Bethpage toxic plume...deal breaker? (Hempstead, Levittown: real estate, buying a house, neighborhood)
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After years of saving my wife and I are ready to move on to the Island. W are both very excited and after looking at over 50 homes fell I love with a cape on Bethpage near the middle school of Ellen Street. We did the expedition and the home is tip top, the schools seems spot on, it's conveniently located...it's just the house we were looking for. I was talking to a buddy of mind about moving today and he mentioned on the side that generally water at the Island taste bad. So I did decided to check that out online and suddenly I'm reading about toxic plumes leaching from the the old Grumman site. Everything online sounds awful. Also bad voc level in basements in certain areas from the same toxins.
I honestly don't know what to do? Anyone want to offer some advice? Should we look else where? I do plan to start a family and want to make sure there safe. Is all the press blown out of proportions? I've lived all my life in NYC where air levels are bad and people still live here in the millions.
The entire island is a cancer field. I think we have the highest rates in the nation.
That said, I dont let it scare or deter me. I enjoy it here. I have no history of cancer in my family and I take care of myself (eat healthy, run, walk), dont smoke, drink seldom. The chances of getting cancer are not that high in the scheme of things. Most ppl who live in Bethpage are fine.
My point is if you are really worried about cancer, you should probably just move of off LI altogether or simply start taking better care of yourself. Of course it wont immune you but it will help.
Yes cancer can strike anywhere but if your child gets cancer are you going to be able live with wondering why?
You take steps to mitigate your chances by doing things like not smoking. Not living over a toxic plume is another way you mitigate your chances.
There are other threads here on this topic. One of our intelligent members recently posted about the people she knows who grew up on the plume and have had cancer
Long Island has higher than normal breast cancer rates. The study posted above could find no links to environmental issues but I would stay away from Bethpage as the evidence of contamination seems to grow worse by the day. As for the entire island being a "cancer field " as another poster stated, that's a bunch of nonsense.
Although Long Island does have a small pockets of higher than average rate of cancer (LI is not a cancer field), Bethpage has high cancer clusters. The toxic plume is a real thing and there are so many other towns on LI that don't have known "superfund" site type of contamination, so why would you buy in one that you know about? Although it is marginally spreading to some other towns, Bethpage sits on the worst contamination site, which makes it more toxic and likely to affect one's health. You are fortunate that this story is out there so that you can make an informed decision. I feel bad for the people that bought in Bethpage before the "toxic plume" information came to light and are now stuck there. Living there is a gamble and I am sure many people are healthy too, but think of resale value of your home in the future as well as the health of your family. The more info that comes out about the toxic plume, the harder it will be to sell your home. I live in a town that borders Bethpage and I refuse to grow vegetables in my yard to eat (just in case). For me it would be a deal breaker.
I grew up in North Massapequa which is south of Bethpage. The government has only recently acknowledged the plume as having moved south of the southern state, where my house was. Many people I went to school with lived north of the SSP and some north of Hempstead Tpke. There are far too many who have either fought or died from cancers, have autoimmune diseases, have a large number of children on the spectrum, have had children who've died from cancer, have children with developmental disabilities.
The area mentioned by the OP is covered in the 1994 spread map. Given it's immediate proximity to the Grumman property, who knows how long that leaching was going on before it became appreciable?
To the OP -- I wouldn't consider buying a house on the plume if I had children or if there was a possibility of children.
There are 3 users on here specifically that always seem to pipe up about the Bethpage Toxic Plume whenever it's mentioned. One user in particular claims that she knows a bunch of people she went to high school with in Bethpage that all got rare types of cancers and she directly attributes them to the toxic plume. You have to take everything with a grain of salt and do your own research to reach your own conclusions. If you feel that it's something you'll never be able to get past, then you might want to keep looking.
However, I was in exactly your shoes one year ago. We saw a cape (near the elementary school) that we fell in love with after looking at many, many houses. The schools are top-notch (for our budget), taxes affordable and it's really a lovely town. I did a ton of research about the Toxic Plume, the effects on the water and how the town has handled it since it was discovered, as well as the Cancer Survey that was ordered by Mangano. I recommend you read the entire thing for yourself: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmen...ions/bethpage/
What we found was that despite the media coverage of the issue, people didn't abandon Bethpage in droves and home values were seemingly unaffected. Schools are still performing well and the enrollment hadn't declined. We took this as a sign that people really liked living here and didn't feel that the "Cancer Cluster" was as prominent as the media made it out to be (the study findings confirm this). We wound up buying the home and haven't looked back. We love it here, we love our neighbors and we don't have any water or air quality issues to speak of.
As it turns out, the water in Bethpage is cleaner now than in its surrounding areas, because of all the precautions taken to clean it up and the fact that the US Navy was sued to cover the costs of the clean up decades ago. The plume itself is spreading south east to surrounding towns and those towns can't agree on what to do, but most don't currently have any mitigation plan in place. They're arguing over whether to do something about the water supply before the plume reaches them or to wait until it's there and then decide what to do. Bethpage has been-there-done-that.
I just wanted to comment, because I was exactly in your shoes a year ago and I found there was a lot of misinformation, as well as alarmists, especially on this forum. I think I would have been kicking myself if we settled for something else, somewhere else, because of people's unwarranted claims, rather than basing our decision on solid facts.
Good luck to you whatever you choose, but arm yourself with all the information you feel you need to make a sound decision.
After years of saving my wife and I are ready to move on to the Island. W are both very excited and after looking at over 50 homes fell I love with a cape on Bethpage near the middle school of Ellen Street. We did the expedition and the home is tip top, the schools seems spot on, it's conveniently located...it's just the house we were looking for. I was talking to a buddy of mind about moving today and he mentioned on the side that generally water at the Island taste bad. So I did decided to check that out online and suddenly I'm reading about toxic plumes leaching from the the old Grumman site. Everything online sounds awful. Also bad voc level in basements in certain areas from the same toxins.
