News broke on this story in the mainstream media -- from WTVH Channel 5 in Syracuse: "New Hartford's Big Secret" -- this evening.
New Hartford OnLine Blog has the details. From the blog, in a nutshell ...
- A private dump owned by the Scully family near Valley View Road was directed to be closed by court order in 1961.
- Twenty five years later in 1986 "severely rusted" 56 gallon drums were found at the site which once contained chemical solvents according to preliminary DEC reports. State officials planned to take soil and water samples.
- In April 1987 135 people attended a public information meeting at the NH HighSchool on two suspected hazardous waste sites in the town, but DEC and OC Health Dept. officials had few answers on this site because they said more testing was needed.
NH Online notes that Lockheed Martin, which is responsible for cleaning up the site (presumably because its wastes wound up at the site) reports in an online document that industrial waste was transported from GE's French Road plant to this site from 1966 to 1973. NH Online asks:
"How can that be? The Supreme Court ordered the dump closed in 1961."
NH Online further notes that Lockheed Martin's cleanup of the site and Sylvan Glen Creek involved the removal of 1000s of truckloads of soil, and the removal of 300 mature trees and comments:
"No wonder there has been increased stormwater problems in that area of town...300 mature trees removed???"
Isn't the Sylvan Glenn area the site of recent flooding events? Could contaminated waste have been transported from the contaminated site into the adjoining neighborhoods by these flooding events?
The Scully Site was on the Town Board's agenda tonight. After all these years, it will be interesting to see if people's concerns are answered.
Update: It didn't take the OD long to put a positive spin on all this.
7 comments:
http://larrytanoury.blogspot.com/2009/02/utica-gets-hammered-by-county-again.html
Jr.
Dan Miner is the poorest example of a news reporter. He does not know truth from lies.
The O.D. reporting skews these articles in favor of New Hartford.
Thank God that Concerned Citizens For Honest & Open Government video taped last nights meeting.
The truth is out there, however, not when reading the Observer Dispatch.
If my memory serves me right, this was one of the top haz mat sites in the State at that time. I think they said it was the 2nd worst.
It may be worse than you think. The City's Reservoirs were closed for a reason.
Could it be that Sylvan Glen Creek and its PCB's were entering the Utica drinking water which went to Parkway, Tilden Ave., Sherman Hills and areas within this framework.
The city's local reservoirs were either taken out of regular use or were abandoned because under new federal regulations all water needs to be filtered and it would be impracticable to build and operate separate filtration plants for them. MVWA's filtration plant is near the water source it uses: the Hinckley Reservoir.
However, my understanding is that at least one of the 3 reservoirs in this area is still kept in reserve as an emergency supply, so there is a potential it will be used at some point.
The reservoir were taken off line for other reason, however, but most of the houses on Cascade drive were taken off there wells and put on public water
There is a huge scandal and you people in New Hartford don't have a clue there has been PCB and toxic material pumped into all of Utica's water but the OD never reported it cause GE paid them to keep it quiet!!
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