[CPEO-BIF] Ft. Edward (NY) vapor intrusion

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Pollution upsets homeowners
Fort Edward residents say General Electric is moving too slowly to 
remove TCE, an industrial solvent

By BRIAN NEARING
Albany Times-Union (NY)
August 7, 2007

FORT EDWARD -- This town has become synonymous with the federal 
government's ongoing efforts to remove PCBs from the Hudson River.

But now another pollutant, which hasn't previously received much 
attention, is starting to roil residents as well.

The danger is underground in a six-street area around General Electric's 
capacitor plant on Broadway. Four decades of GE operations through the 
1980s left behind a plume of PCBs and a potentially carcinogenic solvent 
called trichloroethylene, or TCE, used to clean machinery.

In 2004, fumes from TCEs, which the U.S. Environmental Protection says 
are likely to cause cancer in humans, were found seeping out of the 
ground and into homes -- including the home of Raymond and Jody DeLong 
on West Summit Street, four blocks south of the GE plant and its parking 
lots.

That led the state to order GE to offer homeowners air pumps meant to 
dissipate fumes from basements to the outside air. Forty-seven 
homeowners, including the DeLongs, have the pumps, whose white plastic 
stacks emerge from the sides of their houses.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=612188

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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