[CPEO-BIF] TCE from Litton Systems site, Springfield, Missouri

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Missouri knew of contamination in Springfield’s groundwater decades before anyone told residents

By Eric Schmid, Steve Vockrodt
St. Louis Public Radio (MO) 
October 19, 2022 

Early in 2019, Ed Galbraith faced a crowd of some 200 unhappy Springfield, Missouri, residents. He wanted to make amends.

Galbraith, then director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ environmental quality division, acknowledged that the state agency in charge of protecting the environment should have announced sooner that contaminated water had spread from an old industrial site near Springfield-Branson National Airport. Residents had recently found out that a harmful chemical known to cause cancer had been detected in the groundwater.

The contamination came from the site of the now-shuttered Litton Systems, a former defense contractor that had employed thousands of people in Springfield to make circuit boards for the Navy and telecommunications industry.

Litton used a toxic solvent called trichloroethylene (TCE) to wash the circuit boards and for years improperly disposed of it. The pollutant leached into the groundwater and into aquifers deep below the ground. It then spread to nearby properties, where it made its way into wells that supplied water to those who lived and worked near Litton.

…

For the entire article, see
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2022-10-19/missouri-knew-of-contamination-in-springfields-groundwater-decades-before-anyone-told-residents

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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