{"id":27272,"date":"2016-09-02T13:11:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T18:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=27272"},"modified":"2016-09-02T13:11:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T18:11:01","slug":"bethany-sues-aerospace-firms-claiming-contamination-poses-public-water-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2016\/09\/02\/bethany-sues-aerospace-firms-claiming-contamination-poses-public-water-emergency\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethany Sues Aerospace Firms, Claiming Contamination Poses Public Water \u2018Emergency\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"embed-documentcloud\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<div class=\"DC-embed DC-embed-document DV-container\">\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:129.42857142857142%;height:0;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;\"> <iframe src=\"\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/3039024-Bethany-v-Rockwell-Complaint.html?embed=true&responsive=false&sidebar=false\" title=\"Bethany-v-Rockwell-Complaint (Hosted by DocumentCloud)\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-forms\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:1px solid #aaa;border-bottom:0;box-sizing:border-box;\"><\/iframe> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><p>The City of Bethany is suing a pair of aerospace companies after a \u201cplume\u201d of hazardous chemicals migrating from an airport manufacturing plant contaminated public water supplies and forced the city to shut down a pair of municipal water wells.<!--more--><\/p><p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/search\/Account:2871-joe-wertz\">federal lawsuit<\/a>, filed Aug. 31 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, the city claims Rockwell Automation and Gulfstream Aerospace owned and operated an aircraft manufacturing facility at Wiley Post Airport contaminated with toxic solvents and degreasers containing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atsdr.cdc.gov\/substances\/toxsubstance.asp?toxid=30\">trichloroethene<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atsdr.cdc.gov\/toxfaqs\/tf.asp?id=264&tid=48\">tetrachloroethene<\/a>, which have been detected in municipal wells at levels exceeding federal limits.<\/p><p>Bethany was forced to shut down two wells. Attorneys say the chemicals are \u201cthreatening to contaminate\u201d the city\u2019s supply of public drinking water, according to the complaint. Bethany says Milwaukee-based Rockwell and Savannah, Ga.-based Gulfstream knew about the contamination in 2008, but didn\u2019t notify the city until 2012. The city is suing the companies to recover costs for treating, testing and monitoring its wells and finding a clean replacement water source for its customers.<\/p><p>The manufacturing plant was built in the 1950s and operated by Rockwell until the \u201880s, when it was taken over by Gulfstream. The plant closed its doors in 2002. While testing by Bethany and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality has shown pollution exceeding limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency \u201cin some areas, both Gulfstream and Rockwell deny this,\u201d <i>The Oklahoman<\/i>\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oklahoman.com\/article\/5516429?embargo_redirect=yes\">Brianna Bailey reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cTo date, the consistent testing of the City of Bethany&#8217;s water supply has not shown evidence of any contaminants associated with the operations at the former manufacturing facility,\u201d the companies said in a statement. \u201cThe ODEQ&#8217;s periodic testing of Bethany&#8217;s groundwater has consistently demonstrated that the groundwater complies with all federal clean water standards.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The City of Bethany is suing a pair of aerospace companies after a \u201cplume\u201d of hazardous chemicals migrating from an airport manufacturing plant contaminated public water supplies and forced the city to shut down a pair of municipal water wells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":27274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[600],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27272"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27280,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27272\/revisions\/27280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}