The Hidden Truth on Hidden Lane in VA.

October 30, 2009- After numerous lawsuits and court proceedings filed year after year, the state revoked the landfill’s operating permit following a permanent injunction against the site. The landfill was ordered to be closed in October 1983, much to the delight of Broad Run Farms residents and county officials.

The series has explored the migration of methane gas into the CountrySide subdivision, as well as the groundwater contamination with trichloroethylene (TCE) in Broad Run Farms. It has noted how the contamination has gotten worse overtime, spreading to many of the private wells in the subdivision at concentrations significantly higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum contaminant level.

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DHEC to Discuss Water Quality of Fort Mill, SC Neighborhood

October 30, 2009- Residents of the Foxwood neighborhood will meet with state health officials Monday to talk about contaminants and water quality issues in the well system that serves their homes. About 250 homes in the subdivision are served by a private well system where two contaminants have been found, said Adam Myrick, a spokesman for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

He said the contaminants have been present in the water since quarterly testing began there in 1990, but there have been some increases in those levels.

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Elmont, NY Gas Station Owner Charged With Ignoring Leak

October 30, 2009- The owner of an Elmont gas station is accused of environmental crimes for allegedly ignoring orders from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to repair a damaged underground tank found to be leaking petroleum into the soil and groundwater.

Nejdet Yetim, 45, of Patchogue, the owner of the Liberty gas station on Hempstead Turnpike, was arrested Thursday morning and charged with endangering public health, safety or the environment and knowingly violating a final administrative order.

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Tainted Wells Spur Home Value Worries In Stamford, CT

October 30, 2009- A North Stamford woman left an anonymous message on an Advocate phone saying the newspaper should stop writing about well-water contamination near the Scofieldtown Road landfill because it's making it difficult for her to sell her house. A real estate agent called asking for the list of streets where contaminated wells have been identified because he had a buyer who wanted to avoid those streets.

As city officials continue to test residential wells near the industrial landfill in Scofieldtown Park, the main issue, of course, is public health. So far, 25 wells on six streets have shown
unsafe levels of cancer-causing pesticides.

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Leaking Fuel Contaminates Chicago Neighborhood

October 27, 2009 - Fuel that leaked out of storage tanks and into the land of neighboring homes has some local residents outraged. They say no one is going to want to buy their homes now. They are worried about their investment and worried about their health.

Sometime before August 2001, for an unknown period of time, an unknown amount of oil loaded with toxic chemicals seeped from tanks and headed across the alley into yards, killing gardens and trees and causing an odor.

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Lawyers: Hayes-Sammons Plant in Texas caused woman's cancer

October 27, 2009 - From 1950 to 1967, The Hayes-Sammons plant in Mission, Texas operated a pesticide mixing plant, combining dozens of industrial-grade chemicals into their own special brands of bug-killing elixir.

Guadalupe Garza grew up in the neighborhood, and became the first of nearly 1,600 former Hayes-Sammons employees and nearby residents to take her toxic exposure case before a jury. Specifically, she alleges that three chemical compounds used at the plant - DDT, dieldrin and toxaphene - built up in her body over time and triggered the cancer she developed later in life.

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Old meth lab poisons dream home in Indiana

October 24, 2009 - The headaches, muscle aches and breathing problems began shortly after she moved in, but Julie McCoy Sabatino was slow to blame her house for making her sick.

She was shocked to realize she should: Methamphetamines had been produced in the house, just months before she bought it.

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Methane gas at nearby landfill concerns Santa Monica, California residents

October 24, 2009 - The Pico Neighborhood Association recently raised concerns about the possible dangers of placing the maintenance facility across from Stewart Street Park, which was built on top of a former landfill that releases low levels of methane gas.

"The mixture of methane ground contamination with high electrical voltage could trigger an explosion," Maria Loya, co-chair of the neighborhood organization, said. "This is a residential community with families where there's a park, where there's an elementary school close by.

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Saginaw, MI. Cleanup Deal's Outcome Could Affect Future Initiatives

October 23, 2009- Every spring, Dow Chemical sponsors a fishing tournament "celebrating all things walleye" on the wide, fast-moving river that flows past its sprawling world headquarters.

Signs warn anglers not to eat the fish, which are contaminated with high levels of cancer-causing dioxins the chemical giant dumped into the Tittabawassee River for most of the last century. Yet tournament organizers sell hats featuring the slogan "Dioxins My Ass."

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AVX of SC. Says Land Values Not Tainted By Pollution

October 23, 2009- Myrtle Beach-based AVX Corp. will ask a federal judge next month to dismiss damage claims in an environmental contamination lawsuit in which the manufacturer is accused of polluting groundwater with trichloroethylene, or TCE, a toxic chemical that has been linked with cancer and other health problems.

AVX, in court documents filed in advance of the Nov. 10 hearing in Florence, says the lawsuit should be dismissed because there is no evidence the contamination has created a financial hardship for neighboring property owner Horry Land Co., which first discovered the pollution more than two years ago.

