Broome County Outlines Grippen Park Testing
Latest Results on Drinking Water Indicate No Impact at Lowest Detection Level!

BINGHAMTON, NY - Broome County Executive Barbara Fiala met today with Broome County Health officials, the Department of Environmental Conservation, Village of Endicott representatives and engineers with the County's environmental consultant, O'Brien and Gere.

The focus of the meeting was the testing that is taking place at Grippen Park in Endicott which is a county owned facility. Below is a time-line of events that led up to today's meeting.

• Flood waters overran the Ice Rink in Grippen Park in early April.
• The entire park and ice rink remained under water for several days.
• When the water finally receded clean-up activities began.
• There were also major electrical problems as a result of the flood.
• County employees were finally able to assess the damage to the rink in early May.
• At that time, there appeared to be ethylene glycol missing from the ice rink's pipes which are located under the ice rink.
• The County immediately contacted the Department of Environmental Conservation.
• The system was emptied and shut down.
• Tests wells were immediately installed and testing for glycols was done.
• No major problems were discovered at the level tested at that time.
• Further tests at lower levels were done and formaldehyde (an environmental breakdown product of ethylene glycol) was detected in the monitoring wells and in the untreated water of the Ranney Well(main water source for the Village of Endicott) which is located southwest of the Grippen Ice Rink. The untreated water at the Ranney Well and monitoring wells was screened in the range of 0-120 parts per billion for formaldehyde.
• Further tests were ordered using a more precise method for measuring formaldehyde in drinking water. Those tests were completed today. The results found no formaldehyde at the 8 parts per billion(ppb) method detection limit in both the untreated and treated Ranney Well water.
• EPA Health Advisory Level for formaldehyde in drinking water is 1,000 parts per billion(ppb).
• More water tests are being done. Additional wells are being tested and more wells are being installed.
• We are continuing the investigation under the direction of the DEC to identify the scope of impacts and possible interim and longer term cleanup measures.

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