The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon test indoor air quality as a follow up to an eight-year clean-up of groundwater believed to have been contaminated by the old General Electric Powerex plant on West Genesee Street in Auburn.

Ninety residents in the Auburn/Union Springs area received letters from the EPA asking them to open their homes in April to a precautionary investigation of air quality. These homes are possibly impacted by contaminated groundwater in the vicinity of the Cayuga Groundwater Contamination Superfund Site.

The EPA will hold a public availability session on from 6:30 to 9 p.m., Wednesday, March 4 at the Union Springs High School cafeteria. The presentation will begin at 7 p.m. to inform the public about vapor intrusion and sampling and to allow questions of EPA, county and state representatives.

A map of the affected area will be presented at the information session, said Isabel Rocha Rodriguez, Remedial Project Manager for the EPA. Houses on West Genesee Street and Pinckney Road were among those contacted, she said.

A volatile organic compound, trichloroethylene (TCE), was found in groundwater near the site. TCE easily evaporates into the air from groundwater by rising through soil, potentially affecting indoor air quality.

Adequate ventilation will help reduce indoor air levels of TCE. If it is in the air as a result of vapor intrusion, a sub-slab depressurization system, much like a radon mitigation system, will reduce exposure by reducing movement of vapors beneath a slab into a building. If it is in the water supply, a carbon filter on the water will minimize ingestion and inhalation exposure.

Long-term exposure to high levels of TCE can affect the central nervous system: symptoms include reduced motor coordination, nausea, headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, fatigue and irritation of mucous membranes in eyes and the respiratory tract.

The EPA will pay for testing and provide homeowners with results in writing.

Owners must sign a consent form to allow contractors supervised by EPA personnel to access their homes, mailing it back by March 20, 2009 in the envelope provided.

Testing involves sub-slab vapor sampling in the basement, drilling a small hole in the basement floor or slab and installing a dome-sized sampling port. The process takes between 45 minutes and an hour. Several days later, a small sample collection canister is hooked up to the port, left undisturbed for 24 hours, when the EPA comes to remove it.

EPA's contractor will restore any disturbance to the property related to this sampling.

If warranted, air monitoring/sample collection equipment may be placed in living spaces (basement, first floor, second floor) for further evaluation of indoor air quality.

The Cayuga County Groundwater contamination site is a plume of contaminated groundwater from an unknown source. The old General Electric Powerex site was a prime suspect when contamination was discovered in 2001.

The plume covers an area of 3,050 acres or 4.8 square miles within three towns, Aurelius, Fleming, and Springport. There are approximately 120 homes within the seven-mile plume extending from the Village of Union Springs to Auburn city limits.

Contaminants initially found at the site included TCE, among others. Exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can occur from ingestion of contaminated groundwater, ingestion of food prepared with such water, or inhalation of vapors from activities such as showering. Immediate threats were addressed in the past when treatment systems were installed on wells and some of the homes were connected to the public water supply.

The project is now in its long-term, remedial phase, with continual monitoring of such related effects as air quality.

Any concerns about health effects of TCE should be addressed to the New York State Department of Health, 1-800-458-1158.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net