A new study shows toxic forever chemicals known as PFAS may be entering the food chain on Long Island through contaminated soil, water and air.
PFAS have leached into our food from packaging and cookware. Now the risk may also be reaching our crops themselves.
WASHINGTON — As a four-term congressman, Republican Lee Zeldin played a key role in the yearslong bipartisan push to save Plum Island, off Long Island’s North Fork, from potential commercial development. He helped secure funding for clean water projects in his Suffolk district. And he spoke out against a 2018 proposal to permit offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Calverton Restoration Advisory Board has announced plans to host its own public meeting where the Suffolk County Health Department can present its independent testing data of private wells at the former Grumman site to the residents, after the U.S. Navy declined to have county officials present its findings.
Long Island’s drinking water supply is solely dependent on aquifers. Sarah Meyland, a retired professor at the New York Institute of Technology, spoke about the impacts of chronic water depletion on the region’s water supply.
State environmental conservation officials have given Brookhaven Town an additional three months to recommend cleanup plans for a miles-long toxic plume emanating from the town landfill.
The Department of Environmental Conservation set a new May 1 deadline for finishing the report, which is expected to outline plans for cleaning up the landfill after groundwater testing in 2023 discovered so-called "forever chemicals" in the plume, which extends about 4 miles from Brookhaven hamlet south toward Bellport Bay.
Cleanup remedies at five Long Island hazardous waste sites "continue to be effective in protecting human health," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said this week, though some of the toxic areas need continued monitoring.
The agency conducted the federally mandated reviews at Superfund sites located in Glen Cove, Port Jefferson Station, Franklin Square and East Farmingdale. Across New York, New Jersey and Puerto Rico, 32 federal Superfund sites were appraised, which happen every five years, the EPA said.
New data from the New York State Department of Health shows that dozens of Long Island school districts have tested positive for lead in their drinking water, prompting concerns among parents and advocates and requiring districts to take corrective action.
Suffolk County Legislator Steven Englebright (D-Setauket) invited Citizens Campaign for the Environment co-founder Adrienne Esposito and CCE board and staff members to the Suffolk County Legislature’s Nov. 25th General Meeting to honor them for 40 years of advocacy. Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey (R-Lindenhurst) joined Englebright at the podium, where the CCE team received a proclamation along with flowers and balloons.
Brookhaven officials have been ordered by state environmental authorities to prepare a landfill cleanup plan that could include closing the 51-year-old facility after an inspection earlier this year found elevated levels of so-called "forever chemicals" in a miles-long plume emanating from the dump.
No place could be more impacted than Nassau County by the EPA’s decision to postpone by two years the deadline for water utilities to comply with new federal water standards for PFAS until 2031.
These chemicals are dangerous, having been linked to a large number of illnesses – kidney cancer, testicular cancer, high cholesterol, immune suppression, thyroid disease, and pregnancy complications.
Attorney General Letitia James is right when she states: “Every New Yorker deserves clean, safe water.”
But it takes more than an assertion to make clean water happen. Fighting the pollution that continues to threaten the water we drink and area waterways that support wildlife and recreation takes leadership and aggressive measures from the state. It doesn’t look like we’re getting enough of either from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
After the discovery of chemical drums at Bethpage Community Park last year, Oyster Bay officials worried about the presence of hexavalent chromium, a cancer-causing toxin, in the soil near the drums, federal court records show.
They were concerned by what they saw: yellow and green sludge, a sign of chromium contamination, according to a filing in the town's lawsuit against Northrop Grumman, which seeks to accelerate and widen the scope of the plan to clean up the 18-acre property Grumman Aerospace used as a toxic dumping grounds for decades.
