A large natural spring near University Drive, long polluted with the industrial chemical PCE, has seen a major decline in its contamination levels, Penn State data show.
Thompson Spring, just south of East College Avenue near University Drive, feeds the duck pond near the Centre Furnace Mansion. It’s not a source of drinking water, but the amounts of PCE, or tetrachloroethylene, dissolved there have been a concern as far back as the 1980s.
As recently as 2002, some water samples showed PCE was present there at 18 parts per billion. (For drinking-water supplies, the federal government requires public notification for PCE levels of five or more parts per billion.)
But tests in recent months show PCE levels in Thompson Spring have declined to 7.5 parts per billion, said John Gaudlip, a utilities-system engineer with the university Office of Physical Plant. The spring sits on Penn State-owned land near the College Township-Borough of State College line.
It appears that the PCE levels began to fall in late 2005, a review of university data indicates.
‘We really don’t know’ specifically what’s caused the pollution decline, Gaudlip said. ‘It’s as much a mystery as what the source (of contamination) was.’
At the state Department of Environmental Protection, spokesman Dan Spadoni said he does not believe the contamination has ever been attributed to Penn State itself.
He called the dip in contamination levels ‘not surprising.’
For one thing, Spadoni said, a groundwater-treatment system has been operating at the former Murata Erie site since 1996. That system, along state Route 26 in Ferguson Township, has treated more than 546 million gallons of potentially tainted water, he said.
Nearly 4,800 pounds of volatile organic compounds, including PCE, have been removed from the old Murata site, according to the DEP. Contaminated soil has been hauled away from there, too.
In addition, Spadoni said, PCE-contaminated soil was excavated from a former longtime dry-cleaning site near South Atherton Street and West Beaver Avenue about five years ago. That excavation, completed around the same time that PCE levels in Thompson Spring began to fall, happened in conjunction with the Palmerton apartment development.
(Balfurd Cleaners, which advertises Earth-friendly dry cleaning, does business on an adjacent site on West Beaver Avenue. But other, now-defunct dry cleaners operated in that area long before Balfurd arrived.)
Spadoni said contamination from the former dry-cleaning and Murata sites may have combined to dirty Thompson Spring, though the theory has not been confirmed.
Repeated ingestion of PCE, used in a variety of industries, has been tied to liver problems and an increased likelihood of cancer in serious cases. In high concentrations, it also can pose a threat to wildlife.
