Toxics Targeting in the News

ITHACA — Low levels of TCE contamination found at South Hill Elementary School likely came from a sewer line from the old National Cash Register factory, rather than from Emerson Power Transmission, according to a Wednesday press release from Emerson.

ITHACA — Many South Hill residents on Monday will begin to see the latest round of field work associated with the environmental contamination in their neighborhood.

KeySpan Corp., the owner of more than two dozen former utility gas-plant sites on Long Island, yesterday sought to allay concerns about one of the largest sites as community members prepare to meet about it in Hempstead next week. The Hempstead manufactured natural gas plant, located off of Intersection and North
Franklin Streets, has spawned a nearly 4,000-foot by 600-foot plume from the 7.5 acre site, a recently released report said.

KeySpan plans a meeting on the final remediation report at Adelphi University on June 28 at 7 p.m., in the University Center rooms 202 and 203.

PLAINVIEW, N.Y., May 21 — When Paul Granger, the water district superintendent here, came to work one morning in 2000, he spotted a rig test-drilling for pollution at a gasoline station across the road from two wells that pump up to 1.7 million gallons of drinking water a day.

He expressed concern that pollution might be threatening the water supply, and eventually his district sued three filling stations, affiliated with Exxon, Shell and Gulf.

As the trial in that case opened in Garden City on Monday, the nation’s water supply industry and major oil companies were watching closely.

The outcome of the case could set a national precedent on who will pay the estimated tens of billions of dollars to clean up contamination caused by MTBE, a potentially carcinogenic fuel additive, now widely banned, that seeped into the ground as gasoline leaked from fuel storage tanks across the country.