Transcript of Interview with Joe Duminuco, Vice President of Roux Associates
00:00 Jessica Wertling: Can you please tell me your name?
00:03 Joe Duminuco: Joe Duminuco.
00:05 Wertling: And what is your company and what does your company do?
00:07 Duminuco: Roux Associates Inc., we’re an environmental consulting firm.
00:11 Wertling: What gets done when MTBE spills are found?
00:14 Duminuco: When they’re first found we’ll try to determine the extent of the problem…is it in the soil? In the groundwater? Surface water? Soil vapor? Where it is, how bad it is, and determine what needs to be done to address it.
00:30 Wertling: How do you find MTBE?
00:33 Duminuco: Multiple ways…sometimes people will complain of odors in their basement…someone near a gas station, and we’ll know that there’s been a release. Sometimes you’ll see a release into a sewer system, sometimes into the surface water, or sometimes you’ll just know a tank leaked because the inventory from the…the gas station can tell that they lost product. Then maybe an overfill of the tanker truck comes in, and then the tank is full and they try to put more in, and then you’ll know immediately there’s an overfill. So, there’s many ways that we learn about the spills.
01:08 Wertling: Who gets held accountable when MTBE is found in water?
01:12 Duminuco: You’ll try to find the most likely responsible party, which, typically is gonna be a gas station. Unfortunately though, many times there are three or four gas stations at the same street corner, so if you find the MTBE a block away, everyone is gonna point to the other gas stations, say “It’s theirs,” – so you have to get into a program of investigation and sampling to try and determine which party it came from. Sometimes that can be difficult to determine. And there are times when the owner or the operator of the gas stations who’s responsible has upped and left and you’re never gonna find them anyway, and then typically the government, either the state or the federal government, will have to pick up the tab on the cleanup.
02:00 Wertling: How do you get MTBE out of the water?
02:05 Duminuco: It’s a difficult compound to address. Ya know, it could be in the soil, the water, soil vapor, or surface water; depending on where it was spilled and what happened. In groundwater, it’s difficult to get out. You would have to extract the water from the ground, so essentially put in wells that draw the water out through pumps, bring it to the surface, and then you’d run it through a treatment system. And then after it’s cleaned up, discharge the water either back into the ground or into the sewer. The treatment is difficult; it’s not a compound that’s readily degradable. It takes a lot of effort and time and money to treat it.
02:43 Wertling: Do you know who pays for that?
02:45 Duminuco: If you’re lucky enough to find the responsible party, they’ll pay for it; otherwise…
02:49 Wertling: Taxpayers?
02:50 Duminuco: Possibly, yeah.
02:55 Wertling: How dangerous is Nassau County drinking water, in general, do you think?
03:02 Duminuco: That’s a difficult question. If you’re on city-supplied water, you know, if you have water in your house that’s coming from your own well, you’re going to be drinking clean water, ‘cause all the ground water we are given as drinking water is up to the highest standards. So, from that standpoint, you’re not being exposed to contaminants. And most people don’t have a private well to contact the water themselves.
03:33 Wertling: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
03:36 Duminuco: No, not at this point.
03:38 Wertling: Ok, thank you.
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