Tests show Ramtown pipes no threat to Brick

Tests show Ramtown
pipes no threat to Brick

Parkway Water Co.

for possible buyout

BY KARL VILACOBA

Staff Writer

BRICK — The results of a series of tests for contaminant buildups in Parkway Water Co.’s pipe system have been encouraging to date, according to Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority Executive Director Kevin Donald.

The BTMUA has been involved in a due diligence period with the company in recent months, studying the utility in preparation for a possible buyout. Parkway Water, based in Marlboro, serves more than 1,800 homes and businesses in the Ramtown section of Howell, including three schools — Ramtown Elementary School, Greenville Elementary School and Howell Middle School South.

Parkway customers were notified last year that their water supply had excess levels of radium-226 and radium-228, naturally occurring elements in the soil that can become activated by the introduction of fertilizers and lime, as well as by the movement of the soil.

Donald said the results of six BTMUA tests have detected no significant evidence of scaling, a condition in which contaminants remain in water pipes due to a calcification process that leads to their buildup. The authority plans to conduct a seventh test on pipes near the Greenville Elementary School but has waited until classes were out for summer to begin.

The results of the scaling tests could be a deal-breaker for the BTMUA, a semi-autonomous body that must receive the Township Council’s approval before it sells water to customers outside of Brick.

Brick Council President Stephen Acropolis has expressed reservations about buying "another French’s Landfill" — a reference to the township’s 1973 purchase of a Sally Ike Road garbage dump that would later be added to the federal Superfund list and has cost Brick millions of dollars to remediate. Acropolis has also said the township would need assurances that contaminants would not circulate back through Brick’s water system.

But testing to date indicates there is no chance that radium deposits could wash back into the BTMUA’s supply, Donald said. If the purchase went ahead, the BTMUA would shut down Parkway’s contaminated well system for good, he said. Parkway water has taken four con­taminated wells off-line to date.

"The whole question of that water coming back — it’s a moot point," Donald said.

Donald said the BTMUA is expecting a report from an independent acquisition firm at the end of the month.

A final deci­sion on a Parkway Water purchase would not be likely until the early fall, he said.

The cancer risk for Parkway Water’s customers has been assessed by the De­partment of Environmental Protection as being one in 10,000 if an individual were to drink 2 liters of the contaminated wa­ter every day for 70 years. A company no­tice issued to Parkway Water’s customers in June 2003 advised that individuals on chemotherapy, undergoing transplant surgery, or infants, might be at a higher rate of risk by drinking the water. Ra­dium affects a person because the body does not flush the element, instead allow­ing it to absorb into the bones.