Spilled oil to be cleaned up at Cumru power plant

Jan 17 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - C. Ryan Barber Reading Eagle, Pa.

Sixty years ago, a plot of land in Cumru Township was picked for the towering Titus Station Generating Plant because of access to the Schuylkill River, a rail line and coal.

Now, with its closure just two years away, plant operators have said some of that land needs to be decontaminated.

Before the plant was sold to NRG Energy Inc. of Princeton, N.J., as part of an acquisition last month, GenOn Energy informed the state Department of Environmental Protection of its intent to address a contaminated area surrounding two combustion turbines, which resemble aircraft engines.

The undeveloped site, used solely for operating the turbines, is contaminated with a small amount of leaked lube oil and, to a lesser extent, an oil similar to diesel.

DEP deputy press secretary Kevin Sunday said the plant along Poplar Neck Road excavated many tons of soil after fuel oil leaked in the mid-1990s.

This time, the cleanup efforts are focused on a small amount of groundwater around the turbines, where monitoring has revealed minute amounts of oil, NRG spokesman David Gaier said. With so little oil, Gaier said the water will be bailed out of about a dozen monitoring wells around the site.

"No sources of drinking water were affected," Gaier said, adding that the plant will likely do aquifer testing to confirm that belief. "That's what we believe. We want it to go away completely."

Cumru had until Tuesday to submit a request to be involved in developing the cleanup effort.

At a meeting Tuesday, township commissioners acknowledged receiving DEP notices of the cleanup but did not further discuss the effort.

"If the power plant or DEP schedule any meetings on this matter, the township will make every effort to participate," said Jeanne E. Johnston, township manager.

The plant's cleanup notice begins the voluntary process of addressing contamination in exchange for liability protection. That relief is contingent upon the plant filing a final cleanup report and meeting DEP standards, which are lower for industrial, nonresidential sites such as Titus Station.

The leaked oil could be a lung or skin irritant if it were inhaled or consumed in large quantities, Sunday said. But with the site's use and the small size of the leak, he said there was little cause for concern.

"That the soil was on-site at this power plant means a very minimal potential impact to public health," Sunday said.

Contact C. Ryan Barber: 610-371-5081 or rbarber@readingeagle.com.