Dorna Davis is one of 300 people who live within a mile of Leeds Metal, an old scrap metal recycling operation. From 1969 to 1984 it shredded metal from cars, and since then the metals have been contaminating the ground. Some of those chemicals have made it into nearby wells.
Water contamination is one reason this site is now on the Environmental Protection Agency's national priority list. Clean-up won’t come cheap or easy. First, they're going to build a fence around the property to keep people away. David Wright with the State Department of Environmental Protection says just to clean up the remaining scraps would cost $10 million. That doesn't include cleaning up the lead, gasoline, and other chemicals that speeded into the soil and ground water.
The EPA will spend the winter tracking down the businesses that used to operate on this property to see if they can be held financially responsible for cleanup.
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