Published in the Asbury Park Press
By CAROL GORGA WILLIAMS and JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- Four lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. is responsible for contaminating the water supply here and should pay for medical monitoring to detect potential health problems in people exposed to polluted water.
The lawsuit, filed late yesterday at the Ocean County Courthouse, names three people individually and as representatives of a class of people they claim were harmed by contamination caused by the Toms River chemical company.
The suit was filed on behalf of Linda S. Breen, George Trustin and Laura Piccirillo as representatives of the class. It seeks to help those who consumed contaminated water in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Norman M. Hobbie of the Toms River firm of Corrigan, Bertucio & Tashjy.
Reached last night at home, Breen said she would have no comment. Trustin and Piccirillo could not be reached.
"The class will keep developing," said Hobbie, who declined to say how many people are now involved in the lawsuit. Named as defendants are Ciba-Geigy, the Toms River Chemical Co. -- Ciba's former name -- and the various other corporate entities that have absorbed the chemical giant.
The medical monitoring is intended particularly to detect the presence of cancer, according to the lawyers -- Hobbie, Angelo Cifaldi, Michael Gordon and Christopher M. Placitella.
The same team of lawyers earned a $38.5 million settlement for 400 residents of Pompton Lakes in 1997. In 1999, they earned a $13 million settlement for residents of Maywood, Rochelle Park and Lodi. Both were environmental pollution cases.
"The medical monitoring fund would provide for a yearly examination which would enable members of the class to get testing so if there were any illnesses, they would be detected at the earliest possible time," Hobbie said.
Ciba officials could not be reached for comment last night.
None of the plaintiffs are ill now, but Hobbie said the lawyers are considering filing another lawsuit for those already stricken.
"Presently, we represent individuals suffering from serious illnesses," Hobbie said. "We are evaluating the serious illness cases to determine whether a medically acceptable causal connection can be proved. Where we can establish the causal connection, we are prepared to seek the appropriate legal remedy."
"Exhibit A" in the lawsuit includes the Feb. 29 public health assessment on the Ciba site released by the state Department of Health and Senior Services and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).
The health assessment, which was completed as part of an ongoing study of elevated levels of childhood cancer here, concluded people who lived here in 1965-66 may have been exposed to traces of aniline-based dyes and nitrobenzene from the Ciba-Geigy Corp. that seeped into three wells used by the Toms River Water Co., now known as United Water Toms River.
"There was a completed exposure pathway to dyes and other chemicals from the Holly Street well field of the community water supply in the mid-1960s," the report states. "Although the nature and length of exposures is not known, there is evidence that these wells were contaminated with dyes and nitrobenzene. Dye produc-tion involved the use of a number of chemicals, including known and proba-ble human carcinogens."
Another pathway for toxins from the Ciba-Geigy property was contaminat-ed groundwater pumped into homes in the Cardinal Drive neighborhood through private wells. Cardinal Drive is located next to the plant property.
"The Feb. 29 report from ATSDR confirmed many of the suspicions and beliefs of many residents of Toms River regarding the role of Ciba-Gei-gy in the contamination of ground water, and it is time they are held accountable to the citizens of Toms River for their conduct," said Gordon.
"We look forward to be able to help the people of the Toms River commu-nity who consumed water in the 1960s and '70s who may have been affected," said Placitella, a Colts Neck lawyer who was one of the lawyers who negotiated a $3.75 billion settle-ment in the fen-phen class-action suit.
Today, the former chemical manufac-turing complex "represents no appar-ent public health hazard," now that those wells have been capped and a federal Superfund cleanup of tainted ground water is under way, according to the public health assessment.
State health officials have repeatedly stressed that public health assess-ments do not try to determine the cause of disease, but they do try to determine if a site poses or has posed a health threat.
Many residents here blame Ciba, at least in part, for the elevated levels of some childhood cancers that federal and state officials have been studying for four years.
Linda L. Gillick, who heads the Citi-zens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said last night that she is concerned that by filing a law-suit, the four lawyers may have shut down the lines of communication that have led Ciba and companies, like Union Carbide Corp., to release large amounts of information on past pollu-tion here.
"I only hope that everything that has been needed in the childhood cancer cluster investigation from Ciba," has already been obtained, Gillick said last night.
More than 60 Dover families, mem-bers of a group called TEACH, Toxic Environments Affect Children's Health, have been represented since late 1997 by lawyers Mark Cuker, Esther E. Berezofsky and Jan Schlict-mann. TEACH has chosen to enter into agreements to share information with Ciba Speciality Chemicals Corp. -- the successor to Ciba-Geigy -- Union Carbide and United Water Toms River, and has agreed not to sue the three companies while infor-mation is being exchanged.
When Ciba-Geigy began operations at its Toms River plant, located off Route 37, in 1952, the company was greeted enthusiastically because it brought hundreds of jobs to what was then a rural, farming community. Ciba was later criticized for a shoddy envi-ronmental record that resulted in sec-tions of its property being declared a federal Superfund site in 1982.
Cleanup operations are the only work being done these days at the site, which once employed nearly 1,400 people. The last workers not involved with the cleanup were laid off in De-cember 1996.
A groundwater treatment system at the Ciba site, in place for several years, extracts 2.7 million gallons of polluted water daily, cleans it to re-move contaminants, and recharges it back onto Ciba's land.
The EPA is scheduled to make a final decision in late summer or early fall about which methods to use to clean up 21 spots on the property that are potential sources of a plume of groundwater pollution.
Hobbie said people represented in the class-action suit were affected by the 1965-66 contamination of the Toms River Water Co. wells on Holly Street, near today's Water Street in-terchange with the Garden State Parkway.
Ciba-Geigy files compiled by the fed-eral Environmental Protection Agen-cy include memos from the chemical company and letters to the water company that refer to complaints about discolored water and odors, health workers said.
Those interested in determining whether they should become part of the lawsuit should call (800) 726-9691.
Published: May 19, 2000
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