Read the full article by Jeff McMenemy (Seacoast – EDGE Radio)
“DOVER – The City Council has approved a contract so a company can continue to monitor wells and test sites for contaminants near the Pudding Hill aquifer.
The aquifer plays a critical role in meeting the city’s ongoing and future water needs.
John Storer, the city’s community services director, recently told the City Council the contract involves ‘monitoring of all our different wells’ around the aquifer.
‘It’s all kinds of ongoing monitoring, I think there’s 57 different test sites,’ Storer said during a council meeting.
The council unanimously voted to approve a contract for $273,900 for Emery & Garrett Groundwater Investigations to conduct the monitoring work at the Pudding Hill Aquifer from May 1 to May 1, 2021, according to city documents.
The city will be reimbursed for those costs by Schnitzer Industries, which is the owner of the former New England Metal Recycling site, Storer said.
The city closed the Griffin Well in 2015 and the Ireland Well in 2018 — both of which are located in the aquifer — when tests detected dangerous chemicals in both wells, including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane and MtBE.
The contaminants never got into Dover’s public water drinking supply, City Manager Michael Joyal has said.
The contaminants migrated from the New England Metal Recycling site.
Schnitzer Industries reached an agreement with the city of pay for clean-up costs and monitoring.
The upcoming monitoring work is aimed at ‘looking to see if any of the (contaminants) are spreading throughout the aquifer,’ Storer said…”