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Potential cause of Rockhill water contamination

Written by Kyle Bagenstose –  Read original post here.

Foams used to fight a massive 1986 tire fire at Bergey’s Tires in West Rockhill are being eyed as a potential source of area water contamination.

On Nov. 28, 1986, Sandy Moyer heard a loud “POP” behind her home in a wooded section of West Rockhill.

More than three decades later, she and husband, Jerry Moyer, wonder if it was that spark that caused their cancers.

The November evening is one that lives in the memories of the Moyers and their neighbors along Tabor Road and Old Bethlehem Pike, as well as the archived newspapers of The Intelligencer. A 25-foot-high pile of used tires caught fire, shooting flames another 20 feet in the air and requiring more than 30 fire companies and 20 hours to bring under control.

“The blaze consumed an estimated 70,000 used rubber tires and sent heavy, oil-laden smoke, soot, and an acrid smell over the surrounding area,” a newspaper report from the next day read. The lot was and still is owned by the Bergey’s Tire and Auto, a Franconia-based enterprise that operates 30 auto shops across five states.

Newspaper reports show an environmental firm was brought in to help handle the runoff of an estimated 3 million gallons of water used in the fight. A makeshift retention basin was dug out, and officials were concerned with keeping a “petroleum scum” of melted tires from reaching beyond the property.

But it is another substance that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is now investigating in dozens of nearby private drinking water wells: the unregulated chemicals PFOS and PFOA. The chemicals have made headlines regionally as the cause of major drinking water contamination in other Bucks and Montgomery County water supplies near area military bases.

Newspaper reports state that during the 1986 fire, a team of firefighters from the former Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove and Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster arrived and tried to subdue the inferno with firefighting foams, which are now known to have contained the chemicals.

″(Attempts) to use the foam … were ‘useless,’” a report quoted then-Sellersville Fire Chief Thomas Hufnagle as saying. Hufnagle is now mayor of Sellersville. “The chief said the fire was too intense and the foam immediately dissolved.”

PFOS and PFOA have been found in dozens of drinking water wells in the area, including in that of the Moyers, who live just 200 yards from where the blaze occurred. Last year, their well tested at 352 parts per trillion (ppt) for the chemicals, about five times higher than a 70 ppt safety level put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sandy Moyer was diagnosed with breast cancer just two months before the couple received their first letter from the DEP about the contamination in 2016. Jerry Moyer was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. Neither illness has been definitively linked to the chemicals, but researchers are still studying their effects.

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