New York Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Turley, Redmond & Rosasco : Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Nassau, Suffolk, Bronx, Staten Island

US Senator Charles Schumer announced in a Newsday article yesterday that treatment, medical monitoring and potential compensation are on the way for potentially thousands of workers who formerly worked atop the nuclear waste site owned by Verizon in Hicksville, New York.  In addition to announcing the new benefits for workers, a frustrated but determined Senator Charles Schumer stated that "I will hold the Army Corps' of Engineers feet to the fire" and "the site should have been cleaned up yesterday", referring to his previous efforts in 2004 to achieve a full cleanup.   

Shocked that their efforts in 2004 to secure a federal cleanup of the Hicksville, Long Island,  New York nuclear waste site have not been completed to date, both Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Pete King vowed to to cut through the bureaucracy and finger pointing.  Both Schumer and King were reacting to a letter request for intervention from Troy Rosasco, the attorney for Gerard Depascale, who the New York Workers' Compensation Board recently found contracted a rare cancer while working for the Hudson News Group on this site and was awarded lifetime workers' compensation and medical benefits.  In a previous Newsday artcle on Mr. Depascale, Mr. Rosasco compared the illnesses facing the Hicksville workers as similar to the ilnesses facing 9/11 workers who were exposed at Ground Zero.   "Over the course of the next 10-20 years, I believe we are going to see more cases of cancer and other illnesses related to radiation at this site", said Rosasco.

This new aid promised by Senator Schumer will be especially welcome to those workers who were exposed to ionizing radiation  and other toxins on the site and are now in fear of getting sick in the future.  In addition, the Army Corp of Engineers promised to return to the site this May for more investigation.    Turley, Redmond & Rosasco, LLP is compiling a list of  workers who ever worked on this site and may have been exposed to radiation and other chemicals.  Please call Troy Rosasco, Esq. at 631-582-3700, ext. 123 if you worked at this site and would like to be on the list for possible testing, treatment and/or compensation.   We will keep you posted on further developments. 

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That's what Adreinne Esposito, Executive Director of the Citizens' Campaign for the Environment, called the growing controversy regarding Verizon's radiation contaminated property located in Hicksville, New York  in a recent News 12 Long Island television report on the former Sylvania Nuclear Products facility.  See the full video here.

After Newsday's first story broke about our client's cancer related to his work at this site for Magazine Distributors, Inc.,  a division of Hudson News, in an article few weeks weeks ago, the unanswered questions regarding the dangers at this toxic site are rapidly expanding.  Newsday later followed up a week later with another story unearthing a previously unreleased Army Corp of Engineers report dated November 2005 showing worse contamination than previously thought. 

Why did the federal Army Corp of Engineers sit on the Hicksville Sylvania Nuclear Waste Site report for almost two years and release it only to Verizon ( a defendant in a billion dollar lawsuit brought by local residents alleging increased cancer risks) and the New York DEC?  Way back in 2004, New York Senator Chuck Schumer and US Representative Peter King announced, "It's the federal government that created this mess, it's the federal government that should fix it".  Did they "fix" this radioactive site located smack in the middle of Long Island suburbia, or did  powerful corporate and governmental interests  try to sweep this one under the rug. 

According to Ms. Esposito of Citizens' Campaign for the Environment, " Instead of being honest with the public, they covered it up.  That is negligence on the part of the federal government and that's a conspiracy to keep the public in the dark". 

One thing we know is that Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Pete King are scrappy fighters determined to protect the health and welfare of both Hicksville residents and all Long Island workers who worked at the employers located on the Verizon property.  The New York State Workers' Compensation Board already ruled that our client contracted a rare and deadly cancer, extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma,  while working on this site for a tenant of Verizon.  As George Johnson, a neighbor of the site for seven years, so appropriately said in the News 12 video, "How many people have to die before something happens, before we do the right thing". 

Let's hope Senator Schumer and Congressman King can get the Army Corp of Engineers and Verizon to do the right thing and clean up this site  with all deliberate speed.  

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