Phase I Environmental Database Services

The southern shelf of Cayuga Lake is polluted. It has been polluted for decades.

Swimming has been forbidden at Stewart Park since 1962, when a child drowned because he could not be found when he went under in the silt-laden water. The Cornell Lake Source Cooling project has been in operation since 2000. Local environmentalists have identified the LSC project as a significant contributor to the pollution of the south end of Cayuga Lake, and they want the project either shut down or modified to eliminate or ameliorate its purported effects.

Five years ago, Ken Deschere was diagnosed with a very rare disease: stage IV tonsillar cancer.

He underwent three different surgeries in just over two weeks, and over the next two months was subject to 33 doses each of two types of radiation therapy - at 50 minutes a pop.

A South Hill resident since 1981, Deschere and his wife Regina live about one block downhill from Emerson Power Transmission, a polluted compound listed on New York's State Registry of Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal sites.

More than three million gallons of wastewater from natural gas drilling have been accepted by the Village of Cayuga Heights since May 2008. Cayuga Heights' Publicly Owned Treatment Works - known to most as a water treatment plant - has temporarily suspended this practice, however, effective April 2.

Property owners, businesses, residents, city governments and even corporations are in for a big surprise. Toxics Targeting, Inc., an environmental data firm based in Ithaca, announced it has developed a free Internet map web site that illustrates the exact locations of more than 270,000 reported toxic dumps, leaking tanks, pollution discharges, and other known or potential environmental dangers and hazards across New York State.

Ithaca Gun is slated to be demolished by the beginning of September. The big question is, however, will all pollutants be removed prior to taking down the building? The demolition of a toxic building without entirely removing all enclosed pollutants poses a severe risk to the public health and surrounding neighborhoods.