Ozone Park cleanup set for next month

The Ozone Park toxic site cleanup in New York is set to begin next month, although some critics still have questions about the project.

End Zone Industries, which is the company tasked with cleaning up the hazardous waste on the site, explained the process they will use to tackle the area, which is situated under the former Rockaway Beach Long Island Rail Road line.

At a Community Board 9 meeting, members of the public interrogated the company as to what would happen on the site, Queens Chronicle reports. It is currently home to eight storage bays situated underneath the former Ozone Park LIRR station.

In the late 20th century Ozone Industries - the predecessor to End Zone - used the bays to store aircraft parts until 1998. While these bays are currently vacant, the soil beneath them is contaminated with trichloroethene (TCE) - a chemical which is linked to cancer and disorders of the central nervous system.

Since then, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has been attempting to put together a cleanup plan for the bays over the past decade.

The first samples were taken for testing for TCE in 2004, but it was not until last month that End Zone received the final clearances to access the site from the city. The remediation work is set to begin from the middle of May.

David Austin, project manager at AECOM, revealed that the clean-up project will take three to four months to complete and the soil remediation will include trucking contaminated soil away from the site and venting some of the TCE into the air.

The expert also reassured the public that air-monitoring systems giving real-time readings will be put in place to ensure TCE does not hit dangerous levels.