N.B. residents still waiting for chromium test results

By Jennifer Dunville
The Canadian Press
FREDERICTON - Ruth Peterson said she feels like she's having a bad dream.
But the chemical spill that contaminated ground water near her home and caused her to move into a hotel more than three weeks ago is a living nightmare.
On Oct. 27, an estimated 2,700 litres of chromium trioxide acid spilled at Custom Machine and Hardchrome Inc. on Melissa Street, just outside Fredericton's city limits. The Department of Environment has ordered 11 families and five businesses in the area not to use their well water for anything except flushing their toilets.
The families affected have been provided with drinking water and the option of staying in a hotel.
Since many of them are scared and frustrated, Peterson said, all of them have chosen to move out of their homes.
"We just want to know when, and if, it will be safe to return to our homes," Peterson said. "We're fed up. And it feels like no one cares about how this is affecting us."
Time is ticking by without answers for those living near the contamination site. A meeting to update the affected residents and business owners was scheduled to take place Friday between the departments of Health and Environment, but it was cancelled. Megan Cumby, spokeswoman for the Department of Health, said the meeting was called off because the department didn't have all the information it needed and is still weighing its options.
She couldn't say what information the department is waiting for and refused to say which options the department is considering for the affected businesses and residents.
"We expect to give the residents and businesses affected an update on the situation Monday evening," Cumby said.
"There is a range of options and I'm not going to detail them because I don't want to invite speculation. We're considering and we need specific information for those options."
Serge Gagnon, director of the Fredericton regional office of the Department of Environment, said nine monitoring wells were drilled near the site to check for higher than normal levels of chromium trioxide acid, which is considered to be a naturally occurring substance in the environment in small amounts.
He said testing of the 11 residents' wells shows no abnormal levels of the chemical, but the soil and water in the immediate area is contaminated.
"About 200 kilograms of actual (concentrated) chromium was released into the environment. As of this point, we feel we've captured approximately half of that chromium," Gagnon said Friday.
"Some was recovered from when the spill actually occurred, some from the septic tank and there is a contaminated well on site that we've been pumping water from. We've pumped more than a million litres of contaminated water from that well, which is removing some of the chromium from the ground water in the environment there."
Gagnon said the homeowners' wells are being monitored twice a week and so far have shown below normal levels of chromium for drinking water. But the water advisory has to exist because those homes are near the contamination site, he said.
"Our consultant has drilled nine shallow monitoring wells to detect which way the ground water is flowing and identify if chromium was being encountered outside of the actual spill site, but right now, we're very comfortable that the spill is very localized," Gagnon said.
"The advisory is a precaution imposed by the Department of Health and they are using our information and technical expertise to get a sense of the potential impact to those residences and the likelihood of the contamination going in that direction."
For Peterson and many of the people affected by the spill, the wait for information is agonizingly slow. She said she doesn't have any idea when she'll be able to return home.
"I've had to give away one of my dogs because it wasn't handling being alone very well since I moved out and I couldn't take it to the hotel," Peterson said.
"I'm just afraid the government is going to tell us we can never move back home."