{"id":221427,"date":"2026-05-06T01:27:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T01:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/221427\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T01:27:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T01:27:25","slug":"long-island-residents-anxious-about-underwater-toxic-plume-from-brookhaven-landfill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/221427\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Island residents anxious about underwater toxic plume from Brookhaven landfill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An enormous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/newyork\/news\/long-island-residents-in-minority-communities-sound-off-on-safety-of-brookhaven-landfill\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">landfill on Long Island<\/a> is scheduled to close in two years, but Brookhaven residents who live nearby are anxious and worried about the underwater toxic plume the landfill created.<\/p>\n<p>The Beaver Dam Creek and Bellport Bay, plus underground drinking water wells, are threatened by a 4-mile toxic plume emanating from the 52-year-old Brookhaven town landfill, according to the state. The dump is scheduled to be shuttered in 2028.  <\/p>\n<p>Cleanup plan<\/p>\n<p>The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation required Brookhaven town to submit a cleanup plan for the toxic forever chemicals traveling in an underground plume.<\/p>\n<p>The town has proposed expanded public water hookups and enhanced groundwater monitoring. Other options the town rejected include landfill excavation\/reclamation, removing contaminated groundwater and closing the landfill immediately.<\/p>\n<p>The cleanup plan requires approval of the state DEC, which could take several months.<\/p>\n<p>The DEC said all options will be considered. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Health, home value concerns<\/p>\n<p>Artist Julianna Kirk and her family live adjacent to Beaver Dam Creek and down the road from Bellport Bay.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have been terrified of the landfill for a long time, and now the four-mile plume is only going to get larger,&#8221; Kirk said.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s not happy with the town&#8217;s proposed cleanup plans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Are they saying that the easiest thing for them to do is to keep monitoring after all these years?&#8221; she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Residents of the town have been fighting for decades to get the dump closed, saying they can&#8217;t wait for the cleanup to be funded.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Cheap is expensive. Allowing the plume to continue  to discharge into our estuary and our bays means that it will diminish  our home values, put our health at risk,&#8221; said Adrienne Esposito, with Citizens Campaign for the Environment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If there is another path forward that the DEC wants us to take, well then, the state must fund that path because the state built this landfill,&#8221; Brookhaven Town Supervisor Daniel Panico said.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An enormous landfill on Long Island is scheduled to close in two years, but Brookhaven residents who live&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[87241,9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-221427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-brookhaven","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}