Long Island Verizon Sylvania Nuclear Waste Site Conspiracy?

That’s what Adreinne Esposito, Executive Director of the Citizens’ Campaign for the Environment, called the growing controversy regarding Verizon’s radiation contaminated property located in Hicksville, New York  in a recent News 12 Long Island television report on the former Sylvania Nuclear Products facility.  See the full video here.

After Newsday’s first story broke about our client’s cancer related to his work at this site for Magazine Distributors, Inc.,  a division of Hudson News, in an article few weeks weeks ago, the unanswered questions regarding the dangers at this toxic site are rapidly expanding.  Newsday later followed up a week later with another story unearthing a previously unreleased Army Corp of Engineers report dated November 2005 showing worse contamination than previously thought. 

Why did the federal Army Corp of Engineers sit on the Hicksville Sylvania Nuclear Waste Site report for almost two years and release it only to Verizon ( a defendant in a billion dollar lawsuit brought by local residents alleging increased cancer risks) and the New York DEC?  Way back in 2004, New York Senator Chuck Schumer and US Representative Peter King announced, "It’s the federal government that created this mess, it’s the federal government that should fix it".  Did they "fix" this radioactive site located smack in the middle of Long Island suburbia, or did  powerful corporate and governmental interests  try to sweep this one under the rug. 

According to Ms. Esposito of Citizens’ Campaign for the Environment, " Instead of being honest with the public, they covered it up.  That is negligence on the part of the federal government and that’s a conspiracy to keep the public in the dark". 

One thing we know is that Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Pete King are scrappy fighters determined to protect the health and welfare of both Hicksville residents and all Long Island workers who worked at the employers located on the Verizon property.  The New York State Workers’ Compensation Board already ruled that our client contracted a rare and deadly cancer, extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma,  while working on this site for a tenant of Verizon.  As George Johnson, a neighbor of the site for seven years, so appropriately said in the News 12 video, "How many people have to die before something happens, before we do the right thing". 

Let’s hope Senator Schumer and Congressman King can get the Army Corp of Engineers and Verizon to do the right thing and clean up this site  with all deliberate speed.