L. Salford quarry back on EPA's hazardous cleanup list

A quarry in Lower Salford, Montgomery County, that has been under the eye of the federal government since 1987 for groundwater contamination vaulted back onto the priority cleanup list yesterday.

For the second time since 1990, the defunct three-acre site at 610 Quarry Rd. was placed on an Environmental Protection Agency's priorities list, entitling it to federal cleanup money and remediation, said Roy Seneca, an EPA spokesman.

The site was among 10 others across the country added to the hazardous-waste cleanup list yesterday.

The quarry became a dump for commercial and industrial waste in the 1950s. From 1960 until 1990, a ceramic-tile company in Lansdale disposed sludge and other waste there, Seneca said.

The trigger that caused the EPA to act was the possibility that boron, a by-product of tile-making, might be spreading in groundwater from the site in directions not yet detected, Seneca said.

"No homes or businesses are threatened, but we need to address this groundwater contamination and determine where it could potentially be migrating," he said.

Since the 1980s, the agency has spent $10 million in cleanup at the quarry, including running public water lines to 113 homes whose wells were contaminated within a half-mile radius of the quarry.

With yesterday's action, no new wells were believed to be contaminated, said Seneca and a local official.

"Our wells are not affected by the quarry," said Tony Bellitto, executive director of the North Penn Water Authority. He said most drinking water for the area is piped in from Lake Galena in Bucks County, but 20 percent is from wells that aren't near the quarry.

An EPA time line shows the last studies of the site dated from 2002 and 2007. Those studies indirectly led to yesterday's announcement, but it took a while, Seneca said.

"It took longer than usual because of the history of the site," Seneca said.

The quarry was used to mine shale in the 1900s.

The Lansdale tile company, American Olean, that used the quarry was a subsidiary of National Gypsum Co. until 1990, when it became independent before being absorbed by Armstrong World Industries Inc.

Nancy Spurlock, spokeswoman for the Dallas-based New NGC Inc., whose predecessor, the National Gypsum Co., once owned the site, said her firm has nothing to do with the quarry now.

All ties ended when National Gypsum, a defunct building-supply company, filed for bankruptcy in 1990 and set up a Philadelphia-based trust, which owns the quarry and is responsible for future remediation at the site.

Concern first arose about contamination leaching from the quarry in the late 1980s when studies of nearby private wells showed high levels of boron.

The quarry was on and off the Superfund priority list twice due to disagreement over whether the level of contamination was high enough to cause harm.

Exposure to large amounts of boron for short periods of time can injure the stomach, intestines, liver, kidney, and brain.