Despite Love Canal’s Lessons, Schoolchildren are Still At Risk

August 23, 2008 - Thirty years ago this summer, America learned the name Love Canal. The working-class Niagara Falls neighborhood built atop tons of chemical waste became a synonym for environmental disaster.

Troubles at the local elementary school -- and health problems among its students, such as seizure disorders -- were among the first signs of a much larger problem that made news around the world and prompted federal Superfund legislation to clean up the most polluted sites in the United States.

Despite the outcry over Love Canal, little has been done to make schoolchildren safer from hazardous or toxic waste, says Lois Gibbs, who headed the Love Canal Homeowners Association and now runs the Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

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Canal & Cancer: Officials start cleanup of contaminated waterway in Texas

August 21, 2008 -

The most dangerous segment of the main canal south of Donna is a 90-degree turn just north of Military Highway.

That is the closest two state departments and two federal agencies have come in 15 years to pinpointing the hotbed of cancer-causing toxins in the seven-mile channel.

But no one knows exactly where the poison is coming from - or worse, how many of the contaminated fish have been eaten since the federal government first found the toxins in 1993.

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Bay Shore, New York landowners unhappy with pace of cleanup

August 16, 2008 - As National Grid moves - too slowly for some - to clean up a toxic plume on the western edge of downtown Bay Shore, the company has quietly bought an unoccupied south-of-Montauk Highway mansion laid to ruin by the century-old contamination.

It paid $3 million for the former home of Stephen Phillips, several people familiar with the transaction said, and required a nondisclosure agreement to prevent word from getting out, to no avail. The sale was confirmed at a June public meeting convened by state officials and National Grid. The seller and National Grid declined to discuss the price.

The plume stems from a former Long Island Lighting Co. plant where a natural-gas-like vapor was once manufactured for heating and lighting; the plant is long since closed but has left an underground pool of highly toxic coal tar. The plume is more than 3,500 feet long and 600 feet wide.

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Underground water contamination plume impacts indoor air of 182 homes in Dayton, Ohio

August 21, 2008 - A group fighting for the timely cleanup of a contaminated ground water plume in the vicinity of the Behr Dayton Thermal Plant asked the Dayton City Commission to take a lead in the effort.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has collected indoor air samples from 272 residences in McCook Field. Results showed 182 homes required a vapor abatement system.

A number of citizens from Dayton and Jefferson Twp. said they were concerned about contamination of the city's water, because the plume is still moving.

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Myrtle Beach, SC Residents Prepare for a Fight

August 20, 2008 -

With a plan to start cleaning toxic groundwater contamination caused by AVX Corp. at least a year away, residents living near the Myrtle Beach manufacturer met Tuesday to protest a permit that would let the electronics maker emit hazardous air pollutants in the same neighborhood.

About 50 people attending a Bent Oak Estates neighborhood watch meeting told officials with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control that they no longer trust the state or AVX to protect the environment near their homes.

AVX officials were invited to the meeting, but none attended.

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Neighbors to pollution in Ithaca, NY

August 16, 2008 - Southside residents and members of the public are invited to come learn and ask questions about environmental investigations at the Clinton West plaza at a meeting Monday.

The plaza was added to the state Department of Environmental Conservation's environmental site remediation database this spring because of testing that found high levels of several cancer-causing compounds in the soil and groundwater in the southwest corner of the plaza.

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Merrick County, Nebraska residents frustrated with water pollution cleanup inaction

August 13, 2008 - As officials from the state Department of Environmental Quality met with the Merrick County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, a handful of frustrated residents took the opportunity to fire at both groups.

First, they asked DEQ officials several pointed questions about the contaminated groundwater from the former Nebraska Solvents Co. site northeast of Grand Island.

Then they unloaded on the county board through a livid letter signed by 25 property owners.

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Public needs answers on Chesapeake's fly ash tests

August 13, 2008 - City officials in Chesapeake appear to have forgotten who they're working for.

Alarmed by a string of articles beginning in March by Pilot writer Robert McCabe, the city hired a consultant to test the groundwater at Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville. Testing at the course, which is sculpted atop 1.5 million tons of fly ash, revealed a whole stew of contaminants at dangerous levels, including arsenic, lead, manganese and aluminum. The contaminants pose health risks, especially to children.

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Officials seek source of contamination in Rockville, Maryland stream

August 11, 2008 - The Maryland Department of the Environment and the county's Department of Parks say the waterways leading into Flower Valley Neighborhood Park in Rockville are contaminated, but officials do not yet know what caused the contamination.

Contact with the streams is prohibited, according to an announcement on the Montgomery County Department of Parks Web site.

The contamination occurred upstream and outside of the park, which is located at 4510 Hornbeam Drive, killing "a significant number" of fish and other aquatic life, according to the announcement.

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Contamination still a problem across U.S.

August 4, 2008 - The nation's ocean, bay and Great Lakes beaches continue to suffer from water pollution that puts swimmers' health at risk, according to a leading environmental group.

Last year, beach closings and no-swimming advisories reached their second-highest level in the 18 years that the group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, has monitored the health of recreational waters.

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EPA warns New York residents about PCBs

August 8, 2008 - If you live along the Hudson between Fort Edward and the Troy Dam, you'll be receiving a letter warning about the level of PCBs in the flood plains soil. PCBs are the chemicals General Electric dumped into the Hudson until the 1970s. We've known about that and the plan to clean up the water. Now the Environmental Protection Agency is worried about these soil levels.

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The lessons of Love Canal lost unless Superfund is fixed

August 7, 2008 - Thirty years ago Thursday, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster area. The decision came after the discovery that the Niagara Falls neighborhood was built on top of 20,000 tons of toxic waste that had been dumped by a chemical company.

