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EPA Announces Important Milestone in Cleanup of Great Neck Superfund Site

Release Date: 05/04/2004
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(#04066) New York, N.Y. -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today marked an important milestone in the cleanup of the Stanton Cleaners Area Ground Water Contamination Superfund site in Great Neck with the announcement that it has finished the short-term cleanup at the site, and completed the installation of ground water and soil treatment systems that will continue to operate until the contamination is cleaned up. "We're in the home stretch of the cleanup at the Stanton Cleaners site," said Jane M. Kenny, EPA Regional Administrator. "It's a testament to the success of the Superfund program that we can now add this site to the list of 20 others in Nassau County in which we are in the last phases of cleanups." The Stanton Cleaners site, located at 110 Cutter Mill Road in the village of Great Neck Plaza, in the Township of North Hempstead, New York, is home to an active dry cleaning business. Past disposal practices caused the soil and ground water at the site to become contaminated with tetrachloroethene (PCE), causing drinking water, soil and indoor air contamination. The site was listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) of the nation's most hazardous waste sites on May 6, 1999. EPA took immediate action and installed a system to remove vapors from the soil that could potentially seep into nearby buildings. To date, the system has removed more than 16,000 pounds of PCE from the ground. EPA also removed some underground storage tanks from the site, and installed a system to clean the ground water. This system has already treated nearly 60 million gallons of contaminated ground water and is expected to operate for about 20 years. EPA will continue to monitor the site regularly to ensure that the systems are running properly.