A Toxic Legacy
SUNDAY: Chemical spills in Endicott were the result of years
of inattention by IBM to a series of breaches in the plant’s piping
system, court papers claim.
MONDAY: Health officials are reassessing estimates on TCE
exposure, with the possibility that they will lower acceptable
limits, which could have major impacts on the remediation efforts in
Endicott
Pumping away a polluted legacy from IBM in Endicott
Chemical infiltration lawsuit could be heard by next year
Written by
Tom Wilber
Special to the Press & Sun-Bulletin
4:31 PM,
May 31, 2014
ENDICOTT — For 35 years, pumps have been
operating around the clock attempting to undo the damage from
spilled chemicals that tainted air, soil and water in 300-acres
around IBM’s birthplace and more than 475 residential
properties.
The pumps pull
pollution from the ground through structures called recovery
wells. Over time, these wells have grown in number from four to
more than 22, and to date they have recovered more than 815,000
pounds of trichloroethylene and other toxic chemicals, with an
unknown amount remaining beneath the village.
But only now, nearly a dozen
years after affected residents filed multi-million dollar
liability lawsuits against IBM, is the company’s connection with
the pollution being detailed. The new information comes from
evidence related to a claim that the chemical disaster was a
result of years of inattention by IBM to a series of breaches in
the plant’s piping system.
IBM officials have never
publicly explained their role in the disaster, and their legal
position is the company always handled chemicals responsibly and
in accordance with standards of the day.
Yet, those suing IBM
have compiled documents and testimony from internal company
sources that depict a pattern of indifference by the company,
even after being warned on numerous occasions by their own
employees that rusty tanks and leaky pipes posed a serious
hazard.
Among revelations
contained in papers filed with the Appellate Division of the
State Supreme Court last spring:
• IBM engineering
reports from 1979 and 1980 documented “a subsurface pool of
nearly pure solvent” ranging from several inches to 2 feet deep
between Building 18 and Building 45, in the vicinity where IBM
stored and handled chemicals. The solvent collected in a
depression in a silt layer at the base of a shallow aquifer over
the years, and flowed off site through various underground
channels. Chemicals also mixed and moved with the water table
above. TCE was a “pervasive” component of the chemical plume,
according to the documents. But the mixture also included methyl
chloroform, perchloroethylene, benzene, with smaller
concentrations of methylene chloride, Freon, toluene and xylene.
• Chemicals leaked
from a deteriorating network of tanks and pipelines at the IBM
campus from the mid 1960s through the mid 1980s, according to
court documents. A team of plaintiffs’ attorneys, lead by Steve
Schwarz of the Rochester law firm of Faraci and Lang, cites
testimony from IBM personnel that “the inability to account for
a few thousand gallons of chemicals happened often.” They also
cite a memo, dated October 18, 1979, in which “an IBM employee
discusses the deteriorated condition of the tanks and pipes ...
which the memo claims has been pointed out numerous times
before.” Two months later, according to the legal brief, one of
the rusted pipes ruptured and caused a spill of several thousand
gallons.
• IBM leadership apparently
did not respond to warnings from engineers that the solvent
pool, which estimates put between 10,000 gallons and 1 million
gallons, posed an imminent danger, according to claims outlined
in court documents. “As two engineers memos, another engineers
testimony, and the 1979 (Dames and Moore) consultant report make
clear, IBM was well aware of the loss of these toxic chemicals
to the ground through leaking pipes and tanks, and IBM chose to
ignore the problem rather than fix it,” the brief states.
As a result of the toxic
plume discovered underneath Endicott, more than 1,000 plaintiffs
have signed on to a toxic tort suit that seeks damages for
claims ranging from trespass to terminal illnesses. The case has
been winding its way through the legal process since 2003,
shortly after officials discovered that in-ground chemicals were
forming fumes and wafting into residences and nearby businesses
— a phenomenon called vapor intrusion.
Ground rules for
trial
In the absence of a
settlement, both sides are preparing for a trial that could
finally come next year. In the meantime, their arguments over
ground rules for determining what claims can be heard must still
be decided.
The case is gaining
significance, especially regarding questions about whether
exposure to a harmful chemical in itself constitutes an injury,
and whether polluters can be held responsible for medical
monitoring. “None of this was answered before,” said Thomas
Smith, a toxic tort lawyer with Syracuse law firm Bond Schoeneck
& King, who has been monitoring the case on his blog and is
not involved in the proeedings.
