Contaminated Nation

Connecticut Landfill Cleanup Costs Town Millions

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:29:00 +0000

December 21, 2009 - - The town of Southington, CT will pay about $3.8 million to help clean up the old Southington Landfill site and monitor the groundwater in the area.

Two settlements were recently entered into Federal Court that will provide the funding to perform ongoing work at the old Southington Landfill, which is a Superfund Site, to protect the public from groundwater contamination, according to a document from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The settlement was agreed to by EPA, the U.S. Department of Justice, the State of Connecticut and numerous settling parties.

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Seal Beach, CA. Residents Say Gas Station is a Bad Neighbor

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:39:00 +0000

December 21, 2009- Arco officials say they are making strides to clean up an old gas leak that has contaminated the soil in a nearby neighborhood, but neighbors say they want the station shut down. More than 80 residents attended a community meeting Wednesday night at the Mary Wilson Library for an update on the cleanup of contaminated soil vapor at the gas station on Pacific Coast Highway and 5th Street.

"There's a puddle of oil affecting our home values and our health – Arco, you're a bad neighbor," resident Robert Goldberg said. "Close the station. This place is a public hazard and a public nuisance."

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A Carson, CA. Neighborhood's Future is on Hold

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:33:00 +0000

December 21, 2009- About a year ago, Elizabeth Noriega's son started having migraines. She took him to the doctor, who referred him to a neurologist. His blood was drawn, but the results were inconclusive. Then, in August, she discovered that her home was built on top of an oil tank farm. She also learned that the soil underneath the Carousel tract in Carson is contaminated with high levels of methane and benzene. She wondered: Could there be a connection?

Since the contamination was discovered almost four months ago, most of the 275 homeowners in the Carousel tract have signed on to a lawsuit against Shell Oil. The Carousel development is north of Lomita Boulevard, between Marbella and Panama avenues.

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Natural Gas Companies Fined for Hydrochloric Acid Spill in PA

noreply@blogger.com (Erik) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:27:00 +0000

December 21, 2009- The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has fined Chesapeake Appalachia LLC and Schlumberger Technology Corp. $15,557 each for a 295-gallon hydrochloric acid spill at a natural gas drilling site in northern Pennsylvania.

Chesapeake staff notified the DEP on February 9, 2009 that a 21,000-gallon tank containing 36 percent hydrochloric acid was leaking at the company’s Chancellor well site in Asylum Township, Bradford County. A DEP inspector investigated the report and found that the tank had two leaks and was losing about 7.5 gallons of hydrochloric acid per hour.

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New Hampshire couple's water contaminated with both arsenic and TCE

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:08:00 +0000

December 14, 2009 - Jason and Kelly Thomas worry every time they put their 15-month-old daughter in the bathtub. The Raymond couple brush their teeth with bottled water, cook with bottled water and think about what is in the water every time they wash the dishes or take a shower.

When they bought their 1700s home on Blueberry Hill in 2005, they knew there was a Superfund site across the street. What they did not know is that less than five years later, contaminants from that site would be leaking into their water supply.

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Delayed justice for Kansas residents

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:01:00 +0000

December 13, 2009 - The roughly 100 residents of Treece, Kansas, watched in 2006 as their neighbors immediately to the south in Picher, Oklahoma, were offered money for their homes and land in exchange for relocating to safer ground, due to the threat of cave-ins and contamination from nearly a century of mining in what's known as the Tri-State Mining District.

Finally in October of this year, Congress passed legislation securing a $3.5 million buyout for the residents of Treece. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said "It is our hope that this will give them the opportunity to raise their children, run their businesses, and get on with their lives, free of the burdens of pollution and environmental degradation."

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MA town sues over buried toxic materials

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:55:00 +0000

December 13, 2009 - Monsanto Co. and Cornell-Dubilier Electronics, Inc., which manufacture pesticides and electrical capacitors, respectively, have been linked to PCB contamination at three privately-owned properties in the Parker Street neighborhood near Keith Middle School, according to court documents the City of New Bedford filed Thursday in Bristol County Superior Court.

As part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by neighborhood residents against the city, city attorneys are suing Monsanto and Cornell-Dubilier, in addition to other persons and entities, for more than $5 million related to site assessment, clean-up costs, consulting fees, the purchase of private property and future remediation costs, according to court documents.

