EPA proposes digging up polluted soil in Montana neighborhood

August 30, 2007 - The best way to choke off underground contamination in a neighborhood near downtown Billings is probably to dig out the polluted soil that has long served as its source, a federal official said Wednesday.

Kerry Guy, leader of Environmental Protection Agency team investigating the Billings PCE site, said he's going to recommend that an estimated 1,500 cubic yards of polluted soil near Seventh Street West and Central Avenue be excavated, possibly by next spring.

That step should eliminate much of the pollution that has formed a groundwater plume more than seven blocks long and several blocks wide, starting from Seventh and Central and moving northeast to Division Street.

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Contamination investigation expands in Binghamton New York

August 29, 2007 - BINGHAMTON -- The long, slow search for hazardous chemicals under a neighborhood on the north side of Binghamton literally broke new ground this week, as workers implanted pollution-detection probes outside a chemical warehousing plant and planned to retest air inside nearby homes.

Contractors, trying to pinpoint the source of subterranean pollution, drilled holes Tuesday outside the Ashland Distribution Co. on Broad Street. The work, which extends to a rail bed on the west side of the plant, is expected to continue this week, said Jim Vitak, a company spokesman.

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EPA to test air in New York suburb homes for toxic vapors from nearby contamination

August 29, 2007 - Federal authorities want to find out whether two former local industrial cleanup sites are affecting the quality of the air in nearby homes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently sent letters to about 200 residents in the Elmira Heights area, asking for permission to test the air in their homes for traces of trichloroethylene, or TCE, a common industrial solvent.

The EPA is conducting the tests because of the proximity of the former Facet Enterprises and Kentucky Avenue Superfund cleanup sites.

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New Jersey day care stays open despite contamination

August 28, 2007 - An environmental review of a child care center operated by Tri-County Community Action Partnership here has revealed the presence of "potentially contaminated areas of concern."

According to a press release from Tri-County, a site investigation has identified certain environmental contaminants at the center's 10 Washington St. location that are typically associated with the use of petroleum-type materials.

Based on the levels of the environmental contaminants discovered during the site investigation, further investigation will be required.

However, current information related to the nature and concentrations of the environmental contaminants observed during the site investigation are such that there are no known concerns with the safe operation of a child day care center.

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More than 100 Alabama residents impacted by lead contamination from nearby foundry

August 28, 2007 - An attorney met Monday night with more than 100 residents who live around an abandoned brass foundry responsible for lead contamination in their community.

I'm going to make sure they are compensated for any damages they may have suffered from the plant, Anniston attorney James Sims said.

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Neighbors of former uranium processing plant in Ohio can Sue - Health threats linked to toxins

August 27, 2007 - A federal judge has ruled that neighbors of a former uranium-processing plant suing because of health problems can proceed with their case, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Saturday.

The suit was first filed against Divested Atomic Corporation in 1990 by residents who lived near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which once enriched uranium for weapons and nuclear fuel, but closed in 2001.

Plaintiffs can go forward on their claim that the plant contaminated their neighborhood with hazardous products, including carcinogenic materials, from its site, said attorney Stanley Chesley, of Cincinnati, who represents plaintiffs in the case.

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South Carolina officials to test drinking water in rural Barnwell County to see if a 36-year-old nuclear waste dump has polluted private wells

August 21, 2007 - Recently opened state records show tritium pollution beneath the landfill exceeds safe drinking water standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The contamination, which flows off the landfill to a creek, also rivals pollution on parts of the nearby Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons complex with a history of groundwater pollution, The State newspaper reported Sunday.

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Parents learn about ground and water contamination under new school in New Jersey two weeks before classes begin

August 23, 2007 - Parents of children enrolled at a newly constructed middle school are anxious after learning of soil and groundwater contamination on the site weeks before classes begin.

"All these parents found out two weeks before school that the ground was contaminated," said Lisa Barno, whose 11-year-old son is set to attend the school. "It seems we should have known beforehand."

