cleanup · Chautauqua County

Anderson Cleaners

Jamestown

Former dry-cleaning property at 5 Hunt Road where chlorinated volatile organic compounds affected soil and groundwater. DEC's Class 2 record calls for source removal or treatment, plume treatment and continuing monitoring.

The documented story

What happened here?

The 2.4-acre property at 5 Hunt Road first held a towel factory in the 1930s. Anderson Cleaners occupied it by the mid-1940s and used Stoddard solvent from about 1947 to 1978, storing it in two approximately 1,100-gallon underground tanks later removed.

A 1985 fire destroyed about 8,000 square feet of the building. The dry-cleaning area was not directly burned, but the official work plan records heat-damaged equipment and extensive firefighting water entering that portion of the building.

Dry-cleaning solvents can move beneath a relatively small commercial parcel, so the cleanup record is organized around source areas and the investigated groundwater plume rather than the building footprint alone.

Chronology in context

Turning points in the public record

1930s-mid-1940s

A towel factory preceded Anderson Cleaners at the Hunt Road property.

About 1947-1978

The cleaner used Stoddard solvent stored in two underground tanks; chlorinated dry-cleaning chemicals were also part of the operating history.

1985

A major fire damaged the building and firefighting water entered the dry-cleaning area before reconstruction.

2004-2005

The Brownfield Cleanup Program investigation installed borings and wells and documented chlorinated VOCs in soil and groundwater.

2012 onward

The remedy advanced through dense-product removal, in-ground treatment, groundwater monitoring and soil-vapor evaluation.

Present

The site remains part of Jamestown's documented chlorinated-solvent cleanup record.

News record

Major news events

Coverage selected here marks a turning point in public awareness, policy, enforcement, employment, or cleanup. Links open at the original publisher or archive; WNYAtlas does not reproduce restricted articles or images.

Local

A major fire becomes part of the site's environmental history

The cleanup work plan records that fire destroyed portions of the building and that firefighting water entered the dry-cleaning area. The record treats this as site history, not proof that the fire caused every later subsurface finding.

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Local

Investigation expands from the former cleaner to groundwater and vapor pathways

The public file traces years of borings, monitoring wells, dense-product removal, groundwater treatment and soil-vapor evaluation—showing how a small commercial property produced a much longer stewardship story.

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation

Environmental record

Documented impacts

  • Chlorinated volatile organic compounds affected defined soil and groundwater areas.
  • The contaminants and affected media are consistent with the documented dry-cleaning process; the atlas does not assign unrelated nearby detections to this site.
  • The record concerns the Anderson property and investigated plume; proximity alone does not establish an impact at another property.

Response

Cleanup and controls

  • The remedy combines treatment or removal of concentrated source material with treatment of dissolved groundwater contamination and monitoring.
  • The continuing Class 2 status means remedial action or verification remains necessary and should not be described as a completed unrestricted cleanup.

Then and now

The site today

Anderson Cleaners is mapped separately from Former C&B Dry Cleaners. Their connection is a shared industrial process and cleanup type, not proof of one plume.

Atlas connections

Connected places

These collections explain documented material, facility, waterway, ownership, or cleanup relationships. Inclusion does not imply that every place shares one contaminant source or plume.