The State of New York has filed a federal lawsuit against the owner of an industrial site in Jericho in an attempt to recover over $14 million in costs and expenses incurred in responding to the releases and threatened releases of hazardous substances into the environment.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, names the state and the head of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Amanda Lefton, as plaintiffs and Richmond Associates as defendants.
Court documents said Richmond Associates acquired a 3.8-acre property at 601-603 Cantiague Rock Road in 1998, and the real estate group is liable for the costs associated with cleanup efforts on the property, according to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980.
Efforts to reach Richmond Associates were unavailing.
The complaint filed on July 9 said that as of December 2024, the state had incurred $5.2 million in costs responding to the release of hazardous substances at the site and is expected to spend over $14 million in total. The state is attempting to recover all costs associated with the cleanup in the lawsuit.
The suit said that contamination began in the late 1960s or 1970s, when a textile finishing and printing business called Solvent Finishers used as much as 11,000 gallons a year of tetrachloroethylene, or perchloroethylene, also known as PCE, for dry cleaning, and this continued until 1982.
The complaint said that in 2007, the DEC investigated the site and discovered significant PCE contamination in the soil, groundwater, soil vapor, and indoor air. Three years later, the department listed the property in the registry of inactive hazardous waste disposal sites in the state.
The suit said the tests found that concentrations in some places reached 7,300 parts per million, while the department’s cleanup objective is 1.3 parts per million. The lawsuit said samples of groundwater under the site also showed up to 60,000 times the average concentration of PCE.
The nearest residential property is approximately 400 feet northeast of the property. According to the lawsuit, the Hicksville Water District well field, which is the source of drinking water for municipal drinking water wells, is roughly 11,500 feet southeast of the property.
It also said that groundwater mainly flows south from the site and that the depth to groundwater is about 85 feet below the surface, which is as far as the DEC’s 2007 tests indicated the chemicals could have leached.
The property is across the street from an elementary school and not immediately near a residential home.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it is actively trying to phase PCE out of the dry cleaning industry, as it is a hazardous substance. The court documents said that short-term acute exposure can cause dizziness, headaches, unconsciousness and even death and that it can be toxic to many organs within the body.
