Water Under Review

Flooding may have tainted residents’ wells

by JACK MORSE

The Brunswick News

Don Reichenbach doesn't plan on using his well water any time soon. The Environmental Protection Agency has warned him not to.

The EPA has provided bottled water for Reichenbach, whose property on Floraville Road in northwestern Glynn County abuts the old Brunswick Wood Preserving property, and other residents in that area until water from their wells can be tested.

While previously considered safe, the well water may have been contaminated because flood waters from Tropical Storm Tammy last week could have washed pollutants from the fenced-off wood preserving site into drinking water.

Escambia Treating Co. operated Brunswick Wood Preserving on 84 acres in the area decades ago.  Operations at the facility contaminated the groundwater with creosote, penta-cholorophenal (PCP) and copper chromium-arsenate (CCA), all of which were used in a wood-treating process.  Despite prior Environmental Protection Agency contaminant removal action that began in 1991, remnants of the pollutants remain.

Reichenbach is not happy about the situation.

“This should have been solved a long time ago,” he said.

Brian Farrier, EPA project manager for the site, has said in the past that Brunswick Wood Preserving does not pose a threat as long as people stay outside a fence that surrounds the area.

David Dorian, a member of an EPA emergency response team, arrived in Brunswick this past weekend to assess possible problems the flooding may have caused.