Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Poisoning the waters

From the Daily News:

A bridge rehabilitation project that already has a list of snafus - including the death of a worker and a fire that resulted in weeks of snarled traffic - is being charged with yet another potential hazard: the dumping of high levels of lead and mercury in the water.

The blasting of lead-based paint on the Throgs Neck Bridge, the 2,300-foot span that connects Queens and the Bronx, may have contaminated the waters of Little Neck Bay, according to an environmental scientist.

"I'm not by any means trying to attack the MTA [Bridges and Tunnels]," said Dr. James Cervino, an environmental scientist who serves on the Task Force on Health Effects of Toll Plaza Air Quality in New York City, a state panel.

"I want to urge them to start collecting samples and work with the community," Cervino said.
According to the agency's monitoring of 103 dust-producing work days on the bridge, no dangerous levels of potentially harmful metals were emitted.

But those tests should have included more samples, Cervino said.

"They only tested air," he said, adding that his findings came from the water and the land along the shoreline of the bay.

Although his tests were preliminary, Cervino and community leaders plan to hire an independent laboratory to conduct a more thorough examination of the samples. The results of which should be known by mid-January, he said.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not surprise considering all the different articles out there from pollution done from all the bridge work from the last thirty years. The East river has to be the worst of all the bays and rivers for a chemical soup dump.

In other good local news Thomas Spargo NY Supreme court judge gets 27 months in prison for extortion and bribery. You know he was one of the Brooks brothers rioters trying to stop the Florida recount after John Ellis called it from Fox.