Contaminated Nation
NC Marines Fight For Help After Years of Bad Water
June 21, 2010 - Former Marine Cpl. Peter Devereaux was told about a year ago that he had just two or three years to live.
More than 12 months later, at 48, he still isn't ready to concede that cancer is going to kill him. He swallows his pills and each afternoon he greets his 12-year-old daughter, Jackie, as she steps off her school bus in North Andover, Mass.
The Department of the Navy says more research is being done to connect ailments suffered by Marines such as Devereaux who served at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and their families who lived there to decades of water contamination at the base.
Meanwhile, however, the Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly begun awarding benefits to a few Marines who were based at Lejeune.
More...Acreage Cancer Cluster: One Year Later and Very Few Answers
June 18, 2010 - Acreage residents Bill and Joyce Featherstone find comfort playing with their two dogs.
The pups remind them of the special, but limited time they had with their son, who loved the animals.
The beloved Joey died last September of a brain tumor.
"Instead of me sitting here and being confident, I'm sitting here thinking everyone is asleep at the wheel," Bill Featherstone said. "No one is paying attention."
13 Acreage families with children who had a pediatric brain tumor from 1994-2008 were studied. 11 of those tumors were malignant. There are also countless more reports of adult tumors.
City Eyes Loop Oil Pollution in Gloucester, MA
June 17, 2010 - Testing to determine the full extent of oil and chemical contamination, the inheritance of a century of gas production on the Gloucester waterfront, is beginning this summer on Harbor Loop.
Oil was detected on Harbor Loop in 2005, when the planned rehabilitation of the city harbormaster's wharf was halted after drilling there spread an oily sheen across the surface of the harbor.
It was not unexpected.
Harbor Loop had been the home of the former Gloucester Gas Light Co. manufactured gas plant in the 19th century, a major source of energy before the days of natural gas pipelines or liquefied natural gas container ships.
But precisely what is down there and how far it has spread beneath the surface is still unclear.
Coal Ash Woe: The Tale of a Montana Town
June 17, 2010 - In the tiny Montana town of Colstrip, people knew the Moose Lodge well water tasted bad. But it would be years before the community learned why.
Waste ponds at a massive coal plant nearby had leaked over the decades, contaminating wells in residential neighborhoods and groundwater under cattle grazing lands, as lawsuits would eventually allege. According to an excellent investigation last year by The Center for Public Integrity (CPI), some who drank the well water got diarrhea; another resident stopped drinking her strange-looking tap water after her cat would no longer lap it up.
The contamination came from a coal plant, but not from the usual air pollutants.
Investigators seek source of PCBs in Spokane River
June 14, 2010 - Industry has flourished along the banks of the Spokane River for more than a century. So, perhaps it’s no surprise that high levels of PCBs show up in rainbow trout and other fish.
Once found in everything from lipstick to cable insulation, PCBs were banned more than 30 years ago because of their link to cancer and other health problems. But the toxic compounds are still flowing into the river through storm water runoff.
Tracking the pollution’s source is part of a $980,000 "Urban Waters Initiative" at the Washington Department of Ecology.
Cancer Cluster at California Elementary School
More than 300 cancer cases have been reported within a three mile radius of Kelly Elementary School over the past 10 years. Several children have died, and many of the cancer patients attended or worked at the school.
Parents believe pesticide residue or overhead power lines are the cause. Wednesday night, they demanded the school board look into to the potential health hazard.
San Diego County health officials have launched a task force to investigate parents' concerns that the air, water and soil at the elementary school may be causing cancer in students.
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Bank Sues Illinois Dry Cleaner for Contaminating Residential Property
Forest Park National names the property's owner, Edward Ditchfield, his former company E&H Enterprises and the bank that holds the property in a trust, U.S. Bancorp.
The bank's grounds for the lawsuit? It owns a house around the corner from River Forest Cleaners, a two-flat at 423 Ashland that the bank foreclosed on in 2009. Forest Park National said it has tried - and failed - to sell the property since at its market value because of the polluted ground under the building.
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EPA Investigates Contamination in Louisiana Neighborhood
"This is a very important day. It's a day that should have come a long time ago. We have traveled a long journey and I feel like victory is close," Felix says, smiling.
Nearby, an EPA contractor uses a hand trowel to scoop hard-packed dirt into glass jars for testing at a government lab in Houston, Texas. Felix and other environmental activists in this southwest Louisiana community tried for decades to convince the state and federal governments they live in a toxic town.
