An industrial area of Queens near a school and a day care center was designated a federal Superfund site on Thursday, 60 years after a company that commonly dumped radioactive material into the sewers departed.
Judith Enck, regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said higher-than-normal levels of radioactivity were found in and under buildings and sidewalks in a parcel measuring three-quarters of an acre in the Ridgewood section.
The property is the former home of the defunct Wolff-Alport Chemical Co., which until 1954 extracted rare earth minerals from monazite sand, with the radioactive element thorium as a byproduct. Until thorium became marketable in the Atomic Age, the company dumped it into the sewers.
The site now includes an auto repair shop, a warehouse, a deli and other small businesses and Enck said a public middle school and a private day care center are within about 900 feet.
“What has me particularly concerned is this is a site in a densely populated neighborhood, very close to where people live, where they work, where they go to school, where they send their kids to day care,” she said during a telephone conference from Manhattan.
Enck said it was too soon to say whether the businesses would have to be dismantled. Alberto Rodriguez, owner of the repair shop, declined to comment.
The school and day care center are not included in the Superfund designation but Enck said they will be investigated further. The EPA has been investigating the site since 2012 and has already sealed a hole where radioactive gas was entering the school building from an unoccupied basement storage area.
Other protections, including layers of concrete, lead and steel under building floors and sidewalks, were already installed.
“There is no immediate threat to nearby residents, employees or customers,” Enck said. But she noted that heavy exposure to thorium can cause lung, pancreas or bone cancer, as well as liver damage.
She said the EPA will investigate the nature and extent of the contamination and how to best address it. It could take a couple of years to devise a plan and hold public meetings, she said.
The EPA will also try to find someone legally responsible to pay for the multimillion-dollar cleanup.
“If you can find what’s called responsible parties, the parties that created the pollution, we go to them first to pay for the cleanup, or their successor companies,” Enck said.
There are two other active federal Superfund sites in New York City: the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and Newtown Creek on the Brooklyn-Queens border. New York state has 87 federal Superfund sites, the third-most in the country, Enck said.