Newsday wins Society of Environmental Journalists award

The Society of Environmental Journalists on Thursday awarded Newsday a second-place prize for a series of articles on the Grumman groundwater pollution plume in the organization’s annual contest recognizing the year’s best reporting on the environment.

Newsday reporters and editors won second place for the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting in the large newsroom or circulation category, the most prominent group in a contest that drew nearly 500 entries worldwide.

The organization said on its website that the contest seeks to “honor the best articles, radio broadcasts and videos released from March 1, 2019, through February 29, 2020, and the best books on environmental topics published in 2019.”

Judges called the Newsday series, titled "The Grumman Plume: Decades of Deceit," which was reported and written by Paul LaRocco, Yancey Roy and David M. Schwartz, an “investigation of Grumman International's carcinogenic groundwater ‘plumes’ under southern Long Island mines newly discovered confidential documents to trace how decades of government and corporate coverup and deceit have damaged the regional water supply and endangered public health.”

The series, published in February, tracked deceptive statements, missteps and minimization from both Grumman and regulators that helped slow down the cleanup of the groundwater pollution. The plume is now 4.3 miles long, 2.1 miles wide and up to 900 feet deep. It also contains 24 contaminants including the carcinogenic solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE.

SEJ judges dubbed the series a “very well-written entry [that] weaves together the economic and social history of Grumman on Long Island with discoveries of new evidence illuminating what the company and regulators knew and when they knew it.”