Attorney for Thomas Datre Jr. questions witness’ science expertise
Kathryn Loddengaard, a project scientist for Ronkonkoma-based Enviroscience Consultants Inc., testified Thursday in the dumping trial of Thomas Datre Sr. and Thomas Datre Jr. Credit: James Carbone
A defense attorney spent Thursday challenging the credibility of a prosecution witness who conducted sampling of soil and material at sites where authorities allege a father, his son and four others dumped tons of contaminated fill.
Kathryn Loddengaard, a project scientist for Ronkonkoma-based Enviroscience Consultants Inc., returned for a second day of testimony in the Central Islip dumping trial of Thomas Datre Sr. and his son, Thomas Datre Jr.
Datre Jr.’s defense attorney Kevin Kearon asked Loddengaard during cross examination if she was aware the Brentwood site where she did some of the soil testing — Roberto Clemente Park — sat atop what was once a landfill.
Loddengaard testified she and her team “did not know we were sampling on top of a landfill the day we were sampling,” but learned about it later. She told Kearon no special precautions were taken to do the testing over the landfill.
Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota indicted the Datres, along with four others, in December 2014 for what he deemed a scheme to dump thousands of tons of construction debris — laced with asbestos and harmful chemicals — at four sites in Islip Town and Deer Park.The Datres face criminal mischief charges; as well as endangering public health, safety or the environment; and operating a solid-waste management facility without a permit.
Loddengaard and Thomas Kluender, a project manager at Environscience, as well as other experts, are expected to testify through the end of next week as prosecutors try to show jurors the science behind tests confirming the presence of contaminated material.
The landfill was unearthed after the removal of tens of thousands of tons of fill from a soccer field and recharge basin at Roberto Clemente Park in Brentwood. Soil and material samples pulled from the park by Loddengaard and others with the firm — hired by Spota’s office in 2014 — turned up asbestos, pesticides, hydrocarbons and metals, officials said.
Late last year, the environmental consulting firm’s president and chief executive told Newsday that whatever was buried in the long-covered landfill would have no affect on the tested soil. Soil borings were only drilled to the level of the topsoil below the fill — well above the location of landfill material, he said.
Spota has alleged trucks operated by Datre Jr. hauled the debris from New York City to Clemente Park; a private lot on Islip Avenue in Central Islip; a housing development for veterans in Islandia and a sensitive wetlands in Deer Park. Asbestos was detected at each site except Veterans Way.
Since the start of the trial Feb. 23, Kearon has questioned several prosecution witnesses, including Town of Islip and state Department of Environmental Conservation officials, on the existence of the landfill in a quest to find who knew about it and when they learned it was there.
Kearon asked Loddengaard if the material tested at the park, referred to by the scientist as “native soil,” could have been “some type of cap put on top of the landfill, presumably brought from someplace else?”
Loddengaard said any cap would have only been in one small area of the soccer field that was over the landfill.
When Kearon asked if Enviroscience ever uncovered the full dimensions of the landfill, Loddengaard answered no, but said trenching done in other parts of the soccer field found no landfill material.
Kearon also questioned Loddengaard’s testing method, which included composite samples across the soccer fields and recharge basin. Loddengaard said the samples were “collected over a larger span of soil and then put into one sample,” versus a discreet sample, which she said would be done “at a specific depth where you would expect contamination.”
Asked by Kearon if she knew of the DEC’s technical guidance for site investigation and remediation that indicates a “composite sampling should not be done for volatile contaminants” and for “other contaminants . . . is generally not acceptable when establishing the nature and extent of contamination in a site characterization.”
Loddengaard testified she “did not know that.”
She told Assistant District Attorney Michelle Pitman during the prosecutor’s questioning that background samples were taken in areas of the park not believed to have been subject to dumping to compare the material deposited on the soccer field to the native soil.
In the afternoon, Kluender gave jurors a lesson on asbestos, its different forms and respective hazards, during questioning by Pitman.
Several photographs taken by Kluender at some of the four dumping sites were shown to jurors. Kluender pointed out broken pieces of tile debris and transite shingle, items he said probably contain asbestos, including one piece of material believed to have asbestos inside a crusher at the Islip Avenue site.
Andrew Campanelli, counsel to Datre Sr., on cross examination asked him a series of questions about the commonality of shingles containing asbestos used on Long Island homes before 1981.
Kluender said as long as the shingles were intact, they posed no health threat, unless ingested. Only when they are mechanically crushed do they become friable and able to be inhaled, which could cause asbestos-related illnesses, including cancer.
Pitman, finishing the day’s testimony, asked Kluender: “Is transite shingle commonly used to build soccer fields?”