New Hanover Quarry May Release Contaminated Groundwater says Geologist, Hyrdologist

Sometimes it pays to hang in there until the end.

This was certainly the case for the four-hour township supervisors meeting I attended Monday night.

What I didn't know going in was that there was an appeal of a code enforcement action at the top of the agenda that ended up taking almost two hours.

The interesting thing about it was that the person making the appeal was William Moyer, a sergeant with the New Hanover Police Department.

A water drain he put in year sago, with the verbal OK of the code officer at the time and in order to protect his already water-logged neighbors from getting ever more of his run-off, was suddenly declared illegal because it was causing an icy condition on Reifsnyder Road.

Rather, said his lawyer, the problem was caused by the settling of Colonial Drive.

Anyway it was long and painfully dull, except, of course, to the people whose lives are affected by it.

And then, aaaaaallllllll the way at the end of the meeting, Ross Snook of Sanatoga Road, a geologist, hydrologist and waste expert, told the board that the groundwater contamination beneath the former Good's Oil site is being held back by crystaline bedrock.

That bedrock will be fractured by blasting for the neighboring quarry fighting for approval for more than a decade, and when the quarry draws groundwater for their operation, it will suck contaminated groundwater into the rest of the aquifer, compounding the pollution problem, Snook said.

We'll be following up on this, of course.

For now, here are the Tweets.