MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Twenty-one years after Vermont Health Department tests first found pollution around a Williamstown dry-cleaning plant, the state is moving to declare groundwater in the area undrinkable.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting public comments until next Friday on its proposal to reclassify the groundwater under 85 acres around the UniFirst Corp. facility on Hebert Road in Williamstown.

The state didn’t set up its groundwater reclassification process until the early 1990s, said Tina Hubbard, source water protection specialist at the DEC.

“The reclassification process is actually very slow because there’s a detailed petition, several layers of technical review and administrative review,” Hubbard said. “There’s a committee running the process.”

Gerald Noyes, environmental engineer with the department’s Waste Management Division, noted that the state had taken action, monitoring test wells over the years and reaching an agreement with UniFirst and the town of Williamstown under which municipal water service was extended to area property owners.

Twenty-three property owners are located within the 85-acre groundwater reclassification zone, including the Williamstown elementary and high schools. An additional 57 abutters were notified of the reclassification process as well.

The state Department of Health first tested groundwater around UniFirst in 1983 and found it contained three forms of a class of chemicals called chloroethylenes, which are used as solvents in dry cleaning.

One of the chemicals, PCE, turned up in groundwater tests at 88,000 micrograms per liter. Another, TCE, registered at 6,290. The state safety standard for both is 5 micrograms per liter. Tests last October found PCE at 38 mg/liter and TCE at 26 mg/liter.

UniFirst still maintains a warehouse at the site but no longer does dry cleaning there, said Williamstown Town Manager Bernie Duff. Duff said the biggest concern among residents and town officials is what the reclassification might do to property values. The town of 3,200, just south of Barre, is currently undergoing a tax reappraisal.

A state handout listing frequently asked questions include one that says “Will a Class IV (nondrinkable) designation affect my property values?”

It answers that the classification “serves as a formal recognition and public notification of a condition that already exists. Property overlying non-potable groundwater may be of lesser value than property overlying potable groundwater. However, this would be the case regardless of classification.”

Duff said the town is taking a methodical approach to the situation.

“What we don’t need is any inflammatory adjectives and so on,” Duff said. “As far as I’m concerned, we the town have to respond and answer all the concerns of the citizens. If we don’t have the answers, we have to go get the answers.”

Hubbard said the public comment periods already had closed on two other “UniFirst-related” problem sites where the state is moving to reclassify groundwater as undrinkable – one in Brookfield and the other on the Randolph-Braintree line.

Noyes said those sites were contaminated when a septic hauler took waste from the UniFirst plant in Williamstown and spread it there.

The state already has completed the process for seven other sites, and reclassified groundwater under them as non-potable. They include the former Pine Street Barge Canal site in Burlington; the Tansitor Electronics site, Bennington landfill and Burgess landfill, all in Bennington; the Windham Solid Waste District landfill in Brattleboro; the Maska Inc. site in Bradford; and the Parker Landfill in Lyndon.

AP-ES-09-17-04 1415EDT