Environmental Memoir: Nasty Norwalk water

Map showing location of contamination Source Remediation Area 1 (SRA1) at Kellogg-Deering Well Field Superfund site in Norwalk, Conn. "The Complex" at SRA1 includes an aeration-based extraction system that was designed to help treat tainted groundwater. /EPA image

The second venue for my environmental-damage education was on the Connecticut Gold Coast in filthy rich Fairfield County.

In the summer of 1986, I served as CCAG's fundraising canvas director in Norwalk, which is located in the heart of The Constitution State's most affluent region near New York City. Soon after converting half of the basement in South Norwalk's Methodist Church into CCAG canvas office space, I visited the Kellogg-Deering Well Field Superfund site, which is in one of Norwalk's mostly tony northern neighborhoods.

I parked my car on Slocum Street and could see the flag-pole-high aerator on the other side of the railroad tracks, about a football field's length away.from where I was peering across the empty crew cabin of my crappy-cream-colored Pontiac Sunbird through the passenger window. Unlike the aerator that SRS workers used to evaporate highly contaminated water in Southington, Conn., the Superfund site aerators in Norwark were inside silos. Rather than using an aerator to release deadly toxins into the air, as was the case at SRS in Southington, the aerators in Norwalk helped extract tainted ground water from the poisoned aquifer below for treatment. In a five-year review report filed with the EPA in September 2012, officials at Superfund-site contractor Tetra Tech Nus in Pasadena, Calif., say the aeration effort is falling short of drawing enough groundwater to make significant progress in restoring the aquifer to drinking-water level.

Containing the aeration of the Kellogg-Deering Well Field's contaminated groundwater inside silos limits release of toxins into the air, and the review report found the Slocum Street Aerator safe for human health. But as I gazed the shiny structure a strong place-kick away from my car, I knew the baker's dozen homes on Slocum Street were less than a quarter of the houses packed into tenth-acre plots in the tightly packed subdivision off Main Avenue. I knew that Main Ave, obscured behind the line of maple trees that provided the Slocum Street Aerator with a pastoral backdrop, was lined with houses.

/EPA image