New Lindenhurst homeowner wants tainted property cleaned up

A Lindenhurst resident who bought a newly built home says his property is contaminated and he has been trying for more than a year to get the land cleaned up.

First time homebuyer Nick Gigante, 32, paid more than $500,000 for one of eight new homes built by Nu Level Builders LLC of Lynbrook on the former site of a Knights of Columbus building at 400 South Broadway.

Just months after the closing in May 2019, Gigante said he began noticing that the backyard was not draining properly and rain water would pool. Digging down two feet to put in a drain, Gigante discovered chunks of asphalt, cinder block and bricks. Examining other areas of his property resulted in the same discovery. No grass would grow on the property, he said, only weeds, which when pulled had asphalt clinging to their roots.

Concerned about contamination, in August 2019 Gigante reached out to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The DEC inspected the site, he said, and then contacted the village and the builder, Ricky Valenti, 54, who owns Nu Level.

Gigante said what happened next was months of calls and emails with officials, each saying the other should be responsible for remediation.

"Everyone was just pointing fingers," he said. "They were just telling me what I wanted to hear to appease me at the time."

Valenti vehemently denies placing the debris and said he didn’t bring in fill.

"It’s just upsetting that I have to deal with this," he said. "I build with integrity."

Records supplied by the village show a demolition permit for the building was issued in 2015 to Metro Industrial Wrecking and Environmental Contractors of Huntington Station. Village building inspector Tom Maher said the village did not inspect after the demolition but was there for the excavation for the foundation. The records show nine inspections being done during construction from April 2018 to March 2019 when a certificate of occupancy was issued.

"I was there every day," Valenti said. "They knocked the building down, they carted it away. They didn’t stick it in the ground." Metro did not respond to a request for comment.

Village attorney Gerard Glass said neither the state’s building code nor the local code have "provisions for dealing with hidden, subsurface conditions."

"There’s no enforcement mechanism or code that technically is violated if you can’t prove it was dumped," he said. "It’s an oddball problem. I’ve never confronted this in my 34 years of representing building departments in local government."

Glass said the village recently convinced Valenti to clean up the debris, but Valenti said he had only agreed to remove what Gigante had unearthed.

"What happens if I dig and there’s nothing there," he said. "Who’s going to pay me to do that?"

Valenti doesn’t believe the land is contaminated and has told the DEC to do a boring sample.

"You can’t send me a couple of pictures of asphalt, some bricks and wood," he said. "I don’t know how it got there."

The DEC has not tested the soil, said Gigante, who wants the property fully cleaned up. The DEC would not comment other than to say it "continues to work with the village on this ongoing investigation."

"I thought between the village and the DEC we would have had a solution by now," Gigante said. "I can’t even enjoy my property, it’s disgusting."

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.