IBM sold the 140-acre campus
to Huron Real Estate Associates in 2002. Current tenants include
i3 Electronics (formerly Endicott Interconnect), BAE Systems,
Binghamton University, among others.
IBM officials have not denied
their former operations were a primary contributor to the
pollution. They have not admitted it, either, nor have they
offered a detailed explanation of the source of the problem.
The company has long
contended it is following the responsible path, picking up the
sizable costs for cleaning the spill and providing venting
systems for properties designated at risk for vapor intrusion.
According to IBM
spokesman Todd Martin, the company is cleaning up the solvents
from multiple industries that have operated in the region’s
industrialized corridor for generations. Endicott was also home
to the vast shoe manufacturing empire of Endicott Johnson Corp.,
once the region’s largest employer.
“You are well aware of the
numerous businesses, dry cleaning establishments and
manufacturing operations that existed in Endicott,” Martin said
recently when asked how the chemicals got into the ground.
“Despite that fact, IBM is the only company performing the
cleanup.”
However, the toxic liability
suit names only IBM as the source of the chemicals that tainted
parts of Endicott’s commercial district and nearby residences.
Both sides have scored some
initial victories. Lower courts have ruled against IBM’s motion
to have the case dismissed, and have ruled in favor of a
plaintiff’s motion to have charges of negligence — the
underpinnings of the case — tried before a jury.
But lower court rulings have
also eliminated or limited some aspects of the litigation,
including the charge that the pollution constitutes a trespass
in all cases, and the claim that IBM should be held accountable
for monitoring the medical condition of all plaintiffs,
including non-property owners such as children.
Ongoing medical monitoring
for a large group would entail “a huge expense” for IBM, Smith
said. Removing that claim is a notable victory for the company,
and that victory could strengthen the company’s hand in forcing
a settlement. All issues are still in play, however, until the
appeals are finished, he added.
But many of the early legal
filings have been procedural with the real fireworks yet to
begin.
“Plaintiffs put enough facts
on the record to question the assessment by IBM that they did
everything right,” Smith said. “That was a significant win for
them.”
Even if IBM proves it
followed an accepted “standard of care” in regard to handling
the chemicals and subsequent pollution, plaintiffs can argue the
standard was insufficient, he said.
IBM was able to limit claims
for medical monitoring to only people claiming other damages,
such as illness or property loss, Smith said. That eliminates
claims for a potentially large group of plaintiffs — renters or
children for example — who may have been exposed but did not
develop illnesses or suffer property damage.
Other details about IBM’s use
of chemicals at the site that was once IBM’s main manufacturing
center are coming to light in court papers now on file.
According to a brief
filed by a team of IBM attorneys in July, the company used TCE
at the Endicott plant from the mid 1930s through the mid 1980s,
first as a degreaser and later in the production of circuit
boards and cards.
“There are no documented
spills or leaks of material amounts of TCE,” the brief says,
adding that records from the plant’s early years “are scarce.”
After production volumes peaked in the 1960s, the chemical was
phased out over the next few decades as its health risks became
known.
IBM, with permission from the
village, legally discharged wastewater with “trace amounts” of
TCE and other solvents into municipal sewers until 1983.
“Although the plaintiffs claim that the sewers leaked TCE into
the ground there was no reason at the time to expect that this
practice would result in groundwater contamination or vapor
intrusion some distance away,” the company said in court papers.
New York’s
Department of Environmental Conservation launched an
investigation into the company’s groundwater pollution in the
late 1970s, according to the IBM brief. But the focus “was to
prevent any groundwater contamination from reaching municipal
drinking water supplies; vapor intrusion did not become a
regulatory concern until two decades later.”
New studies
By 2003, however,
officials recognized that chronic exposure to even low
concentrations of TCE fumes posed risks. Breathing chemicals was
potentially worse than drinking them. IBM installed vents to
divert vapors from buildings off campus.
Venting was pursued off IBM’s
former campus, but not on site, where buildings on site were
deemed poor candidates for effective remediation due to their
size and design. “A lot of it has to do with the complexity of
the buildings,” DEC Engineer William Wertz said in an interview
in 2005. “It’s not clear there would be any benefit.”
