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DuPont and Chemours sued by New Jersey over pollution in Pompton Lakes and other sites

NEW JERSEY (From news reports) -- New Jersey sued chemical giant DuPont on Wednesday seeking financial damages for widespread pollution that contaminated air, soil and water at four sites across the state and endangered the health of thousands, including residents of a Pompton Lakes neighborhood who have had to endure cancer-causing solvents beneath their homes for decades.

State officials said the lawsuits target four New Jersey manufacturing sites where the government allegesDuPont spent almost a century haphazardly discarding toxic waste that often migrated to surrounding communities.
Chemours, a DuPont spinoff company, and chemical company 3M are also named in some of the four DuPont lawsuits filed Wednesday in state Superior Court.
DuPont signed an agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection in 1988 to clean up its own property and the groundwater beneath the neighborhood, but no cleanup plan for the groundwater plume has been approved after multiple failed pilot tests.
On Wednesday, Grewal and DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe said they are also issuing a directive to DuPont and Chemours to pay for additional costs for sampling, testing and treating its pollution in Pompton Lakes.
In a statement, Chemours said it was "shocked and disappointed" by the lawsuit, and that the suit appears "to be coming out of left field." Chemours also said it "will defend itself vigorously against these allegations."
A statement by DuPont said the company had been "remediating soil, sediment and groundwater both on and offsite" under the direction of state and federal regulators.
The lawsuits also target other chemical companies over contamination at sites in Central and South Jersey. They include:
DuPont/Chemours' large Chambers Works facility in Pennsville and Carney's Point, Salem County, where the companies released "massive amounts" of PFOA, a toxic 3M compound, into on-site landfills and the air and water, including the Delaware River.
The DuPont Parlin Site in Sayreville, Middlesex County, which is surrounded by homes, schools, businesses and municipal well fields. The company manufactured non-stick Teflon using PFAS, a toxic 3M chemical linked to cancer and used in a variety of everyday products. PFAS contaminated surface water, groundwater, soil, sediment, air and wetlands around the facility.
The Repauno Site in Greenwich Township, Gloucester County, where DuPont manufactured dynamite and chemicals for over a hundred years. Waste including hazardous substances like the solvent TCE, aniline, benzene and PCBs were dumped in unlined landfills, sand tar pits and ditch basins and then migrated off site, contaminating the surrounding area.
The pollution in Pompton Lakes dates back decades to when DuPont workers used the solvents TCE and PCE to clean machine parts and then dumped the used solvents into unlined open lagoons on the company's 600-acre campus. The solvents migrated with groundwater under an adjacent neighborhood of 450 homes.

In 2008, officials announced that the solvents were vaporizing up through the soil into some basements. The neighborhood, which was also contaminated with mercury and lead, has elevated levels of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and kidney cancer among residents. More than 300 homes have had ventilation systems installed to remove the hazardous vapors.

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