Power Plant Facing Legal Action for Contamination

By: Nathan Lamb

A North Carolina power plant accused of leaking waterborne pollutants is facing legal action from environmental officials, according to this story from the Citizens-Times newspaper.
 
A recently filed lawsuit from the N.C. Division of Water Quality alleges that the Progress Energy plant in Asheville is leaking toxic chemicals into groundwater and the nearby French Broad River.

Officials termed the contamination a threat to public health and water resources, and asked the courts to require the company to assess the cause and extent of the problem within 120 days. The suit also requests additional testing for groundwater and private wells nearby.

The state compelled the utility to install monitoring wells at the site in 2009, and the complaint cites test results from monitoring wells, along with two incidents where inspectors discovered contaminants migrating from coal ash ponds to the nearby river.

Specific contaminants included thallium, a toxic metal often associated with coal burning operations. According to the EPA, effects can include nerve damage, gastrointestinal irrational, damage to the kidney, liver, testicular tissue and hair loss.

Duke Energy, which owns the plant, issued a statement saying it has complied with its environmental permits.

Located roughly 120 miles west and north of Charlotte, Asheville is a city of roughly 83,000.

Upstate New York Residents Question Environmental Quality of Legacy Site

By: Duane Craig

Regardless of what Watertown, N.Y. residents might want, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation says it won’t be doing any more environmental testing at the former New York Air Brake site, according to this article.

Besides residents, public officials are also concerned about high cancer rates and other illnesses that affect the north side of that community. Of increasing concern, is the possibility of vapor intrusion into nearby homes from high levels of chemicals that have made their way into the soils beneath the homes. DEC says it won’t be monitoring any indoor air quality in the homes, however monitoring does continue at the site every year.

Reassurances from the DEC largely fell on deaf ears at a recent neighborhood meeting that was also attended by environmental activist Erin Brockovich. One resident who orchestrated the meeting has been disabled by a neurological disease and another resident who attended claimed he remembers dumping chemicals from the facility’s operations.

Those operations started in 1876 when Eames Vacuum Brake Co. was founded as a vacuum break manufacturer. It was making a new kind of pneumatic brake for railroads operating in the area, according to this historical account. In 1919 the company had 7,000 employees making horse-drawn cannons and then during World War II it was busy making tanks and military hardware. General Signal Corp. bought the operations in 1967 and by 1980 had 2,200 employees making parts for aerospace and defense contracts, heavy machinery and farm equipment. The business’ makeup gets a little murky after that as a portion of it was purchased by a German company that eventually moved its operations to North Charleston, S.C. Other portions of the business still owned by General Signal continued to operate in the area as a foundry and maker of railroad car brakes.

General Signal admitted in 1988 that it disposed of toxic chemicals in a landfill on the site. Ten years of testing and cleanup followed, so that today, drainage from the landfill collects in a pond where the water is treated before it is released, according to this article. At one time, toxic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, as well as trichloroethylene, or TCE, were present in two creeks that flow nearby. People in the area wonder today how much of those materials remain in the soils and continue to migrate to adjacent lands.

Worry spreads over General Chemical's place in the neighborhood in Milford, MA.

April 27, 2010- Simply because of what it does, General Chemical Corp.'s work is "dirty business," one company official acknowledges. "We try to be a cooperative neighbor and we have historically done everything that the town has asked us to do," said Roy Swartz, the company's compliance manager.

The dirty work done at the company's Southside facility, though, has produced a record and reputation that's anything but clean.

Since the hazardous waste transfer facility's start at 133 Leland St. in 1960, next to the Woodrow Wilson School, General Chemical has been in trouble with state and federal regulators, been sued by Framingham's fire chief and been the source of panic in the neighborhood over toxic spills.

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Home Hazard: Family's Residence in Prattville, AL Had Been Used as a Meth Lab

February 10, 2010- The only room in this one-story house safe enough for human inhabitation is a small, non-ventilated room with a toilet, and even that is toxic.

Brenda Maitland bought the house, hidden just off Alabama 59, about four years ago. It is where she, her husband and two young daughters were going to swim, ride their new horse, plant a garden -- make a home. But just after a week of living there, Maitland's youngest daughter got sick: sore throat, earaches, watery eyes, burning skin. They were the same symptoms that Brenda Maitland came down with while scrubbing the house the week before the family moved in.

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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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Ithaca, NY Neighborhood Pushing for Pollution Cleanup

August 24, 2009- The president of the South Hill Civic Association is pleading with city leaders for more help in the fight to rid South Hill of toxic pollution.

Association president John Graves said he lives half-a-block from the Columbia Street manhole that registered highest for toxic vapors such as trichloroethylene (TCE) in 2007 testing by Emerson Power Transmission. Yet almost two years later, Graves said that neither he nor any of his neighbors have been contacted to have their houses tested for potential contamination.

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A gritty problem in New Bedford, MA

August 17, 2009 - Brenda Mattos’s voice rises as she leads a toxic tour of her neighborhood. A block away is the section of the high school lawn that tested high for probable cancer-causing chemicals in April. Behind her house is the tiny church whose expansion plans are on hold because the soil is so polluted. Next door? A vacant house, one of six the city bought in the last year because the property was so contaminated.

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Waste Has IN Property Over A Barrel

May 26, 2009- No one wants to own the hazardous waste-soaked Hassan Barrel site. The defunct company’s Summer Street location and several neighboring properties weren’t sold last fall when Allen County conducted its tax sale to collect delinquent taxes.