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Lawmakers demand action on New Jersey cancer cluster

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:49:00 +0000

December 13, 2009 - New Jersey federal lawmakers are asking the U.S. environmental agency to review whether a DuPont pollution treatment project in Pompton Lakes is adequately protecting residents from harm by contaminants.

In June 2008, DuPont and the state Department of Environmental Protection reported that two chemicals, PCE and TCE, that had migrated from a closed company-owned munitions factory were sending toxic vapors up through soil beneath some 430 homes and potentially into their basements.

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PCB hearing in Michigan provides no answers for residents

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:46:00 +0000

December 11, 2009 - After years of watching their home values drop and their neighborhoods suffer under the stigma of having environmental issues, more than 130 St. Clair Shores, Michigan residents came looking for answers at a public hearing Thursday night.

They left, however, without an answer to the question that has dogged the investigation from the beginning: where is the contamination coming from?

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NJ residents get more money in Ford pollution suit

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:35:00 +0000

December 10, 2009 - The borough of Ringwood, New Jersey has agreed to a financial settlement with more than 600 current or former Upper Ringwood residents who sued it over Ford Motor Co.'s dumping in their neighborhood 40 years ago.

The agreement follows a $10 million settlement in September that residents' attorneys reached with Ford and a handful of companies involved in the dumping. At that time, residents - who claim a wave of unexplained deaths and illnesses in the community were caused by dumping - said the amount won't begin to cover their pain and suffering.

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Maryland resident says fly ash contamination ruined her life

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:30:00 +0000

December 11, 2009 - Gayle Queen is afraid her organs may fail, and her doctor says she's already in bad shape. The Gambrills resident testified on Capitol Hill Thursday that improper disposal of coal combustion waste, often referred to as fly ash, contaminated the water supply in her neighborhood and ruined her quality of life.

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Utah landlord faces meth contamination nightmare

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:26:00 +0000

December 10, 2009 - At a recent public hearing on landlord licensing by the Logan City Council in Utah, 25-year-old landlord Tyson Gerber sobbed as he stood before the council and community. “I have just lost everything,” Gerber said, trying to keep his voice under control. “Everything I have worked for since I was eight.”

Two weeks earlier, the young landlord’s apartment building had tested positive for meth contamination.

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Jackson Residents Seek to Shut Down Landfill

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:51:00 +0000

December 8, 2009 - A Hinds County landfill is just a few feet away from a neighborhood and homeowners have said it's an environmental hazard and are trying to shut it down. Mary Ann Benton is petitioning for neighbors in the Shadow Lake subdivision to ask the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to not renew the permit for Faircloth Demolition.

“We are having a problem with a horrible, horrible stench coming from the landfill, so our air quality is being contaminated,” Benton said. “We are in fear every day that our water is being contaminated.”

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South Carolina Plant Relocates Due to Neighborhood Pollution

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:47:00 +0000

December 3, 2009 - Some people living near the AVX Plant in Myrtle Beach say they're glad the plant is relocating to Greenville, hoping it will reduce pollution in the area. Bonnie Burtsfield is one of those neighbors who has lived directly across the street from the Myrtle Beach AVX plant for 16 years. For most of that time, Burtsfield says she hasn't had one sip of her tap water.

Coupled with infertile soil, Burtsfield believes pollution from the plant is seeping into the environment. "Everything we put out turns brown and it just dies. We tried the garden and we couldn't even get a tomato to come out," she explained.

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Polluted Lots Delay Seattle Housing Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:56:00 +0000

December 2, 2009 - The barren lot of land marking the corner of 12th Avenue and East Jefferson Street might be an eyesore from above ground, but underground it’s even uglier.

Through research and testing, the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle found the lot to be contaminated with 400 times the state cleanup standards for petroleum. Capitol Hill Housing, which had planned to build an affordable housing facility on the site, now must wait for the city of Seattle to handle the clean up, which might cost more than $1 million.

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South Buffalo, NY residents remain bitter after city settled claims

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:06:00 +0000

December 1, 2009 - Residents in Hickory Woods have their checks from City Hall now, and some are packing up and leaving the South Buffalo neighborhood built on contaminated land. Most of them, even the ones who are staying, will tell you that what remains is not just a neighborhood, but a legacy of illness, death and deep personal loss.

