The clock continues to tick as the massive groundwater plume emanating from the Navy-Grumman site continues to migrate south and to Nassau County’s south shore. A variety of meetings on the plume cleanup efforts were held over the past 5 months, including those sponsored by the NYS DEC/EPA/ Navy-Grumman; Congressman Thomas Suozzi; and Long Island Pure Water. Following the failure to devise a workable cleanup strategy to stop the plume migration southward by the HDR Consulting firm (Albany, NY) in 2016, the NYS DEC again hired HDR to develop a more focused plan to remediate the worst pollution “hot spots” and contain further migration.
In the late spring Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York State would spend $150 million to lead the cleanup of the Bethpage plume, the largest groundwater plume in New York State. Long Island Pure Water brought a law suit against New York State and Navy-Grumman to fund a study on the presence of radiological contamination and to create a remediation plan specifically for these radioactive materials being detected in wells near the Navy-Grumman facilities. In a separate lawsuit, 80 residents or their estates living in the Bethpage area have sued Northrup Grumman alleging medical injuries including death from contamination originating at the military contractor’s facility.
