Northeast
Long Island residents face renewed concerns after discovery of toxic chemicals in graveyard of contaminants
Large chemical drums found buried at a local park on Long Island have reignited anger and outrage from area officials and residents who have long feared that the park’s past may be linked to cancer’s prevalence in the community. The latest discovery has left some to believe there are more secrets to be dug up.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced at the end of March that six 55-gallon steel drums had been discovered encased in concrete at Bethpage Community Park as the multi-year cleanup of the contaminated site continues. The area, located in the town of Oyster Bay, is the former dumping ground for aerospace manufacturer Northrop Grumman, previously known as Grumman Aerospace.
Preliminary testing revealed that the drums were filled with chlorinated solvents and waste oil, according to the state, which also said in a statement, “The discovery of the drums in an area of ongoing cleanup in the ball field does not present a threat to public health and safety at the site.”
Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino had a scathing rebuke of the ongoing cleanup process and called on Northrop Grumman to remove all the soil and haul it off Long Island.
“You’re looking at Grumman’s graveyard of contamination, we’ve been telling them for years that it’s a lot worse than they’re claiming,” Saladino told Fox News while standing in front of the site’s fenced off enclosure. “Now these drums prove that, and it’s time for Grumman to get on the stick, show they’re responsible [and] clean up this site fully and ship all the contaminants off Long Island. The people of this community and this town deserve nothing less.”
55-gallon steel drums were discovered encased in concrete at Bethpage Community Park as the multi-year cleanup of the contaminated site continues. (Fox News)
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The contaminated soil was first discovered at the park in 2002, and Northrop Grumman was named as a major contributor to a groundwater plume spreading from the site.
According to a state outline for remedial actions, “At its widest point, the plume is approximately 2.1 miles wide. In most areas, the top of the groundwater plume is over 200 feet beneath the ground surface and extends to depths of approximately 900 feet beneath the ground surface.”
The DEC says that from 1942 to 1996, Grumman Aerospace and the United States Navy used approximately 600 acres of property in Oyster Bay to manufacture military aircraft.
A tract of the land, which had been used by the company for waste disposal, was donated to the town in 1962 and later turned into a community baseball field.
There’s never been a confirmed link between the site and the cancer rates in the community, but nearby residents are increasingly joining class actions or filing personal injury lawsuits.
Northrop Grumman has previously denied culpability or declined to comment on ongoing litigation.
Regarding the latest discovery, a spokesperson for Northrop Grumman shared the following statement:
“While conducting environmental remediation in the Bethpage Community Park under the supervision of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), we discovered several drums encased in concrete underground in a closed area of the Park. We promptly notified NYSDEC and other relevant stakeholders and we are working with NYSDEC to assess and address this situation as quickly as possible. 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.”
Fears of a tainted childhood
Long Island was a beacon of opportunity for Lois Schiavetta and her family when they moved to the area decades ago.
“I was three years old, and my dad just got out of the Navy a year before and got a job at Grumman Aerospace, and they decided we might as well move to the town we’ll be working in,” Schiavetta said.
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Schiavetta said her childhood was markedly happy; she spent time with her parents, siblings and friends.
“The ice skating rink was the Friday night thing to do, that’s where we all went to meet the boys and skate,” she said.
Schiavetta lived three blocks away from the manufacturing operation then known as Grumman Aerospace.
“We went swimming all the time, we played in the ballfields,” Schiavetta said. “We didn’t have parents driving us anywhere; we walked, took a bicycle, and that’s where we hung out.”
Throughout her adolescence, she noticed an alarming trend in the community.
“Every single household on the other side of the block had someone who contracted cancer of some sort.”
Now, she wonders whether the time she spent in and around the baseball field later contributed to her own cancer diagnosis.
“I had to have a double mastectomy and go through chemotherapy – it was trying, for sure, and put a large strain on the family and my kids, but I’m still here ten years later,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Schiavetta said she considers herself one of the lucky ones.
“I have many friends who had multiple cancers from my high school, and it’s pretty devastating,” she said. “The numbers that I’ve seen and the names … of our class list of those who have left us.”
55-gallon steel drums were discovered encased in concrete at Bethpage Community Park as the multi-year cleanup of the contaminated site continues. (Fox News)
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A lengthy court battle
“I’m not surprised at all. Grumman has done everything they can … to hide the truth from the public,” Paul Napoli, a personal injury attorney on Long Island, said. “You know, they buried these barrels like they buried their heads in the sand when it comes to telling the community — they buried the truth.”
Since 2016, Napoli has been working with community members on a class action lawsuit against Northrop Grumman.
He alleged that the manufacturer’s historic operations led to expansive air pollution.
“It was actually air pollution they were emitting from 400 stacks at the site, millions of pounds of TCE into the air and thousands of pounds, by their own admission, of hexavalent chromium … and TCE is banned in New York,” Napoli said.
Napoli further alleged that Northrop Grumman initially left its 600-acre site because it didn’t want to pay newly required costs associated with monitoring air emissions following the enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1962.
“I always wondered why Grumman left Long Island – and the reason became pretty clear: the costs associated with putting scrubbers and air emission protection on these 400 stacks was so costly, it wasn’t worth staying in the community, and so they left, but what they left was this toxic legacy.”
Northrop Grumman still operates on nine acres in Bethpage on Long Island.
Napoli hopes by this fall the judge will have ruled on a motion filed in his class action lawsuit against Northrop Grumman. The judge has also appointed a mediator to try and resolve the case through a settlement, the attorney added.
Fox News producer Jennifer Johnson contributed to this report.
