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Press Release: Radiation feared in N.Y. water



Radsafers,

The following article appeared in the March 1, 1998 issue
of the San Jose Mercury News with a New York Times byline:

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		 Radiation feared in N.Y. water

	Ex-staffer claims nuclear lab's waste threatens
		      Long Island aquifer

UPTON, N.Y.--Raising new questions about pollution at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory, a former scientist there has
charged that the lab has jeopardized local drinking water by
draining millions of gallons of discarded water into basins
near an old, but still potent, radioactive hot spot.

The scientist, Robert Ramirez, a hydrologist, voiced fear that
decades of seeping wastewater, along with rain, may have caused
the radioactivity to penetrate far into the underground water
supply.

Some environmentalists say this could turn out to be the worst
of the many pollution problems at Brookhaven Laboratory's
sprawling campus, which was declared a federal Superfund
cleanup site in 1989.

After concluding last year that the laboratory had placed
science ahead of environmental safety, the federal Department
of Energy, which owns the lab, dismissed the lab's longtime
contractor.

Laboratory officials dispute the contention that radioactive
materials have entered the drinking water, and tests at nearby
county wells have not detected any contamination.

But lab officials concede that the 90-by-90-foot site is
dangerous, and in recent interviews, they said for the first
time that they would probably spend millions of dollars to
dig up tons of contaminated soil at the site and ship it as far
as Nevada or Utah for disposal.

The environmentalists contend that while removing the
contaminated topsoil would be a welcome step, it would not
recapture the radioactivity that they believe has spread
beyond Brookhaven's 5,300-acre campus in Suffolk County.

The hot spot and the rest of the laboratory complex sit atop
deep strata of wet sand that stretch across Long Island and
are the only source of its water supply.

Until now, much of the public attention and cleanup efforts
at Brookhaven have centered on other underground plumes of
chemical and radioactive tritium contamination resulting from
various laboratory activities.

Some plumes have drifted beyond the southern borders of the
lab into the adjacent community of Shirley.

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