[CPEO-MEF] "Navy waited too long before telling [New York] DEC about toxic plume near Bethpage well, state says"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Navy waited too long before telling DEC about toxic plume near Bethpage well, state says

By JENNIFER BARRIOS
Long Island Newsday (NY)
November 29, 2014

The state Department of Environmental Conservation wrote a strongly worded letter to the Navy this month, criticizing the military branch for waiting months before formally informing state authorities about elevated levels of a potential carcinogen it found underground near a public-supply well in Bethpage.

In the Nov. 5 letter, Robert Schick, director of the DEC's Division of Environmental Remediation, wrote that the state agency was "somewhat surprised" by the high levels of trichloroethylene the Navy  found hundreds of feet underground in a monitoring well it drilled near a public-supply well, north of Hempstead Turnpike.

While the Navy first discovered levels of the solvent, also known as TCE, as high as 4,600 parts per billion in the monitoring well in March, the DEC said the branch didn't formally inform the state agency of the results until October -- a delay Schick called "unacceptable."

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/navy-waited-an-unacceptable-7-months-before-telling-the-dec-about-toxic-plume-near-bethpage-well-state-agency-says-1.9664821

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
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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