Tainted well water in Cape May, NJ

September 9, 2008 - According to a recently released state report, a number of wells in Cape May County are tainted with bacteriological, organic, inorganic or radiological contamination.

Of the different types of contamination cited in the report, this county’s wells were most affected by the inorganic chemical – nitrate. Ninety-nine of the 3,058 test wells (3.2 percent) were found to have elevated nitrate levels.

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Carcinogens found in contaminated soil in Utica, NY

September 8, 2008 - According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, “The Department of Health and Human Services determined that some PAHs may reasonably be expected to be carcinogens. Some people who have breathed or touched mixtures of PAHs and other chemicals for long periods of time have developed cancer.”

Litwhiler said the PAHs found during the investigation were near Elizabeth Street.

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Toxic sites brought to surface in Albany, NY

September 2, 2008 - State environmental and health officials are looking into at least 24 sites in the Capital Region, where toxic vapors may be rising from underground pollutants previously considered contained. "Vapor intrusion" may be exposing people -- outdoors and indoors -- to carcinogens.

The potential trouble spots are among 421 that the state Department of Environmental Conservation had listed as inactive hazardous waste sites before 2003. Since then, studies have found that even though groundwater contamination and soil spills may have been controlled, pollutants can dissolve and emit toxic vapors that rise into living quarters, play areas and workplaces.

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EPA to Big Oil: Clean Up D.C. Neighborhood!

September 3, 2003 - Chevron’s got some cleaning-up to do in the city’s Lamond-Riggs neighborhood, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency released an order yesterday requiring the oil giant to take several steps to remediate a contaminated gas plume that leaked over time from a Chevron station in Chillium, Md., across the District line this quiet neighborhood in Northeast.

What can a gas plume do to a nice neighborhood like this? Well, in the words of the EPA, the threat is something called “subsurface vapor intrusion,” a term that figures big in a big EPA document on the mess.

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Virginia Residents near Chesapeake golf course fear fly ash runoff

September 2, 2008 - Karen Fox is no stranger to fly ash, or to flooding.

She and her family live on Murray Drive in a roughly 40-home community on a single street just south of Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville. Their well is in the backyard.

This spring, Fox and many other people who live nearby, all in homes with wells, learned that the golf course was contoured with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, a powdery residue laden with heavy metals, left from the burning of coal for electricity. The ash came from Dominion's coal-fired power plant in Deep Creek.

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ExxonMobil deserted them, say owners of tainted homes in Torrance, CA

August 31, 2008 -

Five homes on Del Amo Boulevard sit vacant and eerily quiet, the homeowners paid off by ExxonMobil, considered the most likely source of contaminated soil discovered in December. Soil in the neighborhood beneath some homes adjacent to the Torrance Refinery is fouled with vapors of benzene, methane and other byproducts of gasoline production.

The owners of another five homes will soon finalize negotiations, sell to ExxonMobil and leave the neighborhood in the 2100 block of Del Amo Boulevard.

Another 10 homeowners whose houses sit nearest those that were found to be contaminated have been offered price protection programs that would guarantee they receive market prices for their property if they choose to sell in the next five years.

But increasing numbers of other homeowners in the neighborhood have been left to fend for themselves, unable to sell their homes or to stop what they see as creeping blight caused by the vacant houses.

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New Jersey State: 1 in 8 Private Wells Contaminated

August 28, 2008 - One in eight private wells in New Jersey, tested during real estate transactions or by landlords from September 2002 to April 2007, violated at least one limit for drinking water contaminants, according to a new state report.

The contaminants include arsenic, mercury, nitrate, total coliform and fecal coliform, gross alpha particle activity (a measure of radioactivity) and volatile organic chemicals, according to the report.

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Residents of over 50,000 NJ homes drinking polluted water - 12.5% of wells fail to meet standards

August 28, 2008 - State: 1 in 8 private wells contaminated
Officials urge more testing

DEP estimates that there are over 400,000 private residential drinking water wells in NJ. Over 51,000 of these wells have been sampled, but 350,000 have not.

DEP data from 2002 - 2007 indicate that 12.5 % of over 51,000 residential wells that were sampled fail to meet drinking water standards and are polluted. This rate does not include more than 18% of sampled wells poisoned by toxic lead. Assuming that this large data set and 12.5% failure rate are representative of all 400,000 wells, means that more than 50,000 NJ households are drinking unsafe water.

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W. Chicago homeowner sues seller, agent over contamination

August 26, 2008 - Owners of a West Chicago house are suing their sellers, a real estate agent and her company, alleging they failed to disclose that the home was contaminated with radioactive thorium.

The 13-count lawsuit alleges fraud, misrepresentation, negligence and claims the property at 233 W. Stimmel St. is responsible for the deaths of three family dogs and the lingering respiratory illness to one of the owners.

At the heart of the suit is a portion of the sale contract that states the seller had no knowledge of "any hazardous waste on the real estate."

Sandy Riess said the sellers never disclosed that the property had undergone some thorium remediation, that it was located on a federal Superfund site or that the previous owners refused to have the land tested for radiation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Government confirms elevated cancer level in Pennsylvania

August 25, 2008 - HAZLETON, Pa. - Nearly a year after federal epidemiologists first sounded the alarm over a cluster of rare blood cancers in northeastern Pennsylvania, their research has zeroed in on a hardscrabble region 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that is home to several Superfund sites as well as a power plant fired by waste coal.

The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said Monday that it confirmed a cluster of polycythemia (pah-lee-sy-THEE'-mee-ah) vera, or PV, in a 15-mile stretch between Hazleton and Tamaqua.

Residents of these ZIP codes were four times as likely to suffer from PV as residents living in outlying areas, according to the government.

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A toxic peek beneath San Joaquin County California

August 24, 2008 - Oil drums leaking. Pesticides seeping. Heavy metals draining into our waterways.

Per capita, San Joaquin County has seen more state investigations of potential toxic hot spots than most of its neighboring counties - more, in fact, than the statewide average.

While some of these cases are decades old and were resolved long ago, more than two dozen sites still are being cleaned up - and it can take many years.

Such are the findings of a Record analysis of a state database detailing 250 such investigations in the county and nearly 9,000 statewide. The database is available to anyone who wonders what dangers might hide in the soil or groundwater of his or her neighborhood.

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