“Duanesburg Supervisor Rene Merrihew said last week that recent water tests of the Normans Kill conducted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed the existence of runoff into the stream from the leach field of the town’s long-closed landfill, but that it hasn’t caused any contamination. If so — and DEC won’t comment since it’s negotiating with the town to eliminate the runoff — it should be considered good news on two counts.
The first is that the water quality of the creek, which empties into the Watervliet Reservoir, hasn’t been affected by whatever it was that a group of area high school students saw flowing into the stream near the old dump site last fall. (The students reported the seepage being orange in color and foul-smelling. They subsequently conducted water tests at the site and got more suspicious when they found dramatically lower insect counts. Then they found town records of groundwater tests which indicated excessive chemical levels near the creek.) The reservoir supplies drinking water to thousands of Capital Region residents.
The second cause for relief is that the DEC — in apparently confirming leachate seepage near the landfill and forcing the town to address it — has lessened the likelihood any contamination will take place sometime in the future. Groundwater that may be clean today could bear toxic pollutants tomorrow; that’s why DEC maintains a zero-tolerance policy for leachate seepage.
If Merrihew’s assessment of the situation pans out, it means that the serious problem feared by the students in the Schoharie River Center project didn’t exist. But it also means there was the potential. With the town and DEC addressing the issue, that potential has been diminished.”
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Schenectady Daily Gazette 28 August 2009.