By Betsy Scheinbart
The commissioner of the city Department of Environmental Protection assured Jamaica residents Tuesday that his office is listening to their concerns about a proposal to add more groundwater to the Queens drinking water supply.
More than 200 people attended a public meeting Tuesday evening at York College — two weeks after Community Board 12 members criticized the DEP for not being prepared to answer several questions about the pilot project.
Jamaica residents are particularly wary of the city plans because they faced many years of having to pay more money for lower-quality water than the rest of the city. Up until 1996, Jamaica residents got their water from Jamaica Water Supply Co., a private company which just barely kept the drinking water safe, DEP officials said.
DEP Commissioner Joel Miele spoke at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting, giving an overview of the agency’s six-month pilot project, which is designed to purify Jamaica well water and to determine whether it is possible to integrate it into the borough drinking water system.
The DEP has placed a priority on cleaning up the highly contaminated former West Site Corp. site — where dry cleaning chemicals have seeped into the groundwater — before it begins integrating Jamaica groundwater into the drinking water supply. But area residents are also concerned about gasoline leaks from the MTA bus depot on Liberty Avenue that may have penetrated the aquifer and a number of other contaminated sites in southeast Queens.
Miele acknowledged the community’s concerns, but also emphasized that the city will soon be facing a water shortage if it does not start making use of local resources. City residents currently get the majority of their drinking water from upstate New York.
According to Miele, one largely untapped resource is the Brooklyn-Queens Aquifer system, a layer of sand and gravel below ground which is saturated with water. Jamaica residents currently get a mix of local groundwater and water from upstate, but the DEP hopes to eventually add more local water to the entire Queens drinking supply.
Pumping water out of the aquifers for use in the city’s drinking supply, Miele said, would also reduce the groundwater flooding, which has gotten increasingly worse in the Jamaica area. There is a constant problem with groundwater flooding regardless of whether it is raining.
The level of the groundwater has continued to rise below the earth’s surface, affecting many basements that were built when water levels were lower because Jamaica Water was pumping out much more water than the DEP currently draws from the water under Jamaica.
Groundwater flooding is taking a huge toll on local schools, housing projects and private homes, said City Council Deputy Majority Leader Archie Spigner (D-St. Albans). Spigner said the constant flow of water into basements makes it impossible for people to live in or sell their own homes.
The groundwater contamination of the West Side Corp. site at 107-10 180th St. in Jamaica has been a major concern ever since the state notified residents last year about the severity of the problem. Jamaica Water Supply closed nearby wells in the early 1980s because of the contamination.
Among those who asked questions about the plan to clean the site and the groundwater were state Assemblyman William Scarborough, York College President Dr. Charles Kidd, City Councilman-elect Leroy Comrie and biologist Dr. Dhanonjoy Saha.
They were all looking for assurances that the site and the water below it would be purified before any nearby water is added to the drinking supply. Miele and other DEP officials assured the local leaders that the West Side site would be cleaned and the water would meet city, state and national standards — or else that water would not be added to the drinking supply.
Scarborough also asked the DEP commissioner if the agency had considered using the groundwater for something other than drinking water.
DEP Deputy Commissioner Douglas Greely outlined a few such options, which the agency is exploring. They include the possibility of selling the water to the Long Island Water Corp., John F. Kennedy International Airport, or local businesses such as laundromats.
A Brooklyn company is interested in building a steam and electric plant in Williamsburg, Greely said, and may be willing to drill into the aquifers to get water to turn into steam — another possibility for those waters.
Meanwhile, DEP officials said they did not want to force the aquifer plan down the throats of Jamaica residents, but were hoping to gain the support of the community —— support they acknowledged must be strengthened over the next several months in order for the project to be a success.
Reach reporter Betsy Scheinbart by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 138.