TCE readings in tests at 36
buildings on the Huron campus in 2005 ranged between 0 and 17
micrograms per cubic meter. Although the state’s limit for TCE
exposure is 5 micrograms per cubic meter, officials
characterized risk to workers as low.
Since then, federal studies
have sharpened the picture. In late 2011, after years of delay
due to opposition from parties in the military and private
sector responsible for TCE legacy sites, the federal
Environmental Protection Agency finally completed a formal
assessment. The assessment found, based on a comprehensive
review, that chronic TCE exposure causes kidney cancer. The
assessment also found a strong link between TCE exposure and
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as association between TCE
exposure and other cancers and illnesses.
The TCE plume in
Endicott, meanwhile, has been the focus of federal and state
health studies designed to determine whether people living in
homes over the plume, or working at the plant, were more
inclined to get certain illnesses. The results have raised more
flags.
In 2005, the state
Department of Health documented high rates of birth defects of
the heart, and testicular and kidney cancers in areas south and
southwest of the former IBM plant polluted with TCE and similar
solvents. While the report did not determine a cause, scientists
cited evidence that TCE exposure can play a role in the types of
illnesses found.
Findings by the Department of
Health led to calls from IBM critics for an assessment of the
health of people who worked at the plant, which employed more
than 10,000 people at its peak in the mid 1980s. In 2008, The
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health embarked on
a 6-year $3.2 million study, encouraged by U.S. Rep. Maurice
Hinchey, D- Hurley, now retired, who then ran the Appropriations
Committee.
The NIOSH study, released
earlier this year, found deaths from certain cancers tended to
be higher for workers with greater exposure to TCE and similar
solvents. Specifically, researchers found a “statistically
significant relation” between exposure to TCE and deaths from a
certain type of leukemia, and an elevated rate of fatal kidney
cancers.
While deaths in IBM’s overall
working population were relatively low, the study found elevated
rates of deaths from nervous system diseases, non-Hodgkin
lymphoma, mesothelioma, pleural cancer, rectal cancer and
testicular cancer for certain worker groups.
In addition to long
term exposure concerns, there is evidence that short-term
exposure poses risks to childbearing women. Unlike cancer,
caused by chronic exposure to certain substances, birth defects
are thought to be the result of periodic or acute exposure,
often in the first trimester of pregnancy.
In response to that concern,
and as a follow-up to the 2005 DOH study, NIOSH researchers
looked at birth outcomes for women who worked at the plant
during childbearing years. Those results are due out later this
year.
The studies raise
questions about associations between exposure and disease in the
language of statistical probability commonly used in policy
discussions. But they refrain from building a case against
polluters.
Lawyers suing IBM,
on the other hand, are doing just that with experts who have
modeled exposure scenarios and quantified the risks for clients.
Among the law firms representing village residents in its claim
against IBM is Manhattan’s Weitz & Luxenberg, which counts
New York Assembly Majority Leader Sheldon Silver in its list of
lawyers.
While the legal
briefs filed in state Appellate Division of the New York State
Supreme Court reference this model, the public will have to wait
for the trial to see the detailed testimony and evidence. And
it’s still possible that day could be postponed or canceled in
lieu of a settlement.
TCE TIMELINE
- • 1930s: IBM begins using trichloroethylene, or TCE, at
its Endicott plant in the mid-1930s first as a degreaser and
later in the production of circuit boards. Use of TCE peaked in
the 1960s at the plant.
- • December 1979: A leak in the distribution system
releases 4,100 gallons of methyl chloroform at the IBM Endicott
campus. Cleanup efforts begin.
- • December 1980: IBM releases a report to the state
Department of Environmental Conservation showing that tens of
thousands of gallons of chemicals are pooled under its Endicott
property. The pool of ranges from several inches to 2 feet deep
and contains mostly TCE. Also present are methyl chloroform,
perchloroethylene, benzene, methylene chloride, Freon, toluene
and xylene.
- • June 1986: Pollution at the site is downgraded on the
state’s hazardous waste registry from Class 2 (posing a public
threat) to Class 4 (properly closed).
- • November 2002: Testing at the Endicott plant shows
chemical vapors from pollution are rising through the soil,
contrary to earlier beliefs that chemicals were trapped in the
ground.
