Prison for NY man who caused yucky green pollution

Prison for NY man who caused yucky green pollution

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GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) -- The owner of a Long Island titanium factory has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for storing 12 tons of corrosive hazardous waste on his property, resulting in a mess prosecutors say looked like a scene from a horror movie.

Investigators found dozens of drums oozing green liquid and trash littering the 125-acre site in Port Jefferson Station, a village 50 miles east of New York City.

Seventy-five-year-old Gerald Cohen pleaded guilty last year to violating the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs how people dispose of hazardou

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One year sentence for possibly polluting the ground water that no telling how many people drink. Possible birth defects cause by chemicals in the water. Cancer.

Seems like a very light sentence for possibly causing sickness and death to the people living in close proximity.

How could the EPA not have been informed and taken action much earlier?

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(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 30-5-2009 by whaaa]

Tellingly, this is my neck of the woods, and the local news media hasn't mentioned a word of it yet.

Of course the public record provided the data for this article, and you might notice how little detail there is. I wonder if there's a text book definition that might tell the reader exactly what chemical 'a green ooze' actually represents?

More to follow...

reply to post by Maxmars


LOL.

I suspect there is alot of this stuff around.

Reminds me of the body parts, needles, and other medical waste that washed up on the Jersey shores many years back.

Charge a huge premium to get rid of toxic waste the "proper way" and then just put it in the corner to eventually eat through the drums and leak into the ground water.

It used to be desirable to get a year and a day if you were going to get anywhere near a year. It meant you went to prison where smoking was allowed instead of jail, where it wasn't.

Those were the days.

well you know the implications of getting a year and a day sentence?

is the fact that he can be released early now and DOES NOT HAVE TO SERVE A FULL YEAR.

I suspect he will serve a couple months and get released on good behavior.


This is just a slap on the wrists.

Mr. Cohen was hammered with some pretty stiff fines and clean up fees that could run into the millions. I don't know that a 75 year old geezer needs to be incarcerated for pollution when some violent criminals are released on their own recognizence.

But he needs to address in some manner the sickness and pollution of the water table; More fines perhaps.

He also may be hit very hard by some personal lawsuits or class action suits and be forced into bankruptcy. Tough!

My question is...

How did the EPA ignore this for so long. If I so much as dumped my old used motor oil on the ground the feds would be breathing down my neck.

[edit on 30-5-2009 by whaaa]

green ooze seeping from barrels? did they check to see if any turtles were near by? maybe will have some super hero's on our hands before we know it.


ok on a serious note, this is pretty dangerous, and i really think a description better then green ooze should be released to the public.

was it old Gatorade or nuclear waste, its sounds funny, but i would like to know since this guy is only getting one year.

maybe its not something to bad, O.J. (the drink) if corrosive after a while to, so its really hard to say with there only description being its color, its corrosive, and it oozes.