Pollution Nightmare In Attleboro Neighborhood
ATTLEBORO (CBS) - The government is cleaning up pollution in an Attleboro neighborhood.
Some people have already been moved out by the Environmental Protection Agency and others are worried they will never be able to sell their houses.
Kathy Demers has good reason to worry. Her home looks out at a massive EPA cleanup site. Her husband died from cancer that she suspects may be related to the toxins in the ground under her home.
Kathy says, "He spent a lot of time out in the yard and in the basement, before the basement had an exhaust system put in it."
The source of the pollution is an old chrome-plating company, Walton & Lonsbury.
In 2010, the EPA started tearing down the facility. Then they found the groundwater full of lead and chromium that for 30 years, the company had been pumping it into the ground.
Elsbeth Hearn of the EPA says the contaminates flowed south and west from the facility and into surrounding neighborhoods.
The residents who remain say they can't move even if they wanted to.
"This was our retirement, this home," says Linda Charlebois. "I don't think there will be a retirement anymore because I don't think the value of this house will ever come back up."