For those who are staying at Hickory Woods, money is just one piece of a larger plan for returning the neighborhood to normalcy. They also want the city to complete environmental cleanup so that the neighborhood won't continue to suffer from image problems and subpar real estate values.

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Water contamination at North Carolina Military Base cause of long term suffering

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:55:00 +0000

November 29, 2009 - Ed Bauries shares a bond with other Marines, their children, their widows from across Florida - and the nation. Their shared bond is the water at Camp Lejune, North Carolina. Water that they bathed in, cooked with and drank, decades ago while stationed at the base. Water that now appears to have been tainted with some of the most dangerous chemicals in the world.

Hundreds of thousands lived at Camp Lejune from the 1950's through the 1980's, where it is now alleged that the drinking water was contaminated from leaking underground storage tanks, the dumping of waste and a toxic spill from a nearby dry cleaners.

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Minor Radiation Leak at Three Mile Island

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:33:00 +0000

November 27, 2009 -

The operators of Three Mile Island should have notified the public sooner about a relatively minor radiation leak that nevertheless raises troubling concerns.

Gov. Rendell had every reason to blast the Exelon Corp. for a five-hour delay in informing state emergency officials about the incident Saturday.

The biggest reason: Three Mile Island is forever linked to a near disaster - the 1979 partial meltdown that occurred at the plant's sister reactor, Unit 2, which remains shut down.

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Chemical cleanup continues in Wyoming neighborhood

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:29:00 +0000

November 29, 2009 - Authorities say they are making progress on cleaning a plume of chemicals in the Mylar Park neighborhood.

Small quantities of two chemicals used to clean aircraft parts have seeped into groundwater underneath homes north of the Wyoming Air National Guard facility at the Cheyenne Regional Airport.

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TCE confirmed in Illinois communities’ water supplies

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:56:00 +0000

November 23, 2009 - Trichloroethylene (TCE) is in the raw source water and finished water supplies of at least three Illinois communities, according to November 20 news releases from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

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EPA: Uranium from polluted mine in Nevada wells

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:53:00 +0000

November 21, 2009 - For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells.

They say they have been met by a stone wall from state regulators, local politicians and the huge oil company that inherited the toxic site — British Petroleum. Those interests have insisted uranium naturally occurs in the region's soil and there's no way to prove that a half-century of processing metals at the former Anaconda pit mine is responsible for the contamination.

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Northeast Pa. residents sue Houston-based natural gas driller over polluted water wells

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:47:00 +0000

November 20, 2009 - At a news conference Friday to announce the suit, residents described an ordeal that began shortly after Cabot started drilling near their homes. The water that came out of their faucets suddenly became cloudy and discolored, and it smelled and tasted foul.

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Groundwater Contamination in Illinois Neighborhood

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:27:00 +0000

November 13, 2009 - An Illinois Environmental Protection Agency official said Thursday during a meeting with concerned citizens in downtown Algonquin that the groundwater directly beneath him was contaminated.

Gary King, a remediation manager with IDOT, told neighbors that his department is looking to test the gas trapped in the soil on their property to see whether that contamination could have seeped into their homes and businesses.

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Pennsylvania Developer Builds on TCE

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:49:00 +0000

November 18, 2009 - The lone homeowner in a townhouse development once known as The Sanctuary said he doesn’t want anyone else to fall victim as he did, and he wants to know who in Wright Township is responsible for making that protection happen.

Nick La Rosa, who owns and lives in the only completed house in the development that has since been renamed Whispering Ridge, brought his concerns before the regular meeting of the township planning commission Tuesday night.

“There is TCE (trichloroethylene) in the underground water, and there is no question (the developers) knew it,” La Rosa said. “Who in Wright Township protects the interests of the residents?”

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Cancer cluster has Ohio families concerned

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:54:00 +0000

November 9, 2009 - Several families in Sandusky County, Ohio, said they want government officials to take action regarding a suspected cancer cluster in their area.

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer said Monday nearly 20 people in the area of Clyde, Ohio, have been diagnosed with cancer since 2001 and some area residents want to know why.

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