New York Times
Articles in the New York Times that include Toxics Targeting.
Rush to Drill for Natural Gas Creates Conflicts With Mortgages
As natural gas drilling has spread across the country, energy industry representatives have sat down at kitchen tables in states like Texas, Pennsylvania and New York to offer homeowners leases that give companies the right to drill on their land.
And over the past 10 years, as natural gas has become increasingly important to the nation’s energy future, Americans have signed more than a million of these leases.
New Round of Comments on Drilling
Gov. David A. Paterson ordered state environmental officials on Monday to complete revisions to their proposed standards for a controversial type of natural-gas drilling by June and submit them to a new round of public comment.
Gulf of Mexico Has Long Been a Dump Site for Industry
According to data from the Minerals Management Service compiled and analyzed by Toxics Targeting, a firm that documents pollution and contamination, at least 324 spills involving offshore drilling have occurred in the gulf since 1964, releasing more than 550,000 barrels of oil and drilling-related substances. Four of these spills even involved earlier equipment failures and accidents on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Thousands of tons of produced water — a drilling byproduct that includes oil, grease and heavy metals — are dumped into the gulf every year. The discharges are legal and regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Toxic Tidbits, via the Web
HAVE you ever wondered about health hazards lurking underground near your home, your workplace or a property that you are thinking of buying or renting?
For locations in New York State, there is now an easy way to find out, without resorting to costly testing of groundwater and soil core samples. A free Web site enables anyone — including prospective buyers and sellers, brokers and neighbors — to check a location by typing in its address.
The site responds with an interactive map pinpointing any nearby documented hazards — and there are thousands of them across the state.
19th-Century Process Left 21st-Century Mess
BAY SHORE
GLANCING out her home-office window here in 1999, Janine C. DiNatale was puzzled to see a stranger setting up a table on the sidewalk. She went outside and saw two other men, who were wearing hoods and full-body protective gear and were probing the ground.
Settlement Will Help Clean Suffolk Water
When several major oil companies agreed earlier this month to pay nearly $424 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by scores of water providers claiming damages from the gasoline additive M.T.B.E., one Long Island provider took the largest share by far.
The Suffolk County Water Authority in Oakdale, which supplies water to more than 1.1 million customers in the county, walked away with $73.4 million of the settlement. That figure was by far the highest among the Long Island providers and the other more than 150 water companies from 17 states.
32 Gas Stations in Report Show Spillage Signs
Correction Appended
THE water that fills the drinking glasses and bathtubs of Long Islanders comes from right beneath their feet. Thousands of public and private water wells wick groundwater from aquifers, the sole source of drinking water for 2.7 million people.
But a new study shows that they could be getting more than just water.
A four-year federally financed survey of 52 gas stations across Long Island found 32 of them to have previously unidentified petroleum spills that could threaten the Island’s aquifers.