On August 23, 2011, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a Statement of Basis pertaining to contamination at the Ametek U.S. Gauge facility in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. The report states that high-level contamination has been known and present in the ground surrounding the facility for more than two decades and is too complex to be remedied. The document advises that the EPA will be declaring the land untreatable, and under specific state regulations, will have to designate formal protection areas for the affected toxic ground. What the report also states, although purposefully ambiguously, is the fact that these designations will include the ground on which homes have been built. Those residents who live in the subdivisions surrounding the Ametek facility have been living on top of this contamination since their homes were constructed, yet they were never once informed. Toxic levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) were found in the ground (in the areas where Ametek kept unlined sludge lagoons and various other inground waste disposals) in excess of 215,000 ppb, which is higher than some of the most contaminated sites in the United States. The MCL level (the maximum amount of a chemical allowed to be present before posing any risk) is 5 ppb. These lagoons were located just a few hundred feet from the homes in those subdivisions. The chemicals in the ground have spread with the groundwater, creating vast toxic volatile organic compounds underneath these residences, exposing everyone above to carcinogenic soil gas and toxic vapors that are proven catalysts for various neurological disorders, autoimmune diseases, cancers, fetal development problems, etc. Many of these associated health effects appear years after exposure.
Contamination was known to exist at the Ametek U.S. Gauge facility as far back as the 1970′s. Radium, lead, arsenic, and TCE–in addition to various other chemicals–have all be found at extremely high levels in the ground surrounding the Ametek plant. These are the same toxins found at the landfill that Ametek illegally used as a toxic waste dump back in the 1940′s at 12th and Main Streets. These are also the same toxins that have plagued Sellersville’s drinking water for decades. However, Sellersville Boro Water Works removed all mention of TCE from annual drinking water disclosures, despite the fact that, for years, Sellersville’s tap water was rated as one of the top ten worst in the nation for TCE contamination. Additionally, the borough’s arsenic disclosures and continued public commentary regarding the severity of the contamination were purposefully misleading and false. So, in addition to drinking water with both undisclosed and improperly disclosed levels of carcinogenic toxins, the residents of the aforementioned subdivisions were also living on top of them and breathing them in...unknowingly. But why? Quoting a newspaper article from 1993 regarding the municipality’s concern should Ametek move its operations out of the borough: “The cold, hard facts are these: U.S. Gauge accounts for nearly 18 percent of the annual real estate tax revenue collected by Sellersville, about 25 percent of the water and sewer fees, and more than $80,000 in per capita, occupation and earned income taxes…Without taking sides, messages to union and management representatives alike were practically identical: do whatever it takes to make sure the Gauge doesn’t close.”
What has transpired in Sellersville, Pennsylvania over the past 50+ years is criminal. Residents, especially those in Wyckford Commons (both Sellersville and Perkasie municipalities) and the Mews at Wyckford Commons subdivisions, need to unite and take appropriate action. Note that this could possibly extend to homes beyond those subdivisions as well, so any residents in close proximity should become informed. Health effects from decades of exposure, coupled with financial losses incurred by property value depletion as a result of EPA’s declaration of the land as too contaminated for practical remediation/future residential construction, in conjunction with the overt deception on the part of local, state, and federal agencies–prove to make this situation one of the more disconcerting environmental issues on record. Those affected must take action to ensure appropriate testing is completed in order to realize true resident exposure, both past and present. It will then be up to those affected to take action to protect what is left of their health, homes, and security...all of which having been negatively impacted by life-threatening circumstances that were never disclosed by agencies that have an ethical and legal responsibility to the public to do so.