Hexavalent Chromium Contamination Digs Into City Coffers

By: Duane Craig

2,200 residents exposed to hexavalent contamination

Corporations sometimes acquire strange bedfellows and for Merck & Co., a pharmaceutical maker, its ownership of a company that pressure treated lumber for building the frames of cooling towers couldn't be stranger. Now, as the company leads the remediation efforts to clean up hexavalent contamination in the Beachwood Subdivision of Merced, California, the City of Merced itself will be paying out $1.5 million to more than 2,200 residents who were exposed to the chemical for more than 25 years, according to this report in the Merced Sun-Star online.

Why is the city paying?

It seems its insurance carriers decided to back out of covering them in the earlier stage of this case back in April. So, since the city was also named in the suit it decided to settle out of court and forego attorney and expert costs of $1 million a year. The city is using sewer funds and reimbursements from insurance carriers to cover the bill.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek the first of three trial phases focused on whether contamination leaked from the plant and the second phase was set to determine if the residents were harmed by the contamination. The plaintiffs argued the companies involved did not try to notify residents even when they knew there was contamination released. Merck admitted knowing, but countered the contamination could not have affected the residents. Hmmmm, maybe land and water contamination is acceptable as long as it doesn't affect people?
I won't bore you with the multiple, identical reports on this one. Here is one and another that report something different from the stampede of identical reports. Here's one about the earlier trial.

Rockford gets EPA money for brownfield sites

April 20, 2010- $750,000 is on the way to Rockford to help the city investigate possible environmental contamination and develop clean-up programs for old industrial sites. The money comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and makes up the total of two brownfield grants.

$400,000 of the EPA money is a community wide grant. Half goes to assessments at petroleum sites, like old gas stations. The other half goes to a variety of old industrial sites, such as by the old Ingersoll plant, the N. Madison area, downtown, and the Kishwaukee corridor.

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Environmental Issues Found on Pennsylvania's "Weatherly Trainworks" Site

March 14, 2010 - Cleanup continues on a historic property in Weatherly. The Rotary Foundation, the Weatherly Rotary Club and borough officials want to make the former Weatherly Trainworks ready for commercial development, according to Borough Manager Harold Pudliner Jr.

An engineering and environmental firm informed borough council at Wednesday's workshop meeting of contamination found at the site. Some soil contamination and some lead contamination were discovered.

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Marcellus shale deposit: Buried treasure, hidden costs for PA

March 10, 2010- Parts of the Poconos sit atop a massive natural gas deposit that could bring prosperity to northeastern Pennsylvania. That includes jobs, long-term income for some property owners and a new, domestic energy supply. But concerns over environmental destruction have made developing these deposits controversial.

New technology now makes these fields viable, and exploration and drilling, close to home, has begun.
The pros? A new energy source. Jobs. Licensing and royalties to landowners for the rights to explore and extract on their property.
The cons? Environmental contamination and destruction. Few will benefit directly, while many will have to live with the impact on the environment.

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New Jersey Debates Adding Environmental Concerns to Home Deeds

February 3, 2010 - Should homeowners be required to explain environmental concerns on the deeds to their homes when they put their properties on the market? Some residents say yes, but others say no.

Borough Attorney Joe Ragno researched this issue after resident Lisa Riggiola suggested that the borough adopt an ordinance requiring all potential buyers to be notified that the home they are considering is located in the Plume, which is the area in the borough contaminated by DuPont.
During the Jan. 27 Borough Council meeting, Ragno outlined several reasons why such an ordinance would not be a good idea.

"There are some safeguards in place from the state that are already there for buyers that buy properties in the Plume," said Ragno. The attorney explained that describing the contamination on the deed would attach this stigma to the home long after the property was cleaned. "It would potentially be infinite in nature. When this happens, those deeds will still be out there, potentially damaging the people who own those properties," Ragno said.

Laws already in place require the real estate commission and Realtors to disclose this information. In addition, buyers are also protected by the state Consumer Fraud Act, which requires disclosure and punishes sellers who fail to disclose this information.

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Meeting Held on Former NY Weapons Site

September 18, 2009- About 60 people gathered in the Lewiston Senior Center on Wednesday night for a public meeting about the ongoing investigation of environmental contamination on former federal weapons sites in Lewiston and Porter.

