Drums of toxic chemicals found buried at LI park in community with history of cancer concerns
Six large drums filled with toxic chemicals encased in concrete were discovered buried under a Long Island park in a community long plagued by cancer concerns, officials revealed this week.
The 55-gallon steel drums were found last Wednesday by contractors as part of a multi-year plan to clean up contaminated soil at Bethpage Community Park, which had been the Northrop Grumman Aerospace dumping ground for decades, Newsday reported.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said Thursday the discovery presented “no immediate threat to public health” — but fed-up residents are demanding a full soil excavation.
“We discovered Grumman’s graveyard for contamination,” Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino told the paper. “These drums were encased in concrete coffins, which proves to us that they knew they contained very dangerous content.”
Residents of Bethpage have repeatedly argued cancer is more prevalent there than in surrounding areas.
The town has had to contend with contamination caused by Northrop Grumman’s hazardous waste dumping that led to a 6-square-mile underground toxic plume.
At least one of the unearthed drums, which were found 4 feet deep, was punctured and some of them contained flammable chemicals, Saladino said. A layer of clay was also found beneath the drums where the chemicals could have seeped.
The drums were discovered below to the 18-acre park’s abandoned baseball field, which has been closed for 20 years over soil contamination concerns.
Saladino has called on the DEC to order a full cleanup of the park by removing all the soil and hauling it off Long Island. He says taxpayers have previously paid $20 million to clean the site so residents could use the park’s skating rink.
The supervisor filed a lawsuit against Northrop Grumman — the successor of Grumman Aerospace — a decade ago to be reimbursed for the costs. A new suit was filed in December calling for Grumman to remove all contaminated soil, ABC 7 reported.
“I’ve had it. I’ve had it. I’ve been working on this for over 20 years as a New York state Assembly member and now as the supervisor of the fourth-largest town in America and I’m not going to sit by idly,” Saladino told the outlet.
Northrop Grumman said it is working with the DEC to address the situation.
“We promptly notified NYSDEC and other relevant stakeholders and we are working with NYSDEC to assess and address this situation as quickly as possible,” a company spokesperson told The Post.
“We remain committed to protecting the health and well-being of the community and to continuing our partnership with NYSDEC and other government regulators to address environmental conditions in the area.”
The DEC is overseeing Northrop Grumman’s cleanup activities at the location. Preliminary testing revealed the drums contained “chlorinated solvents and waste oil/petroleum,” which are “consistent with known historic operations” of Grumman and the US Navy in the area.
The park sits on a tract of land used by the company as its chemical dumping ground from the 1940s to the 1960s before it was donated to the town in 1962, according to Newsday. The aviation company, once Long Island’s biggest employer, built famed Navy World War II aircraft like the F4F Wildcat at its sprawling Bethpage campus.
Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were first discovered in the soil in 2002, leading officials to discover how extensively the grounds had been used for dumping, according to Newsday.
The DEC later learned of the carcinogenic chemical plume underground, composed of mostly chlorinated solvents — primarily Trichloroethylene, or TCE. The chemical spread is a whopping 4 miles long, 2 miles wide and 900 feet deep.
A number of personal injury and class-action lawsuits have been filed against Grumman, alleging the company contributed to illnesses — including cancer over the years.
The Cornett family, of Bethpage, filed a $300 million lawsuit against Grumman after three out four of them were diagnosed with cancer within just 20 months between 2015 and 2017.
Northrop Grumman has denied the claims.
Authorities have repeatedly said Bethpage’s water is safe — but residents scoffed at a 2013 state Department of Health study, completed after a three-year investigation, which found no higher overall cancer rates in the 20-block area surrounding the park.
