“The lawsuit, filed in October against Shell, the developer and its subsequent owners, claims among other things that the companies were negligent in their treatment of the site and that they fraudulently concealed chemical hazards on the property.”
Experts Say Homeowners Exposed to Dangerous Levels of Benzene, Methane
By SARAH NETTER CARSON, Calif. May 19, 2010The tidy rows of hacienda-style homes in a pretty, well-manicured southern California neighborhood give little indication of the festering chemicals under the soil.
Adolfo Valdes, pictured with his 3-year-old daughter Alexa, no longer lets his daughters play outside after environmental experts found crude oil just feet under his front lawn.(Sarah Netter/ABC News)
More Photos
Built on top of a long-forgotten crude oil storage site, the 285 homes in Carson’s Carousel neighborhood are now ground zero for an environmental and medical crisis that has pitted current and former homeowners, some of them cancer-stricken, in a massive lawsuit against Shell.
“I’m very angry. I’m angry that this could happen to our family or anyone else’s family,” longtime Carousel homeowner Royalene Fernandez said. “It has definitely ruined our lives and I don’t want it to ruin my kids’ lives or my grandchildren’s.”