Second search is on for buried drums at Bethpage Community Park

A new contractor is scanning the soil beneath Bethpage Community Park for buried drums, more than two months after another company's scans failed to detect six concrete-encased barrels at the former Grumman Aerospace dumping grounds.

Since workers began discovering 22 large concrete-encased chemical drums this spring, officials have continued to search for underground objects at the park. 

A second contractor started a new round of electromagnetic scans on July 15, wrapping up last week. In August, the company will conduct ground penetrating radar scans, state Department of Environmental Conservation officials said. The results are scheduled to be released in September. The new contractor is Hager-Richter Geoscience Inc. of New Jersey.

The latest round of scans follows a previous effort that failed to detect a half-dozen drums. In April, workers unearthed a total of 16 drums. Then the state DEC ordered Northrop Grumman's contractor to scan the area, but no more drums were found. Days later, town and state officials consulted historical photographs and contractors found six more drums.

Denis Slattery, a DEC spokesman, said the agency has worked to make sure the new equipment "will effectively identify any potential additional buried drums not previously discovered and to aid in the interpretation of survey results."

But town officials are concerned. When the contractor tested the new equipment last month, the scans failed to detect a piece of concrete buried 9 feet below ground. Oyster Bay officials have grown impatient with the scans and say Northrop Grumman should remove all of the park's contaminated soil and haul it off Long Island.

"We’re tremendously concerned that this test is inadequate, incomplete and is not fully giving us or the public a sense of calm about what’s underground," Supervisor Joseph Saladino said in an interview.

Testing the equipment

DEC officials said they have confidence in the new equipment.

To test the scanners, the contractor ran ground scans in a small section of the 18.6-acre park.

Officials buried two empty drums — one laid horizontally and another vertically, according to a report summarizing the tests, which Newsday obtained.

The radar detected the drums, which were not encased in concrete. But the scans did not detect a concrete ring that was also placed in the ground, at 9 feet deep.

Judith Enck, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, said ground penetrating radar scans are typically reliable but cautioned that regulatory agencies need to provide "tight oversight" of the effort.

"You want to make sure they're doing it the right way and not cutting corners," Enck said.

Summer of scans

The electromagnetic scans locate buried metallic objects.

With ground penetrating radar scans, the contractor will send signals underground to create a picture of the area below the surface. Ground penetrating radar scans can detect both metallic and nonmetallic objects.

The contractor will also investigate 31 anomalies, including 13 metallic objects, that were discovered during the pilot test.

The presence of so many anomalies, Saladino says, underscores the need for a complete excavation of the contaminated soil.

"This data gives me great concern that Grumman is doing an incomplete job," Saladino said.

Northrop Grumman did not respond to requests for comment about the testing.

The DEC "supports the survey’s execution and its role as one of several investigative tools used for this comprehensive cleanup," Slattery, the agency's spokesman, said in a statement.

Grumman used to manufacture aircraft in Bethpage and used the location as a pit for wastewater sludge and solvent-soaked rags between the 1940s and 1960s.

That was found to be a major contributor to an underwater plume of carcinogenic chemicals that spread from the grounds and now is more than 4 miles long, 2 miles wide and 900 feet deep.

Contamination was first found at the park in 2002, and last year Oyster Bay sued Northrop Grumman, criticizing the pace of the company's state-ordered remediation effort. Grumman donated land for the park to the town in 1962 but didn't disclose the contamination.

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