Emerson Power Transmission / Morse Chain

Former Emerson Power Transmissions Factory.

As the sports broadcasters say, the Emerson Chain Works redevelopment is “currently under review.”

ITHACA, NY - It looks to be one of the biggest development projects in Ithaca's history, but concerns are being raised about major toxicity lurking just below the surface of the would-be "Chain Works District" redevelopment.

The Emerson plant has been vacant for a year. The incoming mayor, Svante Myrick, plans to turn the plant into a residential area, which some believe is hazardous because of contamination.

Ithaca’s mayor-elect has big plans for the Emerson Power Transmission facility, with a controversial proposal to develop housing at the polluted building located off Route 96B.

The Emerson plant has been vacant for a year. The incoming mayor, Svante Myrick, plans to turn the plant into a residential area, which some believe is hazardous because of contamination.

Svante Myrick, Ithaca’s newly elected mayor, wants to develop the Emerson site into residential housing and the plant itself into a combined heat and power plant. However, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has determined that the area had been contaminated with trichloroethene, a recognized carcinogen.

Myrick said the plan isn’t necessarily his, but he sees it as an opportunity for Ithaca.

“It’s a vision that’s informed by the entire community,” Myrick said. “A lot of people have been talking about it and working on it. So it’s the plan that I will pursue, and it’s a plan that I’m excited about.”

Ithaca -- Ithaca activists say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's announcement of a new health assessment for trichloroethylene labeling it as a known carcinogen is a moral victory but not all that useful in efforts to clean up the South Hill neighborhood.

Trichloroethylene, or TCE, was used by the Morse Chain factory, which occupied the facility now known as the former Emerson Power Transmission plant. Use of the chemical ended in the late 1970s, but it remains at the site and downhill from it, in the soil and rock beneath the South Hill neighborhood.

The difficult geology on Ithaca's South Hill makes it virtually impossible to actually remove toxic contamination from beneath neighborhoods, according to staff from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

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.

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.

ITHACA — Audrey Whyte isn't worried — yet.

She knows it's not great that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation recently tested her home for toxic chemicals. Yet, the daycare center she operates from her house on North Meadow Street is doing fine, and she has plenty of friends who stop by regularly.

Outside her pale green home, surrounded by a bright menagerie of toys, conversation is about the toddlers driving plastic cars, the upcoming women's conference she's organizing and errands to run — not carcinogens.

ITHACA — While the Department of Environmental Conservation investigates a potential state superfund site on North Meadow Street, less than two blocks away another site with the same type of contamination was identified this summer.