I honestly don't know what to do? Anyone want to offer some advice? Should we look else where? I do plan to start a family and want to make sure there safe. Is all the press blown out of proportions? I've lived all my life in NYC where air levels are bad and people still live here in the millions.
Thoughts and advice greatly appreciated.
John
A lot of people I had spoken to were unaware of the Bethpage plume - I always assumed it did not receive that much press but I could be wrong. I found out about it from this site when I was considering a home in the Bethpage area, the numbered section just north of the train station. The real estate agent laughed at me when I asked about the plume so I walked.
The navy had set up a drill rig near my in-laws in Levittown to drill 1000 feet down and test the groundwater, this was a few months ago (I posted a picture of it in one of the other toxic plume threads). I was just in their neighborhood and there's a new drill rig a few blocks away from the first one. That's my experience with the plume, so take it for what it's worth (or not worth ).
I don't know whether it's safe to live there or not but I agree with twingles, why even take the chance? Tough decision, good luck.
There are 3 users on here specifically that always seem to pipe up about the Bethpage Toxic Plume whenever it's mentioned. One user in particular claims that she knows a bunch of people she went to high school with in Bethpage that all got rare types of cancers and she directly attributes them to the toxic plume. You have to take everything with a grain of salt and do your own research to reach your own conclusions. If you feel that it's something you'll never be able to get past, then you might want to keep looking.
However, I was in exactly your shoes one year ago. We saw a cape (near the elementary school) that we fell in love with after looking at many, many houses. The schools are top-notch (for our budget), taxes affordable and it's really a lovely town. I did a ton of research about the Toxic Plume, the effects on the water and how the town has handled it since it was discovered, as well as the Cancer Survey that was ordered by Mangano. I recommend you read the entire thing for yourself: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmen...ions/bethpage/
What we found was that despite the media coverage of the issue, people didn't abandon Bethpage in droves and home values were seemingly unaffected. Schools are still performing well and the enrollment hadn't declined. We took this as a sign that people really liked living here and didn't feel that the "Cancer Cluster" was as prominent as the media made it out to be (the study findings confirm this). We wound up buying the home and haven't looked back. We love it here, we love our neighbors and we don't have any water or air quality issues to speak of.
As it turns out, the water in Bethpage is cleaner now than in its surrounding areas, because of all the precautions taken to clean it up and the fact that the US Navy was sued to cover the costs of the clean up decades ago. The plume itself is spreading south east to surrounding towns and those towns can't agree on what to do, but most don't currently have any mitigation plan in place. They're arguing over whether to do something about the water supply before the plume reaches them or to wait until it's there and then decide what to do. Bethpage has been-there-done-that.
I just wanted to comment, because I was exactly in your shoes a year ago and I found there was a lot of misinformation, as well as alarmists, especially on this forum. I think I would have been kicking myself if we settled for something else, somewhere else, because of people's unwarranted claims, rather than basing our decision on solid facts.
Good luck to you whatever you choose, but arm yourself with all the information you feel you need to make a sound decision.
My post is based directly on experience of having lived in the 'officially' acknowledged path of the plume. I have no interest or financial concern in whether or not the OP buys here, whereas you do. It could stand to reason that you would gloss over the issue as you have to concern yourself with your home's value.
Do you know what has transpired in the surrounding community prior to your arrival one year ago? Do you know who lived in the houses around you 10, 20, 30 years earlier? Do you know their health history? Or about the persons who were raised here before the plume's 'discovery' who have since moved on and had children, or died?
On my area alone there was leukemia, brain cancer, stomach cancer, my best friend who died at 13 this was 37 years ago and at the time I wasn't fully aware of the type of cancer other than it was something to do with brain tumors. She had a massive seizure at my house when she called for me to walk to school. After that, she was sent to the hospital for surgeries and treatments. She was dead within a short time. There's breast cancer, MS, Chrohns, scleroderma, Lupus, and more. I babysat for the children who had brain cancer, leukemia, and stomach cancer. 1 lived across the street, the other 4 houses down, and the last around the corner -- 4 houses away. The one who developed stomach cancer did so in his 20's -- after losing both his parents to cancer as a teen. My sibling has a child with developmental disabilities. Her best friend (3 houses down) a child with Dravet syndrome. Around the block and further away one of my HS classmate's children was born with an improperly formed liver. An old boyfriend who lived much closer to Grumman lost his dad to brain cancer
I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that not only Grumman and the Navy were polluting the earth in Bethpage, but Hooker Chemical (the company behind the infamous Love Canal) is responsible for one of the largest amounts of chemicals in the plumes. We know what happened to people sickened by Hooker at Love Canal.
Here's the NYC DEC report on the Bethpage Super Fund site: Environmental Remediation Databases
(Please note that chemicals were dumped as late as 1987.)
Something isn't right. I had considered the idea that it could possibly be related to many of the chemicals dumped on former farms by farmers. Some of this will remain in the earth for years. If that's the case, no matter how clean the water is in B'page, you're still exposed via the soil. Agricultural chemical utilization and human health.
Many of the people (living and deceased) lived in the area from the 1960's on out. We were exposed to this on a daily basis. You choose to dismiss the suffering that people I knew and know have gone through by calling me an alarmist, or suggesting that this is misinformation based on your one year in B'page, or to take their reality with a grain of salt then so be it; you know what they say about Karma.
Good luck and let me know how you're doing in 25 years.
Last edited by OhBeeHave; 07-31-2014 at 02:03 PM..
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