A preliminary conference has been scheduled in a lawsuit filed by the Water Authority of Great Neck North against Lockheed Martin for allegedly failing to pay more than $10 million owed to the water authority to clean up a groundwater plume, according to court documents.
State Supreme Court Justice Timothy S. Driscoll set a conference on Feb. 24 at 11:30 a.m. to discuss the lawsuit initially filed by the water authority in state Supreme Court in Mineola on Oct. 30. The lawsuit claims that Lockheed Martin violated a 2013 agreement it signed with the Water Authority of Great Neck North and the Manhasset-Lakeville Water District.
According to court documents, the agreement went into effect in 2014 and was to last 30 years. Lockheed Martin agreed to reimburse the water agencies of Great Neck North and Manhasset-Lakeville to treat the plume, which affected some of their wells.
Among the harmful chemicals found in the plume is 1,2 dichloroethylene, a highly flammable substance that can cause effects on the blood and liver.
Disputes in the contract arose when the water authority claimed that Lockheed Martin is responsible for money spent on treating wells on Watermill Lane, according to court documents. Lockheed Martin attorneys Louis Orbach and Justin Tan claim the company is “not obligated under the Agreement” to finance the treatment of a different plume.
The attorneys said the Stanton Cleaners Area Groundwater Contamination site had a plume as a result of a former dry cleaners at 110 Cutter Mill Road. Hazardous materials were discharged from the site, which was put on the federal Superfund list in 1999 by the Environmental Protection Agency, court filings said.
“Plaintiff has had treatment systems in place for the Watermill Lane Wells since prior to the effective date of the Agreement due to contamination of those wells by compounds emanating from the Stanton Cleaners Area Groundwater Contamination Site,” the Lockheed Martin attorneys wrote in a Nov. 17 filing.
Water authority Superintendent Gregory Graziano called Lockheed’s citing of the Stanton site as a reason not to pay the $10 million “unfortunate” in a statement to Newsday.
“It is unfortunate that Lockheed is using that history as a way to evade their legal obligation to reimburse the Authority for the cost of addressing the impact of their plume on the Authority’s well sites,” Graziano said in a statement to Newsday.
John Brickman of McLaughlin & Stern LLP, who is representing the water authority, said Lockheed agreed to pay the water authority $250,000 for maintenance on three additional wells on Watermill Lane, where the water authority detected problems in 2014, according to Graziano.
A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said, “In general, it is our practice not to comment on pending litigation.”
Lockheed Martin announced in January that the agency has cleaned up around 70 percent of the plume throughout a 900-acre region in North Hempstead. Officials said that despite the progress, efforts to continue cleaning the area will span at least another two decades.
“Remediation of groundwater is very challenging because we’re constrained by many things like the flow of groundwater where we can put treatment in,” Glenda Clark, a project lead of environmental remediation at Lockheed Martin, said at a January forum. “So, we will be continuing to remediate for a very long time.”
