Toxics Targeting in the News

Town Takes On Big Oil?

Talk about a David and Goliath scenario, and going from Bonac to Brockovich: Yesterday the East Hampton Town Board met with representatives from a prominent personal injuries law firm in executive session. Their goal was an exploration the likes of which few municipalities have undertaken. The uncharted territory? A lawsuit against the oil companies that manufacture the gasoline additive MTBE.

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Gasoline spills threaten water supplies

Twice a week, Dan Whalen drives a quarter-mile to fill 10-gallon jugs with drinking water from a tanker truck that's been supplying water to his neighborhood for more than two years.

Whalen, who lives in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, doesn't drink the water from his taps because the wells in his neighborhood were contaminated by one of the state's biggest spills of gasoline and MTBE, a highly toxic chemical additive. MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, is also a suspected carcinogen.

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Oil catastrophe at Ground Zero

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Hidden Hot Spots

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Legacy of Poison in Twice-Excavated Yards

Tom Harrington's backyard in Queensbury, N.Y., looks much as it used to, except for a few telltale signs: the maple tree is smaller, the swing set is in a different place, and the lawn has strange lines running through it, like a bad hair implant.

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PCB Worries Are Spreading From Hudson To Its Shores

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.

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Uranium found near Falls

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In Town of Contaminated Wells, Outrage and Fear

One Sunday afternoon in mid-October, Daniel Whalen was helping a neighbor saw a limb off a tree when the neighbor said something disturbing: state environmental officials had told him to stop drinking water from his well, and to stop cooking and showering with it, too.