Town where child cancer rose blasts deal over polluted site

By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press

TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) — A proposed settlement between New Jersey and the current owner of a notoriously polluted industrial site is drawing fire from residents of Toms River, where memories of children getting cancer at elevated rates are still a fresh source of pain. The state and Germany-based BASF reached an agreement for the company to restore natural resources polluted by the former Ciba-Geigy chemical plant. But many residents call it woefully insufficient given the history of toxic dumping at the site. Ciba-Geigy and BASF have paid more than $300 million cleaning up the site, an effort whose end is not yet known, and contaminated groundwater still sits beneath some residential neighborhoods.