia if inhaled in high concentrations, and can also cause asphyxiation if inhaled in confined spaces, according to the center.
The Freon found at 400 Lakeville Road “migrated from [1111 Marcus Avenue]” because the two water plumes “commingle,” the report said.
State officials said the groundwater plumes do not represent a threat to tenants of the two buildings.
“People are not drinking the contaminated groundwater because municipal water suppliers have taken appropriate actions to ensure that the public water supply continues to meet drinking water standards,” according to the DEC.
The DEC called for existing water treatment machines for 1111 Marcus Avenue to be modified to prevent the “intrusion of chemical vapors” into existing and future buildings located at the complex. The state agency also proposed the installation of a 120-gallon-per-minute groundwater and extraction system next to a 730 gallon-per-minute system currently on the site, bringing the total amount of water treated to 850 gallons per minute.
At the 400 Lakeville Road, the DEC is proposing to install a “public water supply wellhead treatment system” and implement a response plan if containments “exceed site-specific action levels.”
The cost of the project is estimated at $32 million, which includes $8,600,000 to construct the system and $1,4 million in annual operation costs, according to the state DEC.
The environmental cleanup of the complex is the responsibility of a former owner of the site, Lockheed Martin, according to the company’s website.
A public hearing on the proposed actions has been scheduled for Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m. at Great Neck South Middle School, located at 349 Lakeville Road.
Village of Lake Success Mayor Ronald Cooper said the village and other elected officials from the Great Neck peninsula have been in contact with the state DEC regarding the study for the past 15 months.
“We’ve been providing input as to what we thought the remediation efforts should be,” Cooper said.
He said he believes the DEC’s proposal is the “best scenario in consideration of the least amount of dislocation for traffic in the peninsula and accommodating the public safety issues.”
Gary Cambre, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, said in an e-mail he believes the DEC’s proposal “is equally protective of the water supply as other options while creating the least amount of disruption to the community and area neighborhoods.”
In a second e-mail sent by Cambre to Blank Slate Media, Lockheed Martin said that the company has already taken extensive action to address environmental problems on the site.
“Lockheed Martin has constructed a robust building-wide vapor intrusion mitigation system – also called a sub-slab depressurization system (SSDS) – to ensure building occupants are protected and to prevent vapor intrusion at the former Unisys facility,” the e-mail said.
The e-mail statement said Lockheed Martin also installed temporary mitigation systems in the building at 1111 Marcus Ave. in 2008 “where air levels were identified that exceeded New York Department of Health guidance values.”
The indoor air quality of the building has met state health department “guidance values” since then, the company said.
The statement said the company, which purchased the property from Loral Corporation in 1996, has and will continue to conduct air-quality monitoring for the building in conjunction with health department officials.
The company said the main source of the contaminants on the properties resulted from the manufacturing operations of Unisys, which included waste solvents such as TCE and PCE.
“The waste solvents were discharged to a dry well on an outside corner of the building and are the main source of the contaminants,” the company said.
In 2011, a Village of Lake Success Planning Board study found subterranean gases and contaminated ground water in the soil beneath North Shore-LIJ’s Center for Advanced Medicine, also located at 1111 Marcus Avenue. The center offers outpatient mammography, radiology and other oncology treatments.
The contaminants ranged from tetracholoride, which causes cancer and liver damage, to isopropylamine, butanone, acetone and dichloromethane, planning board member Alan Mindel said at a December 2011 meeting.
Mindel, who elected to the village board of trustees on Tuesday, was the only member of the six-person planning board to oppose approval of the state’s environmental quality review findings needed for North Shore-LIJ to convert warehouse space to medical offices at 1111 Marcus Avenue facility.
Mindel said the chemicals caused “(Symptoms) like cancer, depression, dizziness and all kinds of items going on.”
Village officials in July 2012 after approving plans for the building said they believed the environmental issues have bee addressed.
The 94-acre 1111 Marcus Avenue site was originally constructed by the U.S. Government in 1941 to be used as a plant for Sperry Gyroscope, which manufactured weapons used during World War II.
Since then, the site has been used for various enterprises. It served as the original home of the United Nations and in 1951 was sold to a series of military contractors, including Lockheed Martin.
After Lockheed sold the property in 2000, it was redeveloped as a mixed-use complex that includes the studio for Public Access Television, Hain Celestial and North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System’s Center for Advanced Medicine.