The 7,500-acre site was purchased by the federal government in the early 1940s to construct an explosives plant manufacturing trinitrotoluene, or TNT. It had other uses once the TNT plant closed nine months after it opened. The storage site, a 191-acre area, includes a 10-acre cell that holds radiological waste.

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CDC Launches New Environmental Public Health Tracking Network

July 7, 2009 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now offers an on-line network the public can use to track environmental exposures and chronic health conditions. On Tuesday the CDC announced the Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, a public health surveillance tool that scientists, health professionals, and members of the public can use.

“The ability to examine many data sets together for the first time has already resulted in faster responses to environmental health issues. We believe the Tracking Network holds the potential to shed new light on some of our biggest environmental health questions,” said Howard Frumkin, M.D., M.P.H., DrPh., director, of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

The web-based tool unites vital environmental information from across the country, including air and water pollutants and information for some chronic conditions, including asthma, cancer, childhood lead poisoning and heart disease into one resource.

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CT Development Site Investigated for "Eco-Terror"

April 2, 2009- Soil test results on the possible contamination at the site of a proposed wood-burning power plant off Mill Brook Road in Plainfield should be completed today or Friday, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said.

The DEP, FBI and police began investigating the site Tuesday, spurred by a letter claiming to be sent by Earth First, an environmental advocacy group, saying it had contaminated the property. The letter was sent to PRE Vice President Daniel J. Donovan and copied to The Norwich Bulletin.

The letter stated that more than 1, 200 pounds of contaminants had been dumped at the Mill Brook Road site, at Donovan’s home and at the home of project proponent J. Scott Guilmartin.

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Outraged in Connecticut

August 14, 2007 - STRATFORD — For seven years members of the Raymark Advisory Committee sat around a table just about every month battling the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the best way to clean up toxic waste at 26 remaining contaminated properties.

Residents hardly ever showed, leaving committee members to wage the battle against creating large consolidation sites in Stratford.

But ever since the EPA started presenting potential cleanup plans to the public two weeks ago, residents started showing up — in droves.

Nearly 100 people crammed into a small room at the Birdseye Municipal Complex Tuesday night at a regular Raymark Advisory Committee meeting to voice their objections for the third time in two weeks about the prospect of digging up Raymark waste, which consists of asbestos, lead and PCBs, and hauling the materials to one major consolidation site in town.

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Contamination sparks anxiety and lawsuits in Missouri town

August 5, 2007 - From a distance, the old Westinghouse plant is a nondescript complex of buildings, the kind of place that might make light bulbs or ceiling fans.

Drive a little closer and yellow signs come into view: "Caution: Nuclear Material."

A few years ago, officials with Westinghouse Electric Co. had predicted that the plant, which has been idle since 2001, would be razed in 2005 or last year. Now it appears the buildings won't be torn down and the site completely cleaned up until next year — at the earliest.

To some who live nearby, demolition can't come soon enough.

The plant has been linked to chemical contamination in nearby well water, prompting anxiety among residents and triggering lawsuits.

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Arizona residents fear uranium contamination from past industry

August 2, 2007 - Five weeks ago, the company that used to own the uranium mill on the other side of the nearest paved road, U.S. Highway 160, reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation to test nearby wells it may have contaminated. El Paso Natural Gas hasn’t named the wells it will test yet, so Charley can only wonder if it will include the well her family has been using all these years.

The area’s troubles began when the Rare Metals Corporation started processing uranium at the mill in 1956. Off and on for the next 10 years, it processed some 800,000 tons of ore, all of it for the federal government’s nuclear weapons program. Following the federal regulations of the time, Rare Metals dumped the damp tailings, the waste product of milling, into unlined evaporation ponds on site. Unfortunately, not all the water evaporated. Much of the water seeped into the ground, taking uranium and other contaminants in the tailings with it.

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Hello

As a senior executive at a large environmental risk information company I have unique insight into contamination issues in the U.S.

So much focus today is on global warming and air polution that people seem to forget about the pollutants in our ground and groundwater. There are millions and millions of contaminated sites across the country that affect regular people every day.

The purpose of this blog is to share what I see and learn about the affects of contamination in our nation and our neighborhoods.