New York Times

Drew and Beth Bergmann have been living a homeowner's nightmare for nearly four years.

It started in the fall of 1996, when they noticed the unmistakable smell of fuel oil permeating their tidy Massapequa home and soon discovered that oil from a neighbor's underground storage tank had seeped onto their property. After seemingly endless haggling with insurance companies, environmental companies and state officials, the contaminated soil on their property was finally cleaned up last summer.

“It’s gone quiet,” says Steve McCoy, vice president for sales at Latshaw Drilling.
Mary Katherine Powers for The New York Times

For 25 years, environmental groups and state officials have concentrated on the problems posed by toxic PCB's in the Hudson River, but now they are starting to focus on dozens of contaminated spots in landfills and backyards in the upper Hudson Valley.