Updated: Sat., May. 8, 2010, 6:12 AM NY POST
'Killing' fields of Red Hook Park
By TIFFANY KARY
The grassy fields of a park in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn are contaminated with PCBs at a level 110 times what New York environmental agencies consider safe, according to court records filed in a lawsuit by New York and six other states against bankrupt Chemtura Corp.
Linked to liver cancer, low birth weight and loss of motor skills, PCBs pose a threat to park visitors and nearby residents, said Judith Schreiber, chief scientist in the State Attorney General's Environmental Bureau.
State and city health and environmental agencies declined to comment or said they weren't aware of the risks at the 58-acre park, a popular spot for soccer games and family picnics.
Chemtura has resisted demands by the state environmental bureau that it clean up contamination from a leak at its plant, which abuts the park.
"Contamination at the site and in or near the recreation area is at unacceptable levels from a human-exposure perspective," Schreiber wrote in an April 22 affidavit in Manhattan federal court.
Seven states, including New York, have sought to force the Middlebury, Conn.-based company, the country's largest maker of plastic additives, to clean up nine polluted sites, including the Red Hook facility.
Chemtura filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2009 in US Bankruptcy Court in New York, citing potential defaults on its debt and environmental liabilities. It said it had set aside $107 million to cover cleanup costs over the next 10 years.
The company has disputed at least $2 billion in claims from the US and state governments for environmental liabilities, including its role in polluting the Gowanus Canal, which was labeled a Superfund site this year.
The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates it will take $1 billion to clean the canal, which runs near the park.
Chemtura's Red Hook plant, which closed in 1999, had operated since1958.
Red Hook had traditionally been the focus of industry and shipping until the 1990s. Home to one of the city's largest housing projects, it was named one of the worst neighborhoods in the United States by Life magazine in 1988, due in part to the spreading use of crack cocaine.
Gentrification of the area over the last 15 years has coincided with the opening of large retail outlets, including an Ikea furniture store and a Fairway supermarket, a passenger cruise-ship terminal, cafes and wine stores.
With the neighborhood's resurgence, use of the contaminated park has increased. Red Hook Park hosts soccer tournaments and food vendors that draw large crowds.
PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, have been banned since 1979. The chemical doesn't break down easily, building up in human and animal tissue, as well as in food chains.
Regulators have fought for a decade with Chemtura and the plant's former owner, Crompton Corp., which merged with another firm in 2005 to form the now-bankrupt company.
Marco Granados, a 54-year-old Brooklyn resident, was sitting about 15 yards from Chemtura's former chemical plant last Sunday with a group of friends -- their children playing in the grass. Granados said he has visited the park every summer weekend for years and had never heard of any problem from chemicals.
"I remember, six or seven years ago, a smell -- but nothing now," Granados said.
AI