- • June 2002: IBM sells the 140-acre campus in Endicott to
Huron Real Estate Associates. IBM retains responsibility for the
cleanup.
- • February 2003: Tests show unacceptable levels of TCE,
in houses south of the Endicott plant. IBM installs systems to
vent 75 properties and test 55 more in a broader area.
- • June 2003: DEC orders IBM to accelerate cleanup that
has been ongoing since 1979.
- • July 2003: Tests show more Endicott buildings affected
by chemical vapors bringing the total to 480. IBM installs
venting systems to divert fumes from the buildings.
- • August 2005: The state Department of Health documents
high rates of birth defects of the heart, and testicular and
kidney cancers in areas south and southwest of the former IBM
plant polluted with TCE and similar solvents.
- • May 2006: A follow-up report confirms the high rate of
birth defects and certain cancers among residents in areas near
the Endicott plant and rules out some possible explanations for
the birth defects, such as prenatal care.
- • March 2007: An updated assessment finds other factors,
such as smoking or occupational hazards, could not explain the
spike in illnesses in the Endicott neighborhoods. TCE pollution
remains a suspect.
- • May 2009: The National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health begins a $3.1 million study on the correlation
between exposure to chemicals and the health of thousands of IBM
employees who worked at the facility over several decades.
- • July 2010: IBM installs a test injection well that
sends clean water into the ground in an attempt to flush out
TCE. The company plans to install more wells by the end of 2010
and meets with the DEC and residents on Aug. 25 at
Union-Endicott High School for an update on remediation efforts.
- • September 2011: A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
assessment finds that chronic TCE exposure causes kidney cancer.
It also found a strong link between TCE exposure and
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers and illnesses.
- • January 2012: A state health department study links
congenital heart problems, low birth weight and other birth
defects to soil vapors from industrial contaminants found in a
70-block area of Endicott, south of the former IBM manufacturing
facility.
- • January 2014: A five-year study by the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health finds higher death
rates from certain types of leukemia and kidney cancers for
workers with greater exposure to TCE and similar solvents.
- • 2003-2014: Legal action builds during this time in the
pollution case against IBM. A mid-level appeals court decision
early this year ends in a split ruling on pre-trial issues.
Attorneys are expected to ask New York’s highest court to hear
arguments in the case. An eventual trial is expected to be
postponed by yet even more appeals.
- • 1979-2014: More than 815,000 pounds of
trichloroethylene (TCE) and other industrial solvents have been
pumped from 300 acres around the IBM site that encompasses more
than 475 homes and businesses, according to records from the
state Department of Environmental Conservation.
State health officials reopen Huron TCE investigation
New studies prompt reevaluation of exposure guidelines
Written by
Tom Wilber
Special to the Press & Sun-Bulletin
5:31 PM,
Jun 1, 2014
ENDICOTT —
Exposure to TCE pollution deemed unsafe for village residents is
acceptable for workers at the Huron Campus, state health officials
determined in 2005.
That assessment may
change this year, however, as the state Department of Health takes
into account new evidence that TCE is more toxic than previously
thought.
Eliminating
trichloroethylene (TCE) vapors has posed mechanical and
engineering challenges at the manufacturing buildings, which sit
over the highest concentrations of a chemical plume spreading from
the former IBM campus through 300 acres of the village. Pollution
forms gases that enter buildings and enclosed spaces — a process
known as vapor intrusion. The type of systems used to divert
chemicals from under smaller residential buildings are ineffective
on large cement structures, according to officials from the state
Department of Environmental Conservation.
The campus, former
quarters for IBM Corp.’s microelectronics division before it sold
the site in 2002, is now home to BAE Systems, i3 Electronics
(formerly Endicott Interconnect), Binghamton University and other
smaller firms that collectively employ about 2,000 workers. Air
samples taken from manufacturing buildings in 2005 and 2011 found
TCE levels to be detectible, but below what officials considered a
significant health threat.
The major question:
What are safe levels of TCE vapor exposure? That’s open for debate
and interpretation.
The state Department
of Health is reviewing data in the context of recent studies about
TCE risks “to ensure that previous decisions and recommendations
continue to protect public health,” agency spokesman Jeffrey
Hammond said in a recent email. Officials have been evaluating
TCE’s impact on public heath and the environment in Endicott since
1979, when the pollution was discovered.