Schools Superintendent Nicholas L. Perrapato said that he learned about the contamination earlier this month, although state officials overseeing the construction discovered the contamination in 2004 and took steps to remediate it.

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EPA finds radiation levels in soil beneath a West Chicago home that are more than 300 times the federally acceptable level

August 23, 2007 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified radiation levels in soil beneath a West Chicago home that are more than 300 times the federally acceptable level, officials said Wednesday.

Inspectors took samples on Aug. 9 from the home of Sandra Riess, whose property is about 200 yards from the former Kerr-McGee Co. plant that once produced thorium for gas lamp mantles. The plant was identified as the source of thorium found throughout the town after the plant closed in 1973.

Two weeks ago, inspectors removed bricks, mortar and soil from a hole in Riess' basement to pinpoint the source of radiation that had been found in samples taken in July.

By testing positive for high levels of radium, Riess' property falls under the agency's Superfund project that has cleaned up 676 properties in West Chicago.

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Arizona town concerned about Superfund stigma

August 20, 2007 - Dewey-Humboldt is a small town with a big problem.

On a hill overlooking Western storefronts and modest homes about 15 miles east of Prescott is a 4 million-ton pile of mine tailings, a toxic relic of the town's mining past.

Just a few hundred yards away, across Arizona 69, is a rusting smokestack and an oily, black mountain of slag, the waste product of a long-defunct smelter.

Together, the area surrounding the decades-old piles is the first Arizona site in nearly a decade that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants placed on the Superfund list, the federal cleanup program reserved for the country's worst environmental hazards.

Dewey-Humboldt's 4,000 residents are divided on whether a Superfund listing would be a blessing or a bane.

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Radioactive tritium in South Carolina groundwater

August 19, 2007 - Higher-than-expected amounts of a radioactive material are tainting the groundwater at a nuclear waste dump long considered safe by state regulators.

Previously sealed records, obtained by The State newspaper, show groundwater beneath the state-owned landfill in Barnwell County has tritium levels exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for safe drinking water — in some cases by hundreds of times.

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Ohio neighborhood with contaminated wells waits for safe drinking water

August 19, 2007 - Eugene Smith is frustrated. He wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pay for hooking his house up to city of Akron drinking water.

Nearly 13 years ago, the federal agency installed devices in Smith's home and seven neighboring houses in Copley Township with polluted wells to remove toxic chemicals from the drinking water.

That was to be a temporary fix. But Smith and five of his neighbors are still relying on the cleansing devices.

Smith, 79, drinks the well water from his tap. On doctor's orders, his wife, Rita, drinks only bottled water.

Repeated tests have shown that the water coming from Smith's tap is safe. But he finds it unsettling to count on the $1,600 system of air strippers and carbon filters to clean the drinking water 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If his and his neighbors' homes were hooked up to Akron's lines, it would ensure they were getting safe drinking water, Smith said.

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Health risks at creosote cleanup site in Washington State are mulled

August 18, 2007 - What hazards remain for the public at the still-polluted Superfund site?

Life was simpler before people wised up to the dangers of hazardous waste.

Charles Schmid recalls swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and coming home with tar on his feet. Jerry Elfendahl spoke of the the Japanese drug Seirogan, which touts creosote as its main ingredient to fight diarrhea.

While the small audience at the EPA’s five-year review of the Wyckoff Super-fund site chuckled at the expense of a more naive age, Richard Kauffman, senior regional representative for the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry brought the issue home:

“With so many variables that affect public health, it’s very difficult to link specific contaminants to ailments.”

While the EPA is pushing for a containment plan on the controversial site at Bill Point, and the city, Suquamish Tribe and the state Department of Ecology are pushing for a more costly thermal treatment of underground creosote waste, community concerns about health hazards have not been addressed since the ATSDR’s last report on the site back in 1994.

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San Francisco Neighborhood gets tested for toxic chemicals

August 16, 2007 - Some people in Castro Valley are about to find out just how contaminated their neighborhood really is. State workers took soil and water samples from around a dry cleaning business that has already tested positive for high levels of the chemical used to clean clothes.

