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If True, Cover-Up Artists Should Pay Dearly

BY CYNDI KLAPPERICH
NORTHWEST HERALD

If the allegations made by Philadelphia attorney Aaron Freiwald are true, officials at five Ringwood industries not only poisoned area groundwater for decades, but concealed their miserable conduct.

The end result, Freiwald claims, is that one person has died and at least two others are suffering from extremely rare brain cancers. All lived or live in McCullom Lake, where Freiwald says the plume of pollution affected local wells.

Freiwald has filed three lawsuits – including a class action to which he hopes to add names of former and current McCullom Lake residents – against Rohm and Haas Chemicals LLC, Morton International, Huntsman, Huntsman Polyurethanes and Modine Manufacturing Co.

He has his work cut out for him. Such cases are extremely difficult to prove.

But the documentation he has amassed thus far – page after page of Illinois Environmental Protection Agency documents and reports commissioned by the companies themselves – certainly point to one giant and potentially menacing blunder.

It's hard to believe, but we could have an "Erin Brockovich" or "A Civil Action" in our own back yard.

People were buzzing with a range of emotions – and talking about a variety of afflictions – at a meeting Freiwald organized last week at the McHenry Veterans of Foreign Wars post.

What other types of maladies might long-term exposure to dichlorethene, trichloroethene and vinyl chloride cause? A couple of former residents, both afflicted with multiple sclerosis, wondered aloud whether their well water had played a role.

McHenry attorney Bob Burke, who performs a fair amount of real estate work in the area, said he would not be surprised if pending contracts for homes in McCullom Lake went south and people abandoned their earnest money.

In the long run, he said, residents' property values would rebound, especially if Freiwald was successful in forcing a connection for McCullom Lake residents to a municipal water source.

"But that's not going to address the health problems these people probably already have suffered," he said. "It's a major problem."

Yes, and who knows how many years this thing might drag out.

The really, really sad part is that the ignorance of the middle part of the last century – when dumping disgusting, toxic sludge was all too common – allegedly continued well into the end of the last century, when people certainly knew better.

Freiwald says officials at these companies not only knew better, but intentionally hid their knowledge that groundwater had been severely contaminated. If he's right, that's unforgivable, and should be severely punished.

– Cyndi Klapperich is the Northwest Herald's north bureau editor. She can be reached at (815) 385-0170, (815) 338-1300 or cklapperich@nwherald.com.

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