In 2003, after vapor
intrusion was discovered in Endicott, the state changed the
guideline from 0.22 to 5 micrograms per cubic meter. (A cubic
meter is an area roughly the size of a large refrigerator. A
microgram is equivalent to one millionth of a gram.) At the time,
vapor intrusion sites were being discovered throughout the state,
contamination was prevalent, and eliminating the chemical from the
environment would be prohibitively expensive if not impossible.
“There is a lot of
politics around it because how ubiquitous TCE is and how
expensive it is to clean up,” said Steve Schwarz, an attorney
who represents villagers suing IBM for damages related to the
pollution. “It’s not only about what’s safest, but what’s
attainable. Absolute zero is the safest. There has to be some
judgment about what people can accept.”
Indoor air samples
at 42 campus buildings collected in 2005 — the last time the
state oversaw testing — ranged from zero to 17 micrograms per
cubic meter in some areas that tended to be occupied. Levels
were much higher in other areas — often registering between 50
and 300 micrograms per cubic meter in tunnels and tank rooms
below Building 18, for example. Concentrations in the soil
directly below the buildings often exceeded 10,000 micrograms
per cubic meter and sometimes were over 100,000. Before moving
into the campus in 2012, BAE tested air in several buildings and
found them within acceptable limits.
Company shares data
BAE officials have
shared information about TCE levels on campus with workers and
will continue to voluntarily monitor air quality at the plant,
company spokeswoman Liz Ryan Sax said in an email. The company
commissioned another round of testing recently, and results are
expected later this year.
“The health and
well-being of our employees are primary concerns, and we are
committed to providing all of our teams with a safe working
environment,” she said. “Whenever safety guidelines change in
relation to any BAE facility, we work with the necessary parties
to understand the impact and take appropriate action,” she
added.
Robert Nead,
president of i3 Electronics, responded in a statement that the
i3 buildings “are currently in compliance, and we will continue
to comply with regulations of the Department of Health and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration to ensure our
employees’ safety.”
IBM Corp. is
responsible for cleaning the plume of TCE and other industrial
solvents, which had drained orleaked or were dumped into the
ground for an unknown number of years at the manufacturing site,
and eventually seeped into surrounding parts of the village.
Under the state’s supervision, officials have adopted a policy
to reduce TCE levels wherever they have been detected within the
chemical plume’s footprint outside the industrial park — an area
with an irregular boundary that reaches approximately a
half-mile to three-quarters of a mile south of the compound.
A study of mortality
rates of IBM workers, completed by the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health earlier this year, found people
who worked at the campus had relatively high rates of deaths
from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mesothelioma, pleural cancer,
rectal cancer and testicular cancer. The study also found a
“statistically significant relation” between exposure to
tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene, or PCE,
and deaths from nervous system diseases, and between exposure to
TCE and deaths from a certain type of leukemia. The study looked
at records from 34,494 workers from 1969 through 2001, including
people who had worked at the site before TCE was phased out.
Following the release of the
NIOSH study, Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Endwell, sent a
letter to the state Department of Health asking it to adopt a
more stringent standard for TCE vapor exposure.
Lupardo is among a group that
believes there should be a non-discretionary approach and a much
lower threshold, especially in light of the review of the 2011
literature by the Environmental Protection Agency that
documented risks associated with even minute levels of TCE.
Lupardo argued in her request
to the Cuomo administration that New York state is woefully
behind the curve because of policy changes enacted under Gov.
George Pataki’s administration. The current state guideline is
above standards developed in California, Colorado, New Jersey
and by several EPA regional offices where thresholds range from
0.016 to 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter, which fall in line with
the 2011 EPA assessment.
Based on the 2005 and 2011
tests, health officials concluded that risks from TCE exposure
on the campus were “low,” according to an April 21 email from
Hammond, which echoes public documentation and fact sheets about
the investigation issued several years ago. That means officials
do “not expect to be able to associate health effects” from
exposure.
Officials say that
determination will not “significantly change.” But there appears
to be room for more safeguards after the EPA released a 2011
assessment that tied exposure to cancer and birth defects.