The colorless odorless liquid used in dry cleaning machines is called perchloroethylene or perc for short. The state dept. of toxic substances control says initial testing, shows levels of perc, above the state maximum, contaminated the ground water around a Castro Valley cleaners.

Rose Linder, Peet's Coffee Employee: "We get headaches quite often."

Rose Linder says the letter sent out to residents, within a square mile of the cleaner, explains it all.

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Toxic contamination may force evictions in New York Trailer Park

August 16, 2007 - James Gillette found out last week that his home might soon be moving down the street.

Moving Gillette's mobile home, along with the 14 other homes in the Crumb Trailer Park off Burrows Road in West Winfield, is part of a proposed plan to clean up the park's poisoned soil.

The ground is contaminated with arsenic, manganese, aluminum and lead from Hiteman Leather Co. waste materials dumped at the site from the 1930s to 1950s.

Studies on the 2.5-acre park in 1996 found elevated metal levels that weren't exceeding health-based standards. Further studies in 2002 and 2006 revealed more dangerous levels.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Conservation are proposing to move the trailers to a nearby site and place a clean soil cover over the contaminated soils.

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Outraged in Connecticut

August 14, 2007 - STRATFORD — For seven years members of the Raymark Advisory Committee sat around a table just about every month battling the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the best way to clean up toxic waste at 26 remaining contaminated properties.

Residents hardly ever showed, leaving committee members to wage the battle against creating large consolidation sites in Stratford.

But ever since the EPA started presenting potential cleanup plans to the public two weeks ago, residents started showing up — in droves.

Nearly 100 people crammed into a small room at the Birdseye Municipal Complex Tuesday night at a regular Raymark Advisory Committee meeting to voice their objections for the third time in two weeks about the prospect of digging up Raymark waste, which consists of asbestos, lead and PCBs, and hauling the materials to one major consolidation site in town.

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California neighborhood alarmed by notice of state investigation

August 15, 2007 - MariaJean Garcia says you'd be jittery, too, opening a notice with the words "toxic" and "cleanup" — and an address half a block from your home — in the same paragraph.

That's the mail Garcia and her neighbors received late last week, days before the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control launches an investigation today of potential contamination in the parking lot outside the Marshall Steel Cleaners at Redwood Road and Village Drive.

Don't be surprised to see workers in safety suits outside the Sorani shopping plaza, drilling test bores in the pavement for soil, water and gas samples. Traffic may be diverted, and parking may be limited.

Groundwater, sampled from sites downgrade from the cleaners, contained perchloroethylene, better known as "perc." The state Air Resources Board is phasing out use of "perc," the main solvent used in dry cleaning, which can cause irritation of the eyes, nose, throat or skin.

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Residents to sue Fort Lauderdale over polluted soil

August 14, 2007 - Homeowners in a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood have decided to sue the city over contaminated soil caused by an old municipal incinerator that operated in the community some 50 years ago.

The group from the Durrs neighborhood has hired Miami lawyer Reginald Clyne, who filed a notice of intent to sue the city on behalf of six residents.

The city has known about the contaminated soil for at least 10 years, Clyne said.

''They are going to ignore it for as long as they can,'' Clyne said. ``But the longer they ignore it, the worse it will get.''

But Mayor Jim Naugle questions whether the contamination -- which may have come from the old Lincoln Park incinerator -- is the city's fault.

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Plume under Oregon neighborhood carries threat of more cancer cases

August 13, 2007 - What's the real harm in the solvent plume under roughly 250 homes in the Trainsong and River Road neighborhoods?

The answer is theoretical and technical - a higher than usual cancer rate among a set number of people.

The state Department of Environmental Quality figures the concentrations are so low that the agency is only concerned about people facing chronic, long-term exposure.

