Hanover
The finding, which college environmental contractors said they made using extensive evidence, was unwelcome news for the residents, the Gorlov family, who say Dartmouth is attempting to divest itself of responsibility for cleaning up the residents’ property.
“In our opinion, they simply try to convince everyone and probably themselves that it’s not their responsibility, that it came not from Rennie Farm but from other sources, like our septic tank,” Ivan Gorlov, a researcher at the Geisel School of Medicine who lives off Hanover Center Road, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “In our opinion, they were very selective in what information to use.”
In a statement provided via email Friday afternoon, college spokeswoman Diana Lawrence noted the efforts Dartmouth already has made to help, but said administrators hadn’t yet decided how to respond to this latest finding.
“The college has provided the Gorlovs with a point-of-entry water treatment system and bottled water, although the data show that their water is safe to drink and that the 1,4-dioxane detected in their well is coming from their own septic system,” Lawrence said. “Dartmouth is continuing to discuss the situation with the Gorlovs, but no decision has been made about what action might be taken next.”
A “plume,” or an underground chemical stream, for months has been flowing from the wooded hill near Lyme, where Dartmouth’s medical school deposited thousands of pounds of test animals in the 1960s and ’70s.
The college recently finished installing a system of pumps to extract and treat the 1,4-dioxane, but has been dogged by concerns from residents about the thoroughness of the process, as well as the threat of a federal lawsuit from neighbors to the site whose well was the first to show signs contamination from Rennie Farm.
That potential legal action was heralded in November by a letter from attorneys for the family, the Higginses, who live on Rennie Road, asking Dartmouth to undertake a more aggressive cleanup or face a suit. Federal law requires that parties threatening to sue give 90 days for polluters to address concerns before taking a case to court; Lawrence on Friday said the college had sent a response to the attorneys’ letter.
Jim Wieck, a hydrogeologist working as an environmental contractor for Dartmouth, said that since this fall he had called in several more scientists to carry out a thorough study of the origins of the 1,4-dioxane in the Gorlovs’ well.
Over the past few months, he and his colleagues measured the depth, water level and chemistry of the Gorlovs’ well, as well as their septic tank.
Wieck said he found chemicals in the well that appeared to have come from the septic system, including what he called a “pharmaceutical” and another substance that he said was “present in all leaching fields.”
He declined to name the substances specifically, citing the residents’ privacy.
Although that finding alone indicated that chemicals from the septic system had entered the Gorlovs’ well, he said, more evidence strengthened the conclusion that the dioxane had not been from Rennie Farm.
When the college first discovered dioxane in the well, Wieck and other officials said they had been taken by surprise. They noted that the Gorlovs’ well is located roughly a mile away from the main source of chemicals, in a different direction than the plume was traveling and atop a hill — although, according to state records, the well is about 300 feet deep.
For the substance to reach the distant well, Wieck said at the time, it most likely would have had to pass along a fracture in the underlying bedrock, drawn there possibly by pressure from a well pumping at a low water level.
After studying the Gorlovs’ well this fall and winter, Wieck found that bedrock fractures intersecting the well were “fairly shallow” — that is, near the top — and that the water level didn’t fall much when pumping occurred.
“Based on a comparison of water levels between the valley (where the dioxane plume is located) and their well, flow to the well would not be expected, or even possible,” Wieck said in a telephone interview on Friday.
Drawing all that information together, Wieck said, the evidence indicates to him that the 1,4-dioxane came from consumer products that found their way into the septic system and then through the leach field into the well.
Household products such as soaps and detergents may contain 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a probable human carcinogen.
The substance is also toxic to humans, and long-term exposure can cause kidney and liver damage, the EPA said.
Back in October, the discovery of dioxane in the Gorlovs’ well was concerning not only to college and state environmental officials but to neighbors of the family, who asked whether bedrock fractures could carry the chemical to their homes next.
On Friday, Wieck said additional evidence made this less of a worry. After gathering information on more wells in the area, he said, many others had specifications like the Gorlovs’ that appeared to make transport of dioxane along fractures unlikely.
“We would not expect to see those conditions, and as it turned out, those conditions didn’t exist,” he said. “So I would say it’s not going to show up randomly.”
The Gorlovs were less optimistic.
“If we assume that the source of 1,4-dioxane is the septic tank, it means that it is the same water in our septic tank and in the well and that we basically drink water from the septic tank,” Ivan and his wife, Olga, said in an email to the neighborhood and Dartmouth on Friday. “We would like to challenge Maureen (O’Leary, the official who announced the school’s conclusion) and anybody else who states so to drink water from our septic tank.”
The Gorlovs, both of whom are Geisel researchers, gave a detailed counterargument in their email.
The family noted “incongruences” between test results in their septic tank and their well that they said indicated water was not flowing from one to the other.
Although 1,4-dioxane appeared both in their septic system and in their well, the Gorlovs said, high concentrations of caffeine were present in the waste tank but not in the well.
They also named several common pharmaceutical compounds, including acetaminophen and penicillin, that showed up in the septic tank and not in the water source.
“We will need to go over (Dartmouth officials’) arguments in more detail and look at the literature,” the Gorlovs said in a separate email to the Valley News. “At the moment we do not feel convinced that they are right.”
In an interview later on Friday, Wieck countered that the substances the Gorlovs cited naturally would not make their way from the septic tank to the well.
“While certain chemicals were detected in the septic tank and not in the well, they would be expected to degrade or decrease in concentration prior to reaching the well,” he said.
In the email where she announced the finding about the Gorlovs’ well, O’Leary, who is the school’s director of environmental health and safety, said Dartmouth planned to hold an open house at Rennie Farm on Feb. 18.
Members of the public may visit the site from 10 a.m. to noon that day to view the new treatment system and ask questions, O’Leary said.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.