“Once DOH’s review of the TCE
air guideline is complete, previous determinations will be
reviewed and any recommendations for additional action will be
made as necessary,” Hammond said.
Exposure examined
TCE exposure has long been
associated with acute and chronic illness ranging from skin
rashes to neurological diseases. But policy on exposure
guidelines has been a moving target for state and federal
governments because of an imprecise and developing body of
knowledge about just how much exposure is dangerous, and the
controversy over the cost of cleanups and liability
ramifications.
Not until 25 years after the
Endicott pollution was discovered in 1979 did officials uncover
a major problem. TCE in the ground was forming vapors collecting
in buildings through a process called vapor intrusion. After the
discovery in 2003, IBM equipped more than 475 structures with
systems to divert the chemicals, while state and federal
officials — pushed by concerned residents — began a series of
studies to evaluate the health of people living over the
pollution.
The results of the first of
these studies, by the state Department of Health, came in 2005.
It concluded that people living in the polluted area had
significantly elevated rates of birth defects, testicular cancer
and kidney cancer. Both the state study of residents and the
federal study of workers lacked data to determine a causal
relationship for the illnesses, although TCE exposure remains a
primary suspect and fundamental hypothesis for both studies.
Nathan Graber,
director of the state’s Center for Environmental Health, told
Lupardo on March 7 that his agency is in the process of a review
of allowable TCE vapor limits. Graber wrote the agency “will
consider the EPA’s health risk assessment and any other
scientific studies published since the existing guideline was
established in 2006, including the recent National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study.” He added: “We are
not aware of any groups opposed to a revision of the guideline.”
Although the
guideline is 5 micrograms per cubic meter, the agency evaluates
risks on a case-by-case basis, Graber said, taking into account
multiple factors, including background levels of TCE. In some
instances, the health department will recommend remediation even
if levels fall below the guideline.
Lupardo sponsored a bill in
2008, yet to make it to the Assembly floor, that would revise
TCE exposure policy to incorporate “the most protective
underlying assumptions” about risks. Rather than a guideline,
Lupardo said she is pushing for a number that will “serve as a
line for action, especially given what we know about TCE from
the EPA Health Assessment and the NIOSH study.”
Changes
considered
If workers are not
using TCE as part of the job, they should not be exposed to it
above background levels, said Lenny Siegel, executive director
of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, a
California-based environmental advocacy organization that has
been following IBM’s TCE legacy.
If they are exposed
to it, then they should know the risks, Siegel said, pointing to
recent studies associating risks to child-bearing women exposed
to relatively minor concentrations of the chemical over short
periods.
“Birth defects are
not caused over 30 years,” he said. “They come in the first
trimester of pregnancy. And we don’t know whether that exposure
might come in three weeks or one day.”
Lupardo said she
finds the application of the current guideline unsatisfactory.
Occupational health officials justify higher exposure tolerances
to dangerous chemicals at the workplace partly due to the logic
that workers are exposed to the chemicals for only part of the
day. But the guideline fails to consider thatpeople working at
the former IBM campus and living nearby may have suffered
exposure in both their work and their homes.
As a member of the
Environmental Conservation Committee, Lupardo has been following
the state’s TCE policy since vapor intrusion was discovered in
2002. In 2008, she sponsored a law requiring landlords to notify
tenants of polluted property. She lauds BAE’s practice of
notifying employees of TCE levels, and she thinks other
companies located over polluted sites should do the same.
“I think workers
have a right to know similar information about their
workplaces,” she said.
Vapor intrusion
levels tend to fluctuate with many factors, including seasonal
changes in underground water levels and temperature differences
between indoor and outdoor air. While the studies by IBM in 2006
and by BAE in 2011 provide snapshots of exposure risks,
accurately tracking TCE levels constantly on the move through
soil, water and air requires ongoing monitoring, Siegel said.
The plant — under
both IBM and Huron — has served as a major economic engine of
the Southern Tier, and politicians and labor proponents have an
especially keen grasp on its legacy as well as its importance to
the future well-being of the area.
“Our area in
particular has learned that ignoring these concerns will hurt
our ability to attract new businesses and industries in the long
run,” Lupardo said. “The people of Endicott have endured a lot
through all of this. My father would have said, ‘They’ve been
through the mill.’ They deserve some peace of mind and closure.”
