Apr 23, 2009 7:37 pm US/Central
Lawsuit, New Illness Claims From Crestwood Water
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
The village of Crestwood, the mayor and former mayor are all targets of a lawsuit filed Thursday. It claims they allowed residents to drink contaminated well water for decades.
One family believes that's why one man died and why his wife may only have days to live.
CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports on a struggle to find the truth.
Family members gathered in her Crestwood condo tonight, recalling happier times for Barbara MacLean. The 77-year-old great-grandmother is dying of a rare form of lung cancer, less than two years after her husband, Harry, died of a relatively rare liver cancer.
"To literally poison people, I can't imagine," Rita Santoro , MacLean's sister, said. "I would like to know how he can sleep at night."
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency ordered the village in 1986 to stop using a well contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. But Crestwood secretly kept doing so, while former Mayor Chester Stranczek's administration lied for more than 20 years to consumers and state regulators.
Vinyl chloride has been linked to liver tumors for sure. Dr. Caroline Nawara says it's also linked to bladder, brain and lung tumors.
A physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Nawara, the MacLean's daughter-in-law showed us a scientific study. It links certain tumors to exposure to vinyl chloride, found in Crestwood's well water at a level 2 ½ times higher than the EPA allows.
Why does she think it's the water? Both Harry and Barbara MacLean developed "extremely rare tumors," Nawara said.
We've gotten no answers at Mayor Robert Stranczek's home or his office in five days of trying to contact him. Harry and Barbara MacLean's family want a criminal investigation.
"It's too late for my sister and my brother-in-law," Santoro said. "But for young families who have young children ... I can't imagine what they must be going through."
With Crestwood's leaders not talking, citizens have organized a meeting of their own. It will be at Moraine Valley Church on Saturday.
Meanwhile, a class action lawsuit was filed against the village and its mayor Thursday.
The suit, filed by Crestwood resident Joseph Marzano on behalf of "thousands" of Crestwood residents who paid for allegedly contaminated tap water, accuses the Village of Crestwood, Mayor Robert Stranczek, his father and unnamed alleged co-conspirators with "quietly" making use of contaminated water as a way to save money.
The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit court, claims the village touted their cheap water prices while covertly using water from a well known to contain dry cleaning chemicals, specifically vinyl chloride.
The suit claims that in 1986, state regulators told Crestwood officials that a well they were using was tainted with dangerous chemicals. Following the notification, the suit claims village officials told the state that it would only use the well in emergency situations and would provide tap water from Lake Michigan only.
However, Marzano claims the village continued to use the "tainted" well in an effort to save money.
The well in question was shut down in 2007 after the Environmental Protection Agency found its levels of vinyl chloride "far in excess of the legal limit for drinking water."
"Meanwhile, between at least as far back as 1986 and 2007… [residents] have unknowingly consumed tap water containing unwanted and unhealthy levels of dangerous toxin[s] such as vinyl chloride," the suit alleges.
After residents learned of the contaminated well through news reports, the village sent out letters this week to community members telling them the water is currently safe.
"If we failed to report properly, we will take measures to correct that," Mayor Robert Stranczek stated in a letter posted on a village Web site. "But believe me no one in Crestwood village government, past or present, would ever intentionally allow a hazard to threaten our community."
Mayor Robert Stranczek says the village, the EPA and the state attorney general's office are reviewing whether the village properly reported the use of water from a well contaminated by dry-cleaning chemicals before the well was closed off in 2007.
The suit accuses the village of being "grossly negligent" and wants an undisclosed amount of money in damages, including a refund of the money residents paid for the water in the form of a trust. The trust would "accommodate any testing and/or monitoring for adverse health effects that the Court deems proper after presentation of relevant evidence."
IEPA spokeswoman Maggie Carson said the agency first discovered the contaminated well 1986, and the village did say it would be placed on emergency backup status.
STNG Wire contributed to this report.
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