New cancer study of Grumman plume might not suffice
Workers with yellow containers holding the 55-gallon drums exhumed from the old Grumman site at Bethpage Community Park in April. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Just 20 days after saying they didn't plan to conduct a comprehensive, updated study regarding cancer rates among residents living near the toxic Grumman site in Bethpage, state Health Department officials changed their tune.
"While there is no new threat to public health, and prior exposures have been addressed for more than a decade due to the efforts of New York State, we understand the public would benefit from and appreciate an updated review of cancer cases in the area," state Health Commissioner James McDonald said in a statement.
If it sounds like McDonald was coaxed into making the switch, that may be because it followed intense public pressure — a campaign led by local elected officials on both sides of the aisle.
While a positive and necessary step, it's also just another start in decades of fits and starts.
The Health Department first conducted a cancer study, albeit an incomplete one, of the area near the Grumman site in 2013, after toxic soil vapors seeped into some homes. Since then, the Grumman plume has moved south at a rate of one foot each day — about 4,000 feet in total. Even as state health and local water department officials have assured residents that their drinking water is safe and that there have been no new toxic exposures, the cleanup has been slow.
That stasis was rocked in April and May when contractors found 22 concrete-encased drums filled with toxic chemicals, deeply buried in the soil beneath Bethpage Community Park — drums the state Department of Environmental Conservation had insisted were not there.
The drums' existence — juxtaposed with those denials — rightly concerned residents and local elected officials.
"After all this time, after all this study, after all this work, they're finding drums?" Rep. Tom Suozzi said in a recent interview. "Our confidence was shaken ... I think the uncertainty of it all caused anxiety for people."
The discovery, Suozzi said, "catapulted" calls for a new expanded cancer study onto center stage. The Health Department's initial rejection of those requests didn't sit well with residents who could be forgiven for their distrust.
"All of these small steps are victories but we're not going to stop until they fully clean up the park and fully clean up the plume," Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino said in an interview. State officials, he added, "have proven over and over to us that they shouldn't be trusted ... But now, I hope the study is conducted honestly and thoroughly and I hope the residents will receive all of the information and what it means."
But Saladino added a political twist to a seemingly apolitical cause by critiquing state efforts to add "high-density housing" to the region when the state, he said, should be "taking the steps to provide [residents] with clean water." His remarks undercut the larger effort and unnecessarily introduced an entirely irrelevant issue.
Saladino's deeply rooted, if calculated, skepticism shows that no matter how honest and thorough the study is, it may not satisfy anyone. It's extremely difficult to prove causation when it comes to a connection between any toxic site and the occurrence of cancer. The Health Department's statement already warned that the new analysis "cannot provide a direct causal link."
Whether or not the new study brings the "peace of mind" Suozzi hopes for or the detailed information Saladino seeks, it certainly won't put to bed the politics of the cleanup, no matter how briefly bipartisan this moment was.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
