The gas works and storage tanks of Con Ed’s predecessor company in 1890. Photo courtesy of Con Ed
By Sabina Mollot
After a two-year break, Con Ed this week resumed an ongoing study of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for manufactured gas plant (MGP) impacts and contaminants.
The utility noted on its website earlier this week that it would be doing indoor air testing from March 10-14 in certain buildings in ST/PCV.
The work was described as a routine part of its investigation of the complex, formerly home to MGP sites at East 14th Street, East 17th Street, East 19th Street and East 21st Street.
The former 21st Street Works MGP site occupied two thirds of the space that’s now Peter Cooper Village. Impacts have also been found in Stuyvesant Cove Park.
In its online notice (at coned.com/mgp), the company provided a list of addresses where testing would be done. In Peter Cooper Village, the testing sites are at all 21 buildings. In Stuyvesant Town, the testings sites are at 16 Stuyvesant Oval, 245 Avenue C, 522 and 524 East 20th Street and 615, 625, 635 and 645 East 14th Street.
Any contaminants and impacts are all leftovers from the days when ST/PCV was known as the Gashouse District, home to gas plants and holders where coal and oil was converted into gas for heating, lighting and cooking.
Con Ed’s manufacturing and storage of gas began in the 1840s and continued for a century until the property was sold to Metropolitan Life. Byproducts of the gas conversion included tar and purifier wastes, which were materials formed during the process before the gas was given to customers.
The last time Con Ed did investigation work on the property was in February of 2012 when it also did an indoor air study. Prior to that, in 2011, the company said it was looking at ways to “remediate” or clean up Peter Cooper Village, which was more heavily impacted by MGPs than Stuyvesant Town. However, no plan was ever announced. Con Ed is working with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the NYS Department of Health on the project, which began in 2006.
When asked about the ongoing work and plan for remediation, a spokesperson for Con Ed, Bob McGee, said the investigations at the four MGP sites in ST/PCV have already been completed. Though he didn’t share the results, he did say that reports have been submitted to the NYSDEC.
“Con Ed has submitted alternative analysis reports for each site that analyzes potential remedial alternatives,” said McGee in a written statement. “NYSDEC has reviewed these reports and is in the process of preparing draft Decision Documents for each site that will present NYSDEC’s proposed remedial alternative. When these Decision Documents are complete they will be issued for public comment and a public hearing will be held. After NYSDEC considers public comments they will issue a final Decision Documents presenting the remedy that Con Ed must implement.”
The purpose of the study is to determine the potential hazards of human exposure to contaminants that could happen through breathing, ingesting or touching them.
Con Ed has said that because the contaminants have been found two feet or below the surface of the ground, the public is not expected to come into contact with them.
Exposure to contaminated groundwater is also unlikely, the company has said, because residents are served by a municipal water system.