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Brooklyn Neighborhood On Toxic Waterway
In the course of its roughly 150-year history, the Gowanus Canal has been called many things, but it’s fair to say “lovely” is probably not one of them. Now, however, the Gowanus micro-neighborhood — bounded by the gentrifying brownstone districts of Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Park Slope — is enjoying its moment in the summer sun, drawing the city’s hipsters to its art galleries and rock-climbing gyms, its nightclubs and rooftop film series. The half-empty warehouses and semi-derelict factories — for so long seen as post-industrial blight — now give Gowanus a special cultural edge, like a miniature Baltimore or Detroit (with terrifying pollution substituting for terrifying crime).
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Hidden Groundwater Contamination in Northern New Jersey
He never mentioned a far more dire issue: contamination at a DuPont explosives plant and the fact that groundwater laced with toxic solvents was spreading under a nearby neighborhood.
That's because Sinsimer never knew the pollution existed. Hardly anybody in town was aware, even though documents show DuPont and state environmental officials had been discussing it for several years.
Three months into his term, Sinsimer learned about the contamination — by accident – when he found documents about DuPont locked in a Borough Hall file cabinet.
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Meeting Updates People About Water Contamination Near Rogersville, MO
Officials started studying the water issues southwest of Rogersville last July. They have discovered a new fault below the surface to the south of U.S. 60 that lets surface water move downward fast and reach a nearby well in less than a day. The source of the trichloroethylene, or TCE, is still a mystery.
"It's just one of those unfortunate things that we just don't have the answers to right away. That's really why we're trying to focus on the home owners, the people who are drinking the water, getting a solution for them," said Renee Bungart, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
Questions Persist for Asbestos-ravaged Libby, Montana
The sisters’ town, Libby, population 3,000, has emerged as the deadliest Superfund site in the nation’s history.
Health workers tracking Libby’s plight estimate that at least 400 people have died of asbestos-related illnesses — from W.R. Grace mine workers and family members who breathed in the dust they brought home in their clothes, to those who played as kids in waste piles dumped by the company behind the community baseball field. Some 1,500 locals and others who were exposed have chest X-rays revealing the faint, cloudy shadows of asbestos scarring on their lungs.
Chromium Found in Basements of New Jersey Homes
The community meeting, organized by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health and Senior Services, followed the findings of a new round of tests on a chemical leak that has plagued Garfield for almost three decades. Officials announced Wednesday that harmful levels of chromium had contaminated 16 of 163 homes tested last year by the federal agency.
Bernice Riccio of Lincoln Place lives in one the 16 affected homes. On Thursday, she wondered if the groundwater that has contaminated her basement could be linked to the leukemia that killed her husband, Michael, two years ago.
More...California Neighbors Sue After Finding Homes Were Built on Oil-Saturated Soil
Built on top of a long-forgotten crude oil storage site, the 285 homes in Carson's Carousel neighborhood are now ground zero for an environmental and medical crisis that has pitted current and former homeowners, some of them cancer-stricken, in a massive lawsuit against Shell.
"I'm very angry. I'm angry that this could happen to our family or anyone else's family," longtime Carousel homeowner Royalene Fernandez said. "It has definitely ruined our lives and I don't want it to ruin my kids' lives or my grandchildren's."
More...Dioxin Questions Rise Along the Duwamish
For two years, residents of a small cluster of houses in Seattle's South Park neighborhood have known they were living with elevated levels of a toxic compound known as dioxin/furans. And for two years they've watched Seattle City Light and the federal government tussle over what to do about it.
Next month City Light and the Environmental Protection Agency plan to outline options for cleaning up one of the most polluted spots along the Duwamish River — the few blocks around an old asphalt plant not far from the South Park Bridge.
But those plans are expected to put off most decisions about dioxin, raising more questions in a neighborhood long frustrated by a lack of answers.
Chemical Dump Lurks Under a D.C. Neighborhood
Later, the crew slid the rusting World War I artillery shell into a small steel vault and sealed the door. They detonated a shaped explosive charge to cut the projectile open, and pumped in reagent to neutralize its contents: liquid mustard, an infamous chemical warfare agent.
The process is “as safe as sliced bread,” said Nielson, the operation leader, at a control panel in a nearby trailer. “Maybe safer.”
The destruction of five poison-filled shells and 20 other suspect items ended in early May. But the saga of America’s most unusual hazardous waste site is far from over.
Haggling Over Toxic Cleanup Leaves Iowa Day Care in the Middle
She has no idea whether the underground benzene or other dangerous gases made it into the home she shares with her husband, Richard. Four children stay in the child care center five days a week, playing with stuffed animals stored in a street-side room that used to hold B&C Services' grocery items and the cash register.
Tests in 2006 within 10 feet of the house's foundation found high levels of benzene in soil vapors.
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