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Dickson TN Landfill Lawsuit Looks At Company Roles

October 23, 2009- Dickson County may have narrowly escaped having to shut down its school system in recent weeks because of financial shortfalls, but the county continues to rack up costs defending itself in lawsuits over a landfill that leaked toxic substances into nearby wells.

Now, the New York-based environmental group that filed one of three pending federal cases against the county and the city of Dickson may expand the case to include two Dickson County companies as plaintiffs, dealing a potential new blow to the local economy.
Meanwhile, residents worry that more contamination may be seeping from the landfill — part of which has no lining — and that groundwater carrying a poisonous chemical could pollute other wells and drinking water supplies in the area.

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EPA Concerned About Oxygen Loss In Kansas Homes

October 23, 2009- The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating reports of potential oxygen depletion in homes in four south-central Kansas counties. Oxygen depletion, which can occur when carbon dioxide, methane or other soil vapors seep into buildings, can threaten residents' health. But David Bryan, an EPA spokesman in Kansas City, Kan., said Thursday that no major injuries had been reported.

Residents then reported having trouble with pilot lights on their water or gas heaters in their basements. There also were reports of light-headedness and the death of one household pet, a dog, from apparent carbon dioxide poisoning.

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Suit Filed Over Pollution From Bay Pines FL. Defense Plant

October 23, 2009- In seven years of environmental detective work for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Bob Ankenbauer never saw anything as alarming as the abandoned chemical lab littered with open jars of acid and cyanide.

"I was worried about spillage from kids playing there. I was worried about them forming clouds in the building, worried about the building itself because these acids could eat through the steel," Ankenbauer said.

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Possible Cancer Cluster in Ohio Town

October 21, 2009 - The Ohio Department of Health is beginning a cancer assessment in Ottawa County. It's all thanks to a cancer survivor who believes there's a possible cluster in Port Clinton.

42-year-old Maria Claus Konoff lives in Ottawa Hills with her family, but she grew up in Port Clinton. 15 years ago she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. As the years went on, Maria began to find out that many people she grew up with also had cancer.

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ExxonMobil ruled liable for well toxins in New York

October 20, 2009 - ExxonMobil was ordered to pay $105 million for contaminating ground water in Queens with a gasoline additive. The city sued ExxonMobil for knowlingly contaminating the ground water and ignoring warnings not to use MTBE in areas that use ground water for drinking water.

Mayor Bloomberg said "Our water supply is one of our most vital resources - and we will work to protect it and go after those who damage it"

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EPA takes on arsenic contamination in south Minneapolis

October 19, 2009 - Megan Koester , a Seward resident on 24th Avenue South, looked outside her window to see a group of people wearing white suits, orange hats, and boots removing soil from the house across the street. The University of Minnesota theater junior said she didn’t know who they were or what they were doing, until her roommate asked them.

Koester later discovered they were a group of Environmental Protection Agency workers who have been removing arsenic-contaminated soil in the Seward neighborhood since September.

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Shell Oil Co. sued over contaminated neighborhood in California

October 19, 2009 - One of the largest oil companies in the world, Shell Oil Company, is being sued by hundreds of angry Carson residents who claim Shell contaminated a neighborhood with a cancer-causing carcinogen. The residents assert the contamination have led to the deaths of four residents. The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 in Long Beach Superior Court, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News.

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Could suspected cancer cluster in the Acreage Florida be killing pets?

October 18, 2009 - Owners of Acreage pets that have developed tumors or cancer in recent years wonder if their animals' illnesses could be related to the community's suspected cluster of cancer in humans. The Florida Department of Health has been investigating the human cases since June but has not released firm conclusions on whether a cluster exists.

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TCE contamination found in basements northwest of plume in New York

October 17, 2009 - Nearly seven years after plumes of industrial solvent were found wafting into basements in Endicott, state officials are still finding homes contaminated by similar pollution in neighborhoods to the north.

Contractors working for the state Department of Environmental Conservation are installing pollution-blocking equipment on about 25 more structures affected by TCE pollution in the June Street area, a residential neighborhood west of Nanticoke Avenue. TCE was first found in the June Street area more than two years ago.

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Carson CA. Residents Sue Shell Over Toxic Chemical

October 16, 2009- Hundreds of Carson residents have sued Shell Oil Co., claiming it contaminated a neighborhood with cancer-causing benzene and that at least four residents have died as a result.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Long Beach Superior Court on behalf of 343 residents, involves a tank farm that Shell operated in the Los Angeles suburb from 1924 to 1967. Preliminary results showed benzene levels up to 100,000 times the state standard.

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Illinois Community Files 30 Brain Cancer Lawsuits

October 15, 2009 - Out of a community of only about 1,000 people, 30 people have filed brain cancer lawsuits against a former chemical company, which allegedly spent decades dumping cancer-causing chemicals into the local groundwater.

