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Suffolk to reap millions in pollution settlement

BY JENNIFER SMITH | jennifer.smith@newsday.com

1:50 PM EDT, May 8, 2008

The Suffolk County Water Authority would get $73.4 million from major oil companies as part of a settlement of a lawsuit over drinking water contamination from the fuel additive MTBE. If approved, the settlement would award the water authority the largest single share of the $422 million settlement, officials said.

The money will be used to remediate Suffolk County Water Authority wells tainted by methyl tertiary butyl ether, and for continued drinking water monitoring, said water authority executive Steve Jones.

Suffolk County, whose legislature first filed the suit and were later joined by the water authority, will also receive about $1 million for county wells.

"We've detected MTBE in about 450 of our 600 wells," Jones said before a news conference Thursday announcing the proposed settlement. He and others hastened to assure residents that their drinking water was and will continue to be safe, because contaminated wells were either taken offline or treated with carbon filters to remove the MTBE.

MTBE is classified as a potential carcinogen but its human health impacts over long-term exposure are unclear. The fuel additive is difficult and costly to remove from drinking water.

Defendants who settled include BP Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Marathon, Valero, CITGO, Sunoco and Hess. The settlement also requires defendants to pay their share of treatment costs for wells owned or operated by the plaintiffs that become contaminated by MTBE in the future and qualify for treatment over the next 30 years, according attorneys with Barron & Budd, a Dallas law firm representing many of the plaintiffs.

ExxonMobil has refused to settle. It could go to trial in September, when the case is scheduled to be heard by U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin in Southern District Court in Manhattan.

It is the first of a number lawsuits filed by more than 153 water suppliers and local governments over contamination from MTBE, which was widely used as a fuel additive in the 1990s and early 2000s.

New York state banned MTBE in 2004 because of concerns about groundwater pollution.