[CPEO-BIF] "Nightmare on Ruggles Street, " New Bedford, Massachusetts

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Nightmare on Ruggles Street

Residents of contaminated Keith neighborhood worry about future

By BECKY W. EVANS
New Bedford Standard-Times (MA)
October 4, 2009

NEW BEDFORD - Raised ranches and Cape Cod-style houses line one side of 
lower Ruggles Street - houses with grassy front yards planted with 
ornamental trees and flowering bushes, each home with a paved driveway.

...

Since February, the lower half of Ruggles Street has been eerily quiet 
during the daytime and disconcertingly dark at night.

Three of the street's houses were vacated last winter after the City of 
New Bedford purchased them as part of a massive cleanup effort related 
to a former city burn dump. The dump, which was located at the current 
site of New Bedford High School, accepted industrial waste containing 
PCBs and heavy metals during the 1930s and 1940s. Contaminated ash from 
the dump was later used as fill for surrounding wetlands. The filled-in 
wetlands were later developed for housing, churches, businesses, schools 
and athletic fields.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009910040342


--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
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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