DEP: Ron’s Rental must move

LOCK HAVEN - Ron's Rental at 210 Third Ave. will be moving to a new location, thanks to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The business is in a building once used by Karnish Instrument, a company that made aircraft instruments and used glow-in-the-dark paint to illuminate gauges and pointers.

The paint contained radium-226, a radioactive element that decays into radon, a radioactive gas.

Not to worry - After an initial investigation, followed by what DEP says were "extensive radiation surveys," the agency has determined there is no danger to customers, employees, even tenants of the apartments in the same building.

The danger lies only in the possibility of any future "uncontrolled excavation or building renovation," when people might be inadvertently exposed to harm.

The same goes for the other Karnish Instrument site, in a building that once stood at the entrance to the W.T. Piper Memorial Airport. (The building no longer exists, but the soil there poses a risk.)

To head off any potential danger, DEP plans to use funds provided by the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act to demolish the Ron's Rental building and dig up the soil there and at the airport entrance.

The soil will be properly packaged and shipped to an out-of-state disposal site, as will the contaminated parts of the Ron's Rental building which include load-bearing walls. Non-contaminated building materials will go to Wayne Township Landfill.

Again, "The general public - including Ron's Rental owners, employees and tenants - is not exposed to harmful levels of radiation," DEP stated Tuesday at a public hearing on the matter.

The plans are being formulated now to do the work, which will start as soon as the planning phase is complete, according to DEP. Demolition and soil remediation should take about three months.

The founder and former owner of Karnish Instruments passed away in 1979 and his estate has no funding to cover the remediation, according to DEP. Also, the current owners of both sites did not know they were contaminated until the agency told them.

Anyone who would like further information should call DEP's Northcentral Regional office in Williamsport at 327-3636.