Cleanup:
Toxins to be removed from Burns’s property

GUILDERLAND — After over 40 years, Joan Burns may be able to walk in her backyard without fear.

The federal government has announced that, this September, it plans on removing the toxic waste that it buried on her property a half-century ago.
"It’s been a long time in coming," Gregory Goepfert, the project manager from the Army Corps of Engineers, told The Enterprise.

Goepfert was instrumental in getting the funding for the $650,000 project. Although the project has not been officially approved, Goepfert expects work to begin in September, he said.

The property, on Route 201, was once part of an Army depot. Recent tests performed under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers have shown that much of the buried waste on Burns’s land is toxic and dangerous.
"The results of the samples showed that the materials had hazardous components to them," Goepfert said. "I was able to justify the removal based on these results."

The funds are from the Defense Environmental Restoration Program for Formerly Used Defense Sites, known as FUDS, but funding is hard to come by.

The New York District, which covers New York and New Jersey, has an estimated $500 million in clean-up costs and an annual budget of $3 million to $5 million, Goepfert said.
"We’re fortunate that we’re able to do this," Goepfert said. "It’s a priority project and I’m very happy to be able to get started."

Burns said Monday that she’s optimistic, although the project isn’t definite.
"I’m happy with the way it’s going, but everything’s pending," she said.
"I’m quite pleased..." she continued. "We appreciate all The Altamont Enterprise has done, the articles and so on, that has really helped a great deal."

Goepfert also said earlier that Enterprise stories and editorials on the depot pollution had helped secure funds.
"I requested it over and over again," Burns told The Enterprise a year ago, before samples were taken from her property. "I hope something is about to happen."

Burns and her late husband, Milton, bought their house with 40 acres in 1963. The property was once part of the Army depot that was built in Guilderland and New Scotland in the 1940’s.

The Burnses bought their property from the General Services Administration when the depot was being phased out; they were not told about waste being buried there, Burns said.

News of the Love Canal broke in 1979; Hooker Chemical had buried toxic waste in western New York where houses were later built and residents then suffered health problems.

Burns heard about the Love Canal and she and her husband noted areas where nothing grew and their soil appeared to have an oily substance on the surface.
"I became suspicious," Burns said. Ever since, she had been in contact with a variety of agencies — county, state, and federal — trying to get answers.
Burns, a nurse, said her family has suffered "a lot of health problems" that she believes are associated with the buried waste.
"My husband died of colon cancer in 1995," she said. "He was the one out on the land."

Her two horses, who weren’t genetically related, also died of cancer, Burns said. She had autopsies done at Cornell, she said, and found that both had died of lymphoma.
She has also had cats that "mysteriously died," she said, after they had "gotten out by mistake."

Burns told The Enterprise last year that she can’t sell the land or use it in its current state.
"I don’t like walking on it," she said. "I don’t use it. It’s wasted land."

Burns’s land is located on Depot Road, within in the Black Creek drainage area. The Black Creek feeds into the Watervliet Reservoir, Guilderland’s major source of drinking water.

Thadeus Ausfeld — also instrumental in pushing for funds — has been concerned that the waste buried on Burns’s property will affect the town’s water supply and the groundwater. Ausfeld operates the town’s water plant and, with Charles Rielly, co-chairs the Army Corps of Engineers’ Restoration Advisory Board, largely made up of local citizens. Burns also serves on the board.
"The people who live along [Route] 201 here should be concerned and get involved," Ausfeld told The Enterprise last year. "The public has to wake up."

Cleaning up

This week, Ausfeld said he was pleased that Burns’s property may be cleaned up.
"The engineering evaluation looks really good," he said. "There’s definitely bad stuff there. She certainly deserves to have it cleaned up."

The Army Corps will basically dig toxic materials and remove them from the site, Goepfert said.
"We’ll be removing materials from two basic areas," he said. Drums filled with a tar substance and bottles with paint residue and ink will be dug out of the ground and taken away. The holes will later be filed in, he said.
At the back of Burns’s property, bottles and vials "with an orange liquid and a smell to it," will also be removed, Goepfert said. The toxic material will be taken to a licensed disposal facility, he said.

The project should take 60 to 90 days, he said. A workplan should be created in August, he said.
Asked if Burns would have to leave her property for the cleanup, Goepfert said, "Oh, no. She can stay in her house. We’re not going to uproot her."

A temporary road may be set up in the back of Burns’s property for trucks to transport the toxic materials, Goepfert said.
The public has until July 30 to comment on the project. "I don’t expect anyone to be against this action," he said.

Other "areas of concern"

Including the Burns property, the Army Corps of Engineers has classified nine areas of concern, or sites that were determined to be a risk to human health.

In the 1940’s, the United States Army chose a site near the Black Creek in Guilderland Center for a depot. The Army diverted the creek — now a tributary to Guilderland’s main source of drinking water — into two halves, and, as was common practice in that era, sent waste into the creek or buried it on site or possibly near the site. The depot closed in 1969.

Most of the former depot land now belongs to the Northeastern Industrial Park.

The Army Corps of Engineers was then assigned to assess the environmental damage stemming from the military use of the Former Schenectady Army Depot, Voorheesville Area, which was originally farmland and swamp or marshland.

The Army formed the Restoration Advisory Board to assess the situation. For at least seven years, members of the board have been urging citizens and government officials to advocate the cleanup.

In 2002 and 2003, The Enterprise ran a series of articles outlining the depot’s contamination.

Despite Ausfeld and Rielly’s insistence that the advisory board should meet more often, meetings are usually once a year.

A Restoration Advisory Board meeting will be held tonight (Thursday), at the Lynnwood Reformed Church on Carman Road. Burns’s project will be discussed, as well as other plans for next year, Goepfert said.

Ausfeld told The Enterprise that he will ask about cleaning up areas of concern one, four, five, and eight. Those areas, especially area of concern one, the United States Army Southern Landfill, and area of concern eight, the Black Creek, should, similarly to Burns’s land, be studied and cleaned up soon, he said.

Three years ago, Goepfert secured FUDS funding, originally intended to clean up a former burn-pit (area of concern 3) from which a toxic plume is emanating. The money was used instead to clean up a site by Guilderland High School where the school district was building a new bus facility. It cost about a half-a-million dollars.