The 30 current or former residents of McCullom Lake, Illinois have been diagnosed with various forms of brain cancer in recent years. The complaints allege that the high cancer rate in the small community is due, in part, to a chemical plant owned by Rohm and Haas, which purchased the plant from Morton International in 1999.

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Tests Show Well Water Contamination Near North Stamford, CT Reservoir

October 14, 2009 - The city's latest findings of pesticides in wells expands the area of known contamination to within 500 yards of the North Stamford reservoir. City officials said Tuesday tests have confirmed another five wells have pesticide contamination at levels above state limits. The results bring the number of neighborhood wells contaminated with the carcinogenic pesticides dieldrin and chlordane to 22. City officials continue to collect and process water samples in the area, and more results are pending.

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Contaminated well water issue before Lunington council in Michigan

October 12, 2009 - Ludington Daily News - The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has identified three plumes of contaminated groundwater moving in a westerly and northwesterly direction from the factory sites.

The Ludington City Council has begun considering adopting an ordinance to forbid all use of water from wells in the targeted section of town, which is north of Tinkham Avenue, south of Lincoln Lake, east of Lakeshore Drive and west of Delia Street.

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Fears of tainted water well up in western Colorado

October 11, 2009 - Denverpost.com - Ned Prather can't forget that awful drink of water.

Tests would show the water from a spring he has drank from for decades was heavily contaminated with a carcinogenic and nervous system-damaging chemical stew known as BTEX — benzene, toluene, ethylbenzine and xylene. BTEX and other volatile organic compounds come to the surface in the production water from oil and gas wells.

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Pollution an enduring legacy at old ICBM sites

October 10, 2009 - As U.S. Air Force officials marked the 50th anniversary of the deployment of nuclear missiles to sites in the rural United States this past week, residents in some of these communities are still grappling with another legacy — groundwater pollution from chemicals used to clean and maintain the weapons.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is identifying and cleaning up dozens of former nuclear missile sites in nine states.

he ICBM sites include 14 in Kansas, 10 in Nebraska, seven in Wyoming, seven in Colorado and two in Oklahoma. California, New Mexico, New York and Texas have one contaminated ICBM site each.

TCE may have polluted many more missile sites than the corps is aware.

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Sussex, NJ Residents Warned of Soil & Groundwater Contamination

October 9, 2009- Some Sussex Borough residents have been notified by an engineering firm that six compounds associated with gasoline have been detected in soil and groundwater around the site of a former Gulf station on Loomis Avenue.

The letter, which was sent at the beginning of September to residents who live near the site, indicated that an engineering study detected the presence of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) and tertiary-butyl alcohol (TBA). The letter was sent to area residents by Brilliant Lewis Environmental Services, LLC, a Toms River-based environmental consultant.

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Concrete Plant Threatens Bay Pines, FL.

October 9, 2009- An accident waiting to happen. A hazard to the public.
Those are the words Becky Sharp used when she called Pinellas sheriff's deputies to report what she had found at an old industrial plant: Open containers of acids, cyanide and other poisons so powerful they turned concrete to mush and burned her feet.
Sharp, a private environmental inspector, feared the chemicals would catch fire or explode.

The date was Feb. 3, 1992.
Seventeen years later, people living nearby in Bay Pines Estates are hearing about it for the first time. They're learning that the fallout from that neglect may threaten them today.

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Acreage Florida residents try to connect dots in cancer cases

October 3, 2009 - The Acreage, a corner of unincorporated western Palm Beach County, is a rustic patch of dirt roads, canals and horse trails -- and, among some residents, the simmering fear of cancer.

For months, state and county officials have pored over this sprawling community of farms, groves and suburban homes located 15 miles northwest of West Palm Beach to determine whether a cancer cluster -- a greater-than-expected rate of the same cancer -- can be confirmed. The state Department of Health is in the second phase of the study. And, on Thursday, environmental activist Erin Brockovich is expected to come to West Palm Beach to meet with Acreage residents.

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Erin Brockovich goes after Shell Oil in Carson California

October 2, 2009 - Environmental activist Erin Brockovich (right) has agreed to pursue litigation against Shell Oil Co. for contaminating a Carson housing tract.

Shell recently discovered elevated levels of methane and benzene underneath the Carousel neighborhood. The contamination has been traced to underground oil tanks the company operated on the site until the 1960s.

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Secrets In The Soil in Fort Lauderdale Florida

October 1, 2009 - Imagine being told of dangerous levels arsenic in your front yard and dioxin in your backyard. That is the word going out to residents of a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, the epicenter of I-Team investigation Secrets in the Soil, as their worst fears realized.

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New Bedford Residents Concerned About Contamination Cleanup

October 1, 2009 - Speaking before state and federal environmental officials, residents unloaded their fears, frustrations and concerns over the city's cleanup of PCB contamination in the Keith Middle School neighborhood during a public listening session Wednesday night in the school's auditorium.

A gap of mistrust has been growing between residents and the city, state and federal environmental officials overseeing the cleanup of toxic material linked to a former city burn dump that received industrial waste containing PCBs and heavy metals.

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