Black River dans la mire de l'EPA

Photo: OABONNY

Dans les efforts de nettoyer les Grands Lacs, on essaye de trouver les sources de contamination. Les recherches ont trouvé du BPC dans les sédiments de la rivière Black River qui se jette dans le Lac Ontatio. Le département de l'environnement de l'état ne peut pas déterminer de façon certaine la source de cette contamination: il y a une papetière et le site d'une ancienne fermée, un atelier d'usinage, l'usine de traitement des eaux usées et une centrale hydro-électrique. La contamination pourrait venir de l'une ou de toutes ces installations, mais on croit bien que cela c'est fait dans le passé.

Parce qu'il sera très difficile de trouver l'entreprise coupable de la pollution et lui faire payer la facture, l'état s'est tourné vers l'EPA qui aura plus de moyens pour continuer l'enquête et s'il s'avère qu'il est impossible de passer la facture au coupables, ce sera l'EPA qui payera la note.

Pour des raisons de tourisme et de santé, on considère que c'est important de nettoyer cette source constante de pollution de BPC du lac Ontario. Le BPC peut causer des cancers et affecter les système immunitaire, de reproduction, nerveux et endocriniens.
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"Black River in EPA sights

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it wants to add sections of the Black River that run through Carthage and West Carthage to its list of the nation's most hazardous contaminated sites. Inclusion on the EPA's Superfund National Priorities List would initiate further study and cleanup of the harmful pollutants in the river's water and sediment. "The reason this site has been proposed is because theBlack River empties into the Great Lakes — Lake Ontario," said EPA spokesman Michael J. Basile, with the agency's Region 2 office in Buffalo. "We're concerned about the fact that this could have an impact on the recreation and fishing, and ultimately on the Lake Ontario basin."

The precise boundaries of a potential cleanup project would be determined through further study if the Black River site is added to the priority list. Previous studies by both the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Conservation Region 6 have detected the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and other hazardous substances in the Black River near the villages of Carthage and West Carthage. PCBs once were produced for industrial uses but are now known to cause cancer and harm the body's immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems.

The contamination poses no immediate public health risk because much of the material is compacted in river sediment, but its presence near Lake Ontario merits attention, Mr. Basile said. DEC Region 6 brought the site to the attention of the EPA after a 2005 attempt to garner funding for the cleanup from the state's hazardous waste remediation program. "The Albany office wanted to have a responsible party that they could go after" to recoup costs for a cleanup, said Philip G. Waite, a DEC Region 6 environmental engineer. "In the end we realized we didn't really know what the source was. We don't have a real smoking gun."That was when regional DEC officials turned to the EPA as a potential funding source for the project. If the Black River is added to the Superfund list, the EPA will try to assign responsibility for the contamination and recover costs for the cleanup — but if that proves impossible, the EPA can fund the cleanup independently. Active and defunct paper mills, a machine shop, the Carthage/West Carthage combined sewage treatment plant and a hydroelectric power plant in the area all could be possible sources of the pollutants, an EPA press release said. Mr. Waite said the current assumption is that the contamination is historical, not ongoing.

Its effects are being felt, though. DEC's concerns about the river were sparked by studies on Lake Ontario's water quality in the early 2000s. Searching for potential sources for PCB contamination in the lake, DEC investigators looked at several sites upstream. "What they discovered was a significant concentration of sediments in a sandbar in Carthage. ... It's definitely an ongoing source into Lake Ontario," Mr. Waite said. Preliminary studies by EPA last summer confirmed elevated PCB levels downstream from present and previous industrial sites."

Excerpts from article written by Joanna Richards published in the Watertown Daily Times here: http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20100304/NEWS03/303049946