The federally funded Superfund Health Investigation and Education program concluded that levels of solvent in private wells that dip into the plume are so low that it's fine to use the water for everything but drinking. But the investigators also declared - as a precaution - that the solvent vapors in the crawl spaces of some homes are a public health hazard.

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Alabama officials knew about contamination since 1992

August 12, 2007 - State officials apparently knew lead was running off the Lincoln Metals Corporation property in 1992, but action was never taken to stop the flow of contamination from the site.

The abandoned Lincoln Metals/Heartland Faucet Corp., 248 Foundry Road, Lincoln, has only recently drawn attention after it was disclosed that high levels of lead were found in and around its property and in a public park adjacent to the now defunct brass foundry.

Even though state officials knew of the high levels of lead more than three years ago, an Alabama Department of Environmental Management spokesman said, residents living around the foundry and Lincoln city officials were not immediately informed of the potential problems.

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Pollution Prompts Record Number Of Beach Closings Nationwide

August 8, 2007 - The water at American beaches was unsafe for swimming a record number of days last year, according to the 17th annual beach water quality report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Using data just collected from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the report, “Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches,” tallied more than 25,000 closing and health advisory days at ocean, bay and Great Lakes beaches in 2006. The number of no-swim days caused by stormwater more than doubled from the year before.

“Vacations are being ruined. Families can’t use the beaches in their own communities because they are polluted. Kids are getting sick – all because of sewage and contaminated runoff from outdated, under-funded treatment systems,” said Nancy Stoner, director of NRDC’s water program.

In addition to compiling data on 3,500 U.S. beaches, the report this year takes an especially close look at the nation’s highest risk beaches – those that are either very popular, very close to pollution sources, or both.

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Lead, arsenic, mercury and other poisons are more widespread than previously thought in neighborhood park

August 9, 2007 - Lead, arsenic, mercury and other poisons are more widespread, contaminate the surrounding groundwater and require a more massive cleanup than first thought in a Westland park where children played for years, the state acknowledged Wednesday.

Central City Park has been closed since Nov. 3, days after the Free Press began asking questions about contamination at the park that city, state and county officials had known about for years but never disclosed to residents.

The latest results show high levels of arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls, mercury and methane. High levels of lead were found in two-thirds of the samples, which were taken from across the entire park, said Bob McCann, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality.

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Potsdam, NY residents worried about contamination

August 10, 2007 - Residents of Haig Road have lived beside piles of railroad ties for years, but when they noticed that the ties were being pushed aside to make room for a mobile home park, they got worried. Some of the people living there even decided to document the construction of the area.

"It's the allowing of people to put something on here for kids to play in that's really upsetting," said Willie Worster, who lives on Haig Road.

He says he's upset because wooden railroad ties are soaked in the chemical creosote, which can cause contamination to land and is harmful to humans.

The ties on Haig Road have been there for years, but residents worry the land they sit on may be unsafe.

"It needs to be cleaned up," said Terry Russell, who lives across from the piles of ties. "I mean there's thousands and thousands of railroad ties over there."

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Florida city to be sued over toxic contamination in neighborhood

August 10, 2007 - Coral Gables attorney Reginald Clyne has notified Mayor Jim Naugle and Florida’s chief financial officer that he intends to sue the city over toxic chemicals found in the Durrs neighborhood.

“I have put the city on notice that I represent some of the residents,” Clyne told the Broward Times about the July 25 letter, which the city received on Aug. 1. Clyne copied the letter to Louise Caro, an environmental specialist and attorney with Legal Aid Service of Broward County, Inc. Legal Aid has been assisting Durrs residents in an effort to get more tests done and to have the entire area cleaned up. Now, Caro said, Legal Aid is partnering with Clyne in the proposed lawsuit against the city.

The city operated a garbage incinerator in the neighborhood, north of Sistrunk Boulevard and west of Interstate 95, from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s.

The incinerator spewed ash from burned garbage into the air. Residents who lived there at the time said they saw the ash fall on their yards and automobiles as if it were snow.