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A suicide note purported to be written by the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein while he was in jail in 2019 uses language that in some cases echoes his past writings to friends and family.
One phrase found in the apparent suicide note — “No Fun” — also appears on a handwritten page found in Mr. Epstein’s jail cell at the time of his death, as well as in emails he sent over the years.
And another saying in the suicide note — “watcha want me to do — bust out cryin!!” — appears in emails that Mr. Epstein had written to people close to him.
A cellmate claimed that Mr. Epstein left the suicide note before he was found unresponsive in their cell weeks before his death. The New York Times reported on the note last week and successfully asked a federal judge to unseal it.
If authentic, the note gives a view into Mr. Epstein’s mind-set before he was found dead at age 66 in August 2019. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
‘NO FUN’
A different handwritten note was found in Mr. Epstein’s cell when he died, and investigators believed it was written by him. In that document, Mr. Epstein complained about jail conditions — burned food, giant bugs and being kept in a locked shower. He concluded it with the underlined phrase, “NO FUN!!”
Mr. Epstein also used the phrase in emails when describing things he was unhappy about, or situations that had not gone his way.
‘watcha want me to do — bust out cryin’
Mr. Epstein used the phrase “watcha want me to do — bust out cryin” with friends, and in messages to his brother, Mark Epstein.
Like the note released by the judge, Mr. Epstein’s emails were often short, with staccato phrases and erratic punctuation. The emails were contained in millions of pages of documents the Justice Department released in response to a law passed last year requiring disclosure of records pertaining to Mr. Epstein.
Administrators at the Croft School, struggling after allegations of financial fraud, haven’t been able to find a buyer for its Boston locations, which will now close at the end of the school year, parents were told Friday.
Millions of dollars were raised by families and community members to keep the private school open for a few more months while Croft School administrators scrambled to find a buyer. But in Friday’s email, the chief restructuring officer and independent sale advisor said that two parties expressed interest but they ultimately had to pivot toward winding operations down.
“To be clear, the 2025-2026 school year will be completed based on the availability of parent funding. However, without a viable timetable for a transaction, we are faced with this difficult decision,” the email said.
About 350 students had attended the Croft School’s three campuses, two in Boston and one in Providence. Regular tuition starts at $31,000, according to the website.
Millions were raised to keep the private school open for a few more months but the Croft School is looking for a buyer as a long-term fix to its financial problems.
More than 60 families unenrolled from the South End campus over the weekend, the email said.
News of the debt crisis surprised parents in March, when the school’s board revealed in a letter that founding Executive Director Scott Given admitted to fabricating a letter of credit regarding a possible expansion and keeping two sets of books, overstating the school’s revenue while understating its expenses.
The discovery that the school was more than $13 million in debt came after police were alerted to possible fraud. The school has said it’s cooperating with multiple investigations involving Given, who has been suspended.
The private school, with two locations in Boston and one in Providence, requires $5 million to stay open for the rest of the schoolyear.
Given has been sued by at least one Boston parent, accusing him of running a Ponzi scheme. His legal team has said he has no comment.
Parents rallied to save the school, raising enough funds to keep classes going.
The officials in charge of the sale noted “how hard many of you worked to maintain The Croft School as you know it,” but added that the “difficult circumstances, uncertain financials and condensed timeframe made this a trying environment for purchasers to timely make a binding offer for the schools.”
It’s been one year since the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General brought charges against former Pittsburgh-area funeral home owner Patrick Vereb. He’s accused of deceiving more than 6,500 pet owners and denying them promised burial services.
State Sen. Nick Pisciottano of West Mifflin says critical legislation isn’t moving along like it should, so he’s asking pet owners to get on social media and call their state senators.
“We’re never going to be able to go back in time and make those things not happen for folks, but we do have the opportunity here, now that we’ve identified this gap in state law, to make sure that there are proper safeguards in place so that this never happens again in the future,” Pisciottano said.
Investigators said nearly 6,500 pets were promised a proper burial by Vereb, but instead their bodies were dumped in landfills or left in leaking garbage bags.
Pisciottano says legislation is needed to make sure that never happens again, which is why he sent out a letter, encouraging people “harmed by the lack of oversight in this industry” to get loud again.
“In Harrisburg, this bill passed unanimously in the state House, 203 representatives all voted for it. I don’t think that it’s a partisan issue, or an issue where there’s two sides that are for and against, and so we got to make sure this bill is high enough on the priority list of enough senators so that we can move this legislation forward.”
Both the House bill and the Senate bill remain stalled in the Senate, awaiting any movement. They hope to increase transparency in pet cremation bookkeeping and require providers to detail services and certify the return of cremated remains, among many other things. But until either bill gets considered, it can’t go up for any sort of vote.
“So if it doesn’t get done by the end of November, it has to start all over, so we would have to reintroduce in the House, reintroduce in the Senate, it would have to pass through the House again, it would still have to pass through the Senate,” Pisciottano said. “And so, our argument is, if there’s no opposition, and we’re halfway to the finish line, why can’t we just get it done this year?”
Pet parent Megan Lindeman is forever thinking about what happened to her Persian cat, Rory. She says the trust is broken and this legislation will help restore it.
“It passed unanimously in the House and to have it not go anywhere at this point is incredibly frustrating,” Lindeman said.
She said families who were grieving were taken advantage of, and there needs to be accountability, “so that we can restore trust and transparency.”
Pet parents are encouraged to call their senators and ask them to take this legislation up for a vote. KDKA reached out to Sen. Joe Pittman, who controls the schedule for the floor, to ask if he plans to bring it up for a vote, but didn’t hear back.
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