Toxics Targeting in the News

As the Ithaca Gun demolition proceeds, three members of the Community Advisory Group are questioning whether the city and state are doing enough to protect neighbors from potentially contaminated dust.

Group member Walter Hang sent an e-mail to Mayor Carolyn Peterson last week arguing that the demolition contractors are not using enough water to suppress dust and that there is insufficient monitoring to know whether potentially contaminated demolition dust is moving off-site. Hang is president of Ithaca-based Toxics Targeting, which maps polluted and hazardous sites in New York state.

ITHACA — Walter Hang has made his enormous database of toxic-site maps available for free online.

The Ithaca business owner and outspoken environmental activist makes his living compiling environmental database records from local, state and federal agencies and creating maps that show potential property buyers where pollution has been found.

“Even though the vast majority of my clients are engineers and environmental consultants, I started this company to help people who are buying homes,” Hang said.

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.

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.