GUILDERLAND — So far, the Army Corps of Engineers has removed 1,400 cubic yards of soil from Joan Burns’s property on Depot Road. More work is planned for the spring.
"We’re going after the areas where we had anticipated finding material," said Gregory Goepfert, the project manager from the Army Corps.

The $650,000 cleanup of hazardous Army waste began in September after decades of worry for Burns.
"I’m very optimistic," she told The Enterprise on Tuesday. She added, "I’m anxious to see what more they’ve found. I’ve been promised a complete report."

One container discovered in the cleanup tested high for mercury, said Goepfert.
Burns said she’s someone who loves the country, but, once she learned there were hazardous wastes buried on her land, "It was always on my mind," she said. "There’s a certain amount of apprehension."
When she sees the trucks roll out with soils, she said, "It’s a positive thing...It gives you a feeling of security to know something is being done."

The property was once part of the Army depot that was built in Guilderland and New Scotland in the 1940’s. Burns and her late husband, Milton, bought their house with 40 acres in 1963 from the General Services Administration when the depot was being phased out; they were not told about the waste 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 on their land and the soil appeared to have an oily substance on the surface.
"I became suspicious," Burns told The Enterprise earlier. 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 couldn’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," she said as she pushed for cleanup.
"I requested it over and over again," Burns told The Enterprise in the summer of 2004 before samples were taken from her property. "I hope something is about to happen."

Funding

The Restoration Advisory Board, which advises the Army Corps of Engineers on the cleanup of the old Army depot, had pushed for testing that would show if the materials buried in Burns’s 40 acres were hazardous.
The tests showed that much of the buried waste was toxic and dangerous. "The results of the samples showed that the materials had hazardous components to them," Goepfert told The Enterprise this summer. "I was able to justify the removal based on the results."

Goepfert secured $650,000 for the project from the Defense Environmental Restoration Program for Formerly Used Defense Sites, known as FUDS, which is greatly underfunded.

The New York District, covering New York and New Jersey, has an estimated $500 million in cleanup costs and an annual budget of $3 million to $5 million, Goepfert said this summer.

With hurricane disasters since then, federal funds are even harder to come by now.
Asked if the work on Burns’s property is staying within the $650,000 procured, Goepfert said last week, "I don’t know that just yet."

Three years ago, Goepfert secured FUDS funding, originally intended to clean up a former burn pit from which a toxic plume is emanating. The money was used instead to clean up a site by Guilderland High School where the district was building a new bus facility, after buried Army debris was discovered there. That cleanup cost about half-a-million dollars.

More work

The initial plan for Burns’s property was to remove materials from two areas in a period of 60 to 90 days.

Drums filled with a tar substance and bottles with paint residue and ink were to be dug out of the ground and taken away. At the back of Burns’s property, bottles and vials with an orange liquid were to be removed.

Goepfert said last week that, of the 1,400 cubic yards of soil that have been removed, 1,100 have already been trucked away and the remaining 300 cubic yards were slated to be removed this week.
All of the soils that tested as non-hazardous are being taken to Albany County’s landfill, he said, to be used as "cover material."

A total of 61 drums have been removed, all of which are flammable, he said. They contain a fuel-based cleaning solvent along with sludge and they will be sent to a licensed disposal facility this week, Goepfert said.

Also, he said, three roll-off containers, similar to Dumpsters, were found. After testing, one was found to be non-hazardous and the other two were flammable; one of the flammable containers also tested high for mercury.

Additional work remains to be done, said Goepfert.
An area near the Black Creek bed was probed and "sub-surface metal disturbances" were found, he said. Test pits were dug, which revealed gallon cans of cranberry juice or sauce, which are not hazardous.

Burns’s land is located on Route 201, within the Black Creek drainage area. The Black Creek feeds into the Watervliet Reservoir, Guilderland’s major source of drinking water. (See related story.)

Thadeus Ausfeld 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 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."
"We’ll look in that area in the spring to see if we missed any drums," said Goepfert. "We only found one or two in that area."

The reason for the wait is for more favorable weather conditions, he said.
Several areas were tested with an electromagnetic detector. "We found some indication we might have something," said Goepfert.

Buried metal fence posts were discovered as were metal pipes and pill bottles, similar to those found elsewhere on Burns’s property. Although the contents of the pill bottles have not yet been analyzed, said Goepfert, it appears to be salt as in the bottles that have been tested already.
Asked who would be responsible for cleanup if hazardous wastes were found on Burns’s property after the current project is complete, Goepfert said, "The Army Corps takes responsibility for the site even after we’re done, as long as the materials are connected with former defense use."

Burns told The Enterprise this week that she is looking forward to the finishing work that will be done in the spring.
"Because of the weather, they plan to wrap it up temporarily this Friday," she said. "They’re taking out their equipment. They’ll be back in the spring to finish up and do the cosmetic part."

A large hill that Burns and her late husband, when they first bought the property, envisioned their children sledding on will be removed, she said.
"It’s not part of the natural topography," she said. "When we found oil slicks there, we never let the kids use it, and now they’re grown up."
Asked if she felt confident all of the hazardous materials will be removed, Burns said, "When they found the additional drums...I was surprised...You never know with 40 acres. You never really have 100-percent security everything is out. They’ve been doing a thorough job, though, and I feel it’s in good hands."

She praised The Enterprise for its coverage of the problem, which has spanned more than a decade.

Other Areas of Concern

Including the Burns property, the Army Corps of Engineers has classified nine Areas of Concern, called AOC’s, sites that were determined to be a risk to human health.
Looking ahead to future projects, Goepfert said, "We look forward to completing feasibility studies on AOC 1 and AOC 7."

Area of Concern 1 is an Army landfill in the southern part of the old depot, next to the railroad tracks and bounded by Route 201 near where it meets Stone Road. A pond on the site is about 1,500 feet from the main channel of the Black Creek.

Area of Concern 7, a triangular disposal area, is in the southeast end and contains buried debris such as glass bottles and railroad ties.

Both of these areas are located on property now owned by the Northeastern Industrial Park, which occupies most of the former depot site.

Goepfert anticipates studies on areas of concern 1 and 7 will be complete by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, 2006.

Those studies have not yet been started.
"We would like to get those underway," said Goepfert. "They take several months to complete."
He also said he has been "very, very encouraged by the level of cooperation" from two state agencies — the departments of health and of environmental conservation — and from Albany County’s health department. He praised Heather Bishop from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Charlotte Bethoney from the state’s Department of Health, and Ron Groves from the county’s health department.
Goepfert concluded, "I think we’ve accomplished something the community and Mrs. Burns have pressed for...I feel personally satisfied."