Chevron has sent a letter to residents and businesses near the intersection of Bloomfield Avenue and Hillcrest Terrace informing them that it is looking “to identify and clean up” the impacts of a gas station that once stood on the site.
The property was once known as 277 Bloomfield Avenue, which is where the parking lot for the 7-Eleven now lies. According to the letter, there was a Gulf gasoline station on the property from the mid-1930s to 1962. Miscia’s Service Center acquired it and operated a service station and an auto repair facility there until 1990, when it stopped selling gas and only did auto repair. The property, which sits above the front parking lot at Brookdale Avenue Elementary school, was sold to a developer in 2005.
In the letter, Chevron says that unspecified “remedial investigation activities” began in 1990 under New Jersey’s Regulated Underground Storage Tank program. A report on that work was submitted to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in 2015. Chevron says that petroleum hydrocarbons and the metals lead and mercury were found in the soil and groundwater. It has now hired an environmental consultant, Arcadis U.S., to do further investigation, which will include monitoring existing groundwater wells four times a year.
Chevron says that water supplied by the township of Verona is not affected. For the past two years, Verona has been getting its water entirely from a Passaic Valley Water Commission reservoir after its two wells, both located in the northwest corner of town, were found to have higher levels of PFAS contaminants than state standards now allow. Chevron also says that there are no “surface environmental impacts” at the site that would affect pedestrians.
Chevron is directing anyone who has questions about the work to contact Zachary Rakebrand, the Arcadis project manager, at 609-366-9044 or [email protected] .
