Contamination Leaves RI Residents Feeling Blue

August 13, 2010 - Residents of the Bay Street neighborhood in Tiverton have been living a nightmare for nearly a decade, since sewer work uncovered soil so contaminated, much of it was blue in color. Since that time, the long-suffering residents have encountered delay after delay and roadblock after roadblock in their quest to get the neighborhood cleaned up and return to a normal life.

They thought they had finally turned the corner this year when the cleanup began. But they have been dealt another frustrating setback. Now the town and the state must step in and take control. It is way past time for those in power to work for their constituents.

The saga began in 2002 when the contaminated soil was first discovered. The former Fall River Gas Co. is accused of using the neighborhood as a dumping ground, callously and illegally discarding such dangerous substances as petroleum, arsenic, cyanide and lead. Since the discovery, the residents have been trapped on poisoned land they had no chance of selling.

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Cleanup Starts in Rhode Island Neighborhood With Blue Soil

August 31, 2009 - The project starting Monday will remove the soil polluted with arsenic, cyanide, lead and other contaminants to a depth of two feet from about 100 properties. Houston-based Southern Union agreed to pay $11.5 million for the cleanup to end a lawsuit filed by residents.

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Residents of polluted Rhode Island neighborhood settle suit

April 23, 2008 - Lawyers for dozens of residents of a polluted Tiverton neighborhood say they have agreed to settle a lawsuit brought against an energy company over contamination that turned the soil under their homes blue.

Reynolds says the settlement involves money to the property owners as well as a pledge to clean up the contaminated properties.

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Gas company fights lawsuits over pollution in Rhode Island

October 25, 2007 - New England Gas Co. is pointing fingers at many others for the contamination of the Bay Street neighborhood in Tiverton. In a lawsuit, the company claims it is not responsible for the contamination of some 50 acres of residential property, and if forced to pay damages, it should be reimbursed by other parties, including the town.

The company has at least four lawsuits pending against it in federal court filed by residents of the Bay Street area, who maintain that waste from the Fall River Gas Co.'s coal gasification plant was dumped in their neighborhood decades ago and has caused them physical, emotional and financial harm.

The waste found in the soil in the Bay Street area contains arsenic, cyanide, lead and petroleum-based pollutants at levels that exceed safe standards. The cost to clean up the area has been estimated between $30 million and $55 million

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Residents of toxic neighborhood in Rhode Island wait and wait

October 16, 2007 - Gail Corvello figured that if she and her neighbors held out for about five years, they would be able to get out from under the nightmare of the soil contamination in the Bay Street neighborhood that has had a stranglehold on their lives since 2002.

She was wrong.

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Rhode Island Neighborhood Trapped by Pollution

June 19, 2007 - TIVERTON — Imagine living in a place where you can’t plant a flower, dig a garden, sell your house or let your children play outside, where hidden toxins darken the soil and a summer breeze carries the fear of airborne particles infiltrating your lungs.

This is Gail Corvello’s nightmare, and it unfolds every day in a neighborhood that looks like any other to an outsider, with tidy homes and lawns sloping down to Mount Hope Bay.

Yesterday morning, Corvello stood outside her Bay Street house, which doubles as a daycare center, and ushered four young children, ages 2 through 5, outside into the brilliant sunshine.

It was nearly five years ago that construction crews installing a sewer line on Bay Street dug up the telltale blue soil that would change the lives of Corvello and some 250 people in this working-class slice of North Tiverton, just beyond the Fall River line.

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