The $20,000 in back taxes isn’t worth the risk of helping to pay to clean up the property, said Dave Fuller, Allen County building commissioner. Federal officials have said employees stored barrels of caustic chemicals in sheds and trailers and eventually dumped the waste into huge trash bins and open pits because the cost of disposing the waste grew too high over the years. But what they were dumping was a toxic brew of paint waste, volatile chemicals such as butanone, ethyl benzene and toluene and heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury. The chemicals can cause health problems including cancer, kidney and liver damage and lung problems.

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San Antonio's Toxic Triangle Residents Still Seek Justice

May 26, 2009- It’s been more than two decades since plumes of toxic chemicals were discovered seeping from the former Kelly Air Force Base into the soil and groundwater under the surrounding neighborhoods. More than 20,000 homes sit above these plumes in an area residents have come to call the “Toxic Triangle” because of higher than normal rates of cancer and birth defects.

Residents of the Toxic Triangle who have watched neighbors and family members sicken and die believe those chemicals — primarily trichloroethylene (TCE), a degreasing agent, and tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a paint stripper and dry-cleaning chemical — are the cause of the area’s high incidences of liver, kidney, and other cancers.

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US Arsenic Levels in Well Water Higher Than Thought

May 26, 2009- Arsenic is a well-known toxic chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization list as a known carcinogen. While arsenic occurs naturally, it can also be found in industrial applications such as leather and wood treatments and pesticides.

Man-made arsenic contamination results from the manufacture of metals and alloys, petroleum refining, and the burning of fossil fuels and wastes. “These industrial activities have created a strong legacy of arsenic pollution throughout the United States,” says an EPA report from April 2004. “The combination of high toxicity and widespread occurrence has created a pressing need for effective monitoring and measurement of arsenic in soil and groundwater.”

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NC Resident Sues Utility For Toxic Tap Water

May 15, 2009- When vacationing on the Outer Banks you may have noticed that the water seems to taste a little different than your home tap. You may have even come to expect inconsistency in the taste of your tap water. Most people solve this with a simple external filter put on their plumbing at home.

Although this usually takes care of the problem, did you know that occasionally harmful toxins can seep through to your home causing serious health issues? There have been many cases involving neglectful property owners or businesses spilling toxic substances onto nearby land. Innocently thinking that your local water utility always keeps a high standard may be naïve thinking at best as the following lawsuit illustrates.

A father of twins has filed a lawsuit against the Washington DC Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) accusing it of providing lead-tainted water that resulted in developmental problems in his children.


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Toxic Plume Spreading Under Florida Neighborhood

April 30, 2009 - Raytheon wants to zap the toxic plume spreading under the Azalea neighborhood with a combination of hot electrodes and chemical doses designed to neutralize the pollution, according to its latest plan filed this week with state environmental regulators.

There are 10 contaminants in the toxic underground plume, but the predominant ones are a pair of cancer-causing chemicals called 1,4-dioxane and trichloroethene. Workers discovered the contamination in 1991 during construction of the Pinellas Trail, which runs next to the Raytheon property. The pollution originated from a drum storage area on the site, which had belonged to a company called E-Systems.

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EPA Testing Safety of MI. Toxic Nightmare

April 17, 2009- In the summer of 2008 investigators found about 500 barrels behind a home on O Avenue. Crews cleaned up the site, but say toxic and radioactive materials leaked into the ground. Since then, tests have shown no chemicals in the well water of nearby homes.

On Thursday night, concerned residents attended a meeting at KVCC, where the EPA was expected to explain more about the safety of the site. Approximately 50 people showed up, some of them quite angry. Authorities say the well water is safe, however there is other contamination in the area that the EPA is still concerned about.

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Miami's Sector II: A Playground of Past Contamination

April 2, 2009- Children, thousands of them over the years, played in a sandbox and back yard of a day care center in the heart of Liberty City. It's located steps from the now demolished Scott Carver public housing project that's long been mired in financial scandal and public corruption. But what never made headlines is what's in the soil in this neighborhood known as Sector II.

Many of them are coming to terms with the fact that their daycare center, housing project and park and lake were developed around what was a 1940's dump site, a burial ground of toxic junk and solid waste.

They informed me that there was contamination on that property." Her reaction was to get the children "out of there," she explained." It could be anyone's children, and yet no one seemed to care here."

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Home Raided for Lead Leak in Orlando

April 1, 2009- Toxic lead could be seeping into the ground in Ormond Beach. The Department of Environmental Protection went back to a home on Santa Ana Avenue on Wednesday to inspect an old, illegal salvage yard and they brought the SWAT team with them.

Department of Environmental Protection police scoured the back yard Wednesday of the unassuming but allegedly poisonous Ormond Beach home. Tables full of testing materials were set up as investigators tried to determine just how far and deep chemicals from old TVs might have leaked into the ground.

"They kicked the gate open, opened the door, and first thing I knew there was a machine gun in my face, they were running through the house," resident Ronnie Brookshire said.

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Toxic Cleanup Lags in New Jersey

May 5, 2007 - Of the country's most polluted industrial sites, New Jersey holds the lion's share, and over three decades only a small percentage have been cleaned up under the supervision of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

A report compiled by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity and released last week details how the agency's work has slowed dramatically under the Bush administration.

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