Today, state and federal health officials have found high levels of toxic chemicals, including arsenic, lead and dioxin, on the site. But no study has ever conclusively linked the toxins with the incinerator. Clyne, however, blames the incinerator for the toxins in the neighborhood.

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Radiation in West Chicago neighborhood

August 10, 2007 - In April, when her two St. Bernards died of bone cancer within six days of each other, Sandra Riess tried not to panic.

She already knew her property in West Chicago contained higher than usual levels of radiation from the old Kerr-McGee Co. plant that once sat less than 200 yards away. But when the area was cleaned in 1994, inspectors were prevented by the then-owner from testing the basement, where Riess' dogs frequently wandered after Riess moved in. Their deaths led her to push the EPA harder to inspect her property, she said.

On Thursday, inspectors from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removed bricks, mortar and soil from a hole in her basement to pinpoint the source of radiation after samples taken two weeks ago showed levels nearly 50 times what the federal government considers acceptable.

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Two mile contamination plume in the ground and groundwater under Chico, CA

August 9, 2007 - The first step is being taken to start cleaning up a plume of toxic chemicals lurking underground in a south Chico neighborhood.

TCE and PCE, chlorinated solvents commonly used for dry cleaning and metal degreasing, were discovered almost four years ago in the wells of homes in the Skyway Avenue neighborhood.

Further investigation revealed that the chemicals were released some time before 1976, by Combustion Engineering, which operated at a location on Speedway Avenue, off the Midway.

The plume, found to extend for about two miles, is believed to run from its origin on Speedway Avenue, under Skyway and Cessna avenues and ending along Hegan Avenue in the area of the Chico State University farm.

Now, state agencies and a corporation being held responsible are designing a clean-up plan, beginning with an outreach effort to assess the community's concerns.

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Fort Lauderdale residents get no answers on neighborhood contamination

August 9, 2007 - After hearing all the bureaucrats and gobbledygook, Kerline Jeanmary's question was straightforward: What is Fort Lauderdale going to do about contaminated soil found around homes near an old city incinerator?

Residents who live near Lincoln Park, in northwest Fort Lauderdale, got no clear answers at a town hall meeting on Tuesday.

The incinerator has been gone for 50 years, but the pollutants it spewed — such as arsenic, dioxins and lead — apparently still remain in the Durrs neighborhood.

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Chicago resident's home contains almost 50 times the amount of radioactivity deemed safe by the federal government

August 9, 2007 - "These levels are staggering," Sandy Riess said. "They're so extraordinary to be shocking."

But U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials say the thorium is limited to Riess' basement, and likely hasn't caused anyone harm.

EPA officials said the finding is a "new discovery" unconnected to the other 116 residents who recently learned in letters from the government that there might be buried residual thorium on their properties. The contamination may have been left over from a 1980s cleanup and missed during a second examination in the 1990s.

Kerr-McGee Co. inadvertently distributed thorium throughout West Chicago for several decades. The substance, a byproduct of a closed factory that made gaslight mantles, was used as fill for construction of many homes in West Chicago. Riess owns one of the properties originally decontaminated by Kerr-McGee in the 1980s.

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Health officials tell residents in Fort Lauderdale Neighborhood not to pick vegetables from their gardens or let kids play in their yards

August 8, 2007 - A few dozen residents from a neighborhood off Sistrunk Boulevard aired their concerns Tuesday about potentially unsafe levels of dioxins, arsenic and other chemicals state health officials recently found in their yards.

''Our children have suffered this catastrophic burden,'' said resident Leola McCoy. ``I hope we get some results.''

The concerns from McCoy and her neighbors at the Mizell Center, 1409 NW Sixth St., come months after state health officials released a report documenting the discovery of the contaminants in the Durrs neighborhood. Health officials told the residents not to pluck vegetables from their gardens or let kids play in their yards.

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Neighborhood wells contaminated in Elkhart Indiana

August 7, 2007 - People on Elkhart's north side got answers Tuesday about growing concerns of water contamination in their neighborhood.

