Community organizes for a full cleanup – 2004
The Newhall Coalition holds polluters responsible for decades of contamination. Photo credit: Staff
For decades, Winchester Rifle, later bought by Olin Chemical, dumped tons of toxic chemicals into a swamp, which was then sold and became the site for more than 300 homes, a school, and a park. The site was so toxic that the soil from one of the resident’s yards was declared an ‘imminent health hazard’ by the DEP. After years of pressuring Olin to take responsibility for the contamination, we helped Newhall Coalition members buy shares of Olin Chemical and come up with a plan to attend a shareholder’s meeting and bring the issue to the company directly. At the meeting, Community Action Works and community members presented our demands: clean up contamination to residential standards by 2006, settle pending lawsuits, and repair structural damage to affected property. Today the site has been remediated.