Editorial

Grumman’s toxic mess must be fixed now

Posted

Environmentally speaking, the mid-20th century was a terrible time. Government and industry experimented with all manner of chemicals, from pesticides to solvents. Few, it seemed, worried –– or cared –– much about the potential long-term effects of soil and water contamination on future generations. Owing to poor handling –– or poorly constructed storage facilities –– potentially cancer-causing chemicals were allowed to seep into the ground, where highly toxic plumes have festered for decades, ignored or forgotten by officials.

Well, we are the future, the generation that must clean up the messes left by those who came before us.

We must act decisively to repair the damage, or we will allow the environmental degradation to continue, possibly leading to irreversible catastrophes. One such rapidly moving disaster is the toxic plume that formed during World War II –– yes, World War II –– beneath the old Grumman aerospace plant in Bethpage. Chemicals used to manufacture warplanes were carelessly allowed to seep into the ground. From there they moved steadily southward toward Wantagh and Seaford.

If the plume is not stopped, it will eventually reach South Oyster Bay, contaminating the fragile wetland ecosystem that hugs the entire South Shore and harming, if not destroying, the area’s fishing and clamming industries. The stakes could not be higher.

In 2000, the plume had reached Hempstead Turnpike. By 2012, it had spread south of the Southern State Parkway.

In 1948, Leroy Grumman, who had founded the Bethpage manufacturing plant a little over a decade earlier, received the Presidential Medal of Merit for wartime production, according to the Northrop Grumman website. In many ways, the name Grumman became synonymous with Long Island.

That’s all well and good. But here’s the thing: Grumman left the Island long ago. In the 1980s, the company employed as many as 25,000 area residents. By 2013, that figure was down to just 550.

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