Geocel Corporation found a leak in old underground tanks earlier this year.

Tests show the leaking chemicals contaminated the drinking water in a number of nearby homes.

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Albany homeowners grapple with TCE pollution and vapor intrusion

August 7, 2007 - FORT EDWARD -- This town has become synonymous with the federal government's ongoing efforts to remove PCBs from the Hudson River.But now another pollutant, which hasn't previously received much attention, is starting to roil residents as well.

The danger is underground in a six-street area around General Electric's capacitor plant on Broadway. Four decades of GE operations through the 1980s left behind a plume of PCBs and a potentially carcinogenic solvent called trichloroethylene, or TCE, used to clean machinery.

In 2004, fumes from TCEs, which the U.S. Environmental Protection says are likely to cause cancer in humans, were found seeping out of the ground and into homes -- including the home of Raymond and Jody DeLong on West Summit Street, four blocks south of the GE plant and its parking lots.

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Contamination sparks anxiety and lawsuits in Missouri town

August 5, 2007 - From a distance, the old Westinghouse plant is a nondescript complex of buildings, the kind of place that might make light bulbs or ceiling fans.

Drive a little closer and yellow signs come into view: "Caution: Nuclear Material."

A few years ago, officials with Westinghouse Electric Co. had predicted that the plant, which has been idle since 2001, would be razed in 2005 or last year. Now it appears the buildings won't be torn down and the site completely cleaned up until next year — at the earliest.

To some who live nearby, demolition can't come soon enough.

The plant has been linked to chemical contamination in nearby well water, prompting anxiety among residents and triggering lawsuits.

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Arizona residents fear uranium contamination from past industry

August 2, 2007 - Five weeks ago, the company that used to own the uranium mill on the other side of the nearest paved road, U.S. Highway 160, reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation to test nearby wells it may have contaminated. El Paso Natural Gas hasn’t named the wells it will test yet, so Charley can only wonder if it will include the well her family has been using all these years.

The area’s troubles began when the Rare Metals Corporation started processing uranium at the mill in 1956. Off and on for the next 10 years, it processed some 800,000 tons of ore, all of it for the federal government’s nuclear weapons program. Following the federal regulations of the time, Rare Metals dumped the damp tailings, the waste product of milling, into unlined evaporation ponds on site. Unfortunately, not all the water evaporated. Much of the water seeped into the ground, taking uranium and other contaminants in the tailings with it.

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Clinton and Kerry to introduce TCE legislation

August 1, 2007 - U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., is set to file legislation today to direct the Environmental Protection Agency to study trichloroethylene (TCE) - a chemical degreaser once used at military air bases in Western Massachusetts and across the country - and determine whether relevant federal safety standards are outdated.

U.S. Sen. Hillary R. Clinton, D-N.Y., a 2008 presidential hopeful who also chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health, will co-sponsor the legislation with Kerry.

The EPA has 12 months if the bill is enacted in which to draft new health standards for TCE in drinking water.

The bill would also issue "a health advisory standard for vapor intrusion (of TCE) within 12 months of enactment, and it would require the EPA to establish an Integrated Risk Information System reference concentration of trichloroethylene vapor with 18 months of enactment."

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Health authorities blame contamination for sickening one of every eight people in Libby Montana

July 31, 2007 - Libby is home to the now-closed W.R. Grace vermiculite mine. The vermiculite was used in a variety of household products. And it contained tremolite asbestos, which is blamed by some health authorities for killing about 200 people, and sickening one of every eight people in Libby.

The EPA declared the area a Superfund site.

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New Jersey neighborhood concerned about property value impact after discovery of contaminated soil

July 30, 2007 - Tainted soil found at West Brook Middle School months ago has some Paramus homeowners concerned that their property values will drop.

So far, there's no hard evidence that prices in the neighborhood around West Brook have dipped in response to the pesticide contamination. But those who predict a downswing feel sure that the school district's tarnished reputation for covering up the contamination can mean only one thing for property owners.

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