The Love Canal contamination tragedy is very personal to me. In 1978 I was living there with my husband and two children when I began to wonder whether the kids' recurring illnesses were connected to the chemical waste.

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Are Superfund sites super bad for housing prices?

August 5, 2008 - Say the word Superfund when buying a house and well, people tend to get nervous.

Known as some of the most hazardous and dangerous waste sites in the United States, I�ve known people who didn't buy homes near them, fearful that toxic substances could be leaking into the nearby air or water to harm them. Think Civil Action.

So you�d probably think that if a Superfund site got cleaned up, housing prices would rise accordingly.

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Potentially unsafe levels of arsenic contamination at New Bedford High School athletic fields in Massachusetts

August 2, 2008 - Three soil samples taken at Paul Walsh Field revealed arsenic levels above 40 parts per million that could trigger what the state calls a "potential imminent hazard." The findings of arsenic in two soil samples taken from the main baseball field and one from the softball field were reported by an independent laboratory to TRC and the city Wednesday.

Samples for contaminants have been taken in the entire complex as part of city's efforts to understand the extent of the pollution caused by a former burn dump in the neighborhood.

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LOVE CANAL: Former residents return to site with a message

August 1, 2008 - If it weren’t for the barren lots where homes once stood, it might have felt like old times at Love Canal.

Lois Gibbs and members of her organization, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, addressed a throng of reporters Friday morning near the corner of 100th Street and Colvin Boulevard. Several former residents of the neighborhood were there also.

The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the first state of emergency declaration in the neighborhood. On Aug. 2, 1978, state Health Commissioner Robert Whalen ordered the closure of the 99th Street School and recommended the evacuation of pregnant women and young children.

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Polluted groundwater in Tennessee has groups pushing for stronger protections

July 28, 2008 - DICKSON, Tenn. - Polluted groundwater in Tennessee has the NAACP looking to the governor for answers.

The organization points to Dickson as an example of what can happen to a community when a landfill goes wrong.

For years, neighbors have complained about sickness they feel was caused by polluted groundwater.

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Mercury contamination in a Boise neighborhood is much worse than investigators initially anticipated

July 28, 2008 - Originally, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency experts and hazardous materials crews from the Boise Fire Department thought the spill involved between 1 and 2 ounces of mercury. Estimates of the amount have risen to as much as 12 to 16 ounces.

“I was very surprised we had to dig a foot down,” Michael Sibley, the EPA’s onsite cleanup coordinator, said. “That means there is more product out here than we originally thought.”

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Rulings overturned in Santa Rosa, California contaminated wells case

July 26, 2008 - A state appeals court has overturned much of a Sonoma County judge's ruling in a complex water contamination lawsuit filed by 32 Santa Rosa residents who say their wells were tainted with potentially cancer-causing chemicals in the 1990s.

The unanimous opinion, issued late Thursday by a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco, also reverses huge monetary sanctions against the plaintiffs' attorneys and sends the case back to Sonoma County Superior Court for further proceedings.

It also revives the case against one of the defendants, the former Optical Coating Laboratory Inc., which is now owned by JDSU in San Jose.

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Officials evacuate residents from West Idaho neighborhood where mercury spill happened

July 25, 2008 - Officials have evacuated all the residents from two four-plexes in a West Boise neighborhood as they search for and clean up a mercury spill.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Central District Health and Idaho Department of Environmental Quality are assisting fire crews to determine how much liquid mercury is on the ground in the neighborhood just east of the Flying Wye highway interchange.

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EPA tests homes and day care in West Oakland for harmful compounds

July 25, 2008 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tested about a half dozen homes, a business and a day care center near the former Lane Metal Finishers site on 30th Street and San Pablo Avenue, where the state Department of Toxic Substances Control found elevated levels of volatile organic compounds in five samples taken 8 feet below the surface of the former metal plating location.

Vicki Rosen, community involvement coordinator for the EPA, said her agency was contacted to sample the indoor air of nearby buildings to see if contaminants in the soil have migrated.

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Some Upper Ringwood, New Jersey Residents Fear They Won't Survive Legal Fight With Ford

July 28, 2008 - Two-and-a-half years after they filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Ford Motor Co., Upper Ringwood residents are steeling themselves for a long battle one that some believe they won't survive.

"I'll be dead before I get any money," said Mickey Van Dunk, 37. He's had 17 surgeries to treat a rare autoimmune disorder that's left his face heavily scarred.

Van Dunk and his neighbors many of them members of the Ramapough Mountain Indian tribe blame Ford's dumping of industrial waste in Ringwood 40 years ago for an ocean of misery: multiple cases of cancer, asthma and other sicknesses, and a neighborhood that's a Superfund site.

Since they filed their lawsuit, residents say more have become ill. Several have died of cancer, a grandfather developed throat cancer, a 12-year-old girl had surgery to remove a tumor and her 7- year-old cousin was hospitalized for unexplained nosebleeds. This is in addition to a litany of illnesses and deaths claimed in their suit, which could be the largest environmental lawsuit ever in New Jersey.

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Deadly Toxic Chemicals From Marine Base Threaten Irvine, California Neighborhoods

July 28, 2008 - Toxic waste from the now-closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine is seeping underground into one of the richest neighborhoods in southern California, putting people at risk.

Orange County residents who have been studying the issue for the last several years say developers intent on changing the old base into a multi-million dollar park and housing community, have not come clean; they haven’t revealed the base’s dirty secrets to people investing their hard earned money here, and in nearby areas that sit squarely on top of an underground plume of TCE- trichloroethylene.

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