By DOUGLAS STEINKE
Journal Staff Writer
SCITUATE, R.I., Oct. 5, 2000 (The Providence Journal)—Workers were busy operating yellow bucket loaders and digging trenches along Byron Randall Road yesterday to make way for the pipes that will connect houses here to a water main in Johnston.
The houses on Byron Randall Road that will be connected to the Providence Water Supply Board pipeline have wells that have been tainted by a chemical degreaser known as trichloroethylene. The wells also have high concentrations of tetrachlorethylene and dichloroethylene.
Although Scituate is home to the reservoir that provides water to about 60 percent of the state's residents, the town does not have its own municipal water system.
The pipeline is financed by the U.S. Department of Environmental Management and will aid some 14 homeowners in Scituate and Johnston along portions of Byron Randall Road, Shun Pike and Peck Hill Road.
It will cost about $250,000, part of a $1.2-million EPA grant to study and fix the problem. The pipeline should be completed around December. Workers from R.H. White Construction Co. were digging the trenches yesterday.
The chemical solvents that caused the pollution are toxic, and some are suspected carcinogens. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, released a report last month that alleged the contaminants came from a machine shop that sits on Peck Hill along the Scituate-Johnston town line.
A study conducted for the town of Scituate by the Maguire Group Inc., a Providence engineering and consulting group, found that the contaminants exist in roughly three plumes, two along the Johnston border and one on Danielson Pike near the Foster town line.
It's unlikely the EPA will become involved in providing safe water for the Danielson Pike properties, state and local officials say, because the houses are so far from a water main and the estimated cost of installing a water line there would be close to $15 million.
The Byron Randall Road, Shun Pike and Peck Hill Road locations are about 500 feet from an eight-inch water main in the town of Johnston.
The Department of Environmental Management currently provides bottled water to those residents. According to DEM records, the agency shipped more than 8,000 gallons of water to Scituate residents who were unable to use their wells last year.
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