Hazardous Waste Cleanup: Dolan Wholers Corporation in Boonton Township, New Jersey
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- Cleanup Status
- Site Description
- Contaminants at this Facility
- Site Responsibility
Cleanup Status
The Dolan Wholers facility is being cleaned up under the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Property Transfer Program by Textron, Inc., which owns the assets of the former Cessna facility. Contaminated soils were excavated from several areas by Textron, including the refuse landfill, the sludge landfill, the wastewater-disposal lagoon and the spray-booth sump. A system to clean up the groundwater in the vicinity of the wastewater disposal lagoon has been operating since 1992. The system pumps groundwater from two recovery wells that are designed to control the migration of the contamination. The groundwater is then passed through granular activated carbon to filter out contaminants, and put back into the ground.
A similar system in the vicinity of the former refuse and sludge landfills operated from 1992 to 1994. This system has been permitted by the NJDEP to be shut down, and groundwater monitored, to determine whether concentrations of contaminants leaving the area are low enough not to pose a threat to human health and the environment. Additional technologies are being considered to further enhance the degradation of groundwater contaminants in this area.
Textron will continue to conduct groundwater monitoring and sampling at the site and off-site to assure that the migration of contaminated groundwater is under control. The adjacent Stony Brook is also being tested to confirm that it has not been affected by the contamination.
Site Description
The Dolan Wholers Corporation is located at 429 Rockaway Valley Road in Boonton Township, New Jersey. The Dolan Wholers Corp. is the location of the Former Cessna Aircraft facility, which encompasses approximately 160 acres and consisted of several manufacturing and storage buildings. The Cessna facility began operations in 1941 and ceased operations in late 1983. No aviation business or manufacturing processes currently operate at the site.
Cessna manufactured electronic components for aircraft communications and navigation, which included microcircuitry, metallic housings for circuit boards, printed circuit boards and assembly of components. The manufacturing process generated solvent and plating wastes. Most of the plating wastes were discharged to a manmade holding pond.
Contaminants at this Facility
Because of leakage from former landfills, a lagoon, tanks and storage areas, chemical compounds have contaminated the soil and groundwater at the site. The chemical compounds in the groundwater that exceed state groundwater standards include 1,1,1-trichloroethane; 1,1-dichloroethane; 1,1-dichloroethene; cis-1,2-dichloroethene; tetrachloroethene; trichloroethene; and vinyl chloride.
Site Responsibility at this Facility
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Corrective Action activities at this facility have been conducted under the direction of EPA Region 2.