Oyster Bay expands investigation into Bethpage Community Park, testing soil under pool

Oyster Bay is testing the soil beneath the sprawling pool complex at Bethpage Community Park, near where Grumman Aerospace spent years dumping toxic chemicals, as part of a new push to expand the scope of the yearslong environmental review and cleanup.

Town officials said it's the first time the ground beneath the pool will be tested for contaminants. The testing comes as Oyster Bay and Northrop Grumman, Grumman Aerospace's corporate successor, battle in court over plans to clean up parts of the 18-acre town park where 22 concrete-encased chemical drums were found buried more than two years ago.

Already, Northrop Grumman contractors have extracted thousands of soil samples from the park, mainly in the ballfield area, which has been closed since 2002. That portion of the park, spanning 3.5 acres, was closed after soil tests revealed toxic contamination. 

An ice-skating rink on the property remains open, along with the pool — an original part of the park when it opened in 1965. The pool is less than 500 feet from the ballfields and draws about 2,000 people annually. 

The town and Northrop Grumman are at odds over how much soil should be dug up and if it should be trucked away. 

The round of testing, town officials say, is aimed at compelling the company to remove soil from areas beyond the ballfield. The testing began earlier this month and is expected to last several weeks.

"We need to know what's under the pool. That's the last area in the park that has not been sampled at all," Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino said in a phone interview. 

The cleanup of Bethpage Community Park has been hampered by delays and contentious litigation. The most recent phase involved thermal remediation, in which heated metal rods were used to vaporize toxins deep in the soil. The next stage would remove soil contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that are closer to the surface. Ultimately, the town and Northrop Grumman must agree on a plan for removing PCBs to submit to the Environmental Protection Agency for approval.

"All of this is designed to pressure Grumman to start removing soil. Thirteen years have gone by, and Grumman has not removed so much as one truckload of soil from the park," Saladino said. 

When asked for comment, Northrop Grumman directed Newsday to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The company has accused the town of delaying the cleanup through its litigation strategy.

The DEC, in a statement, said the investigation has been focused on areas where Grumman operations took place. The pool area of the park was previously "undisturbed woodlands," Newsday previously reported, citing a 2016 DEC review. Northrop Grumman contractors have tested in the area near the pool, including under the cement around it, according to the DEC.

Sampling beneath the pool itself, the agency said, "would cause significant disruption to the facility and community."

"There is currently no evidence Northrop Grumman operations took place in the swimming pool area," the DEC statement said.

'Looking at the entire park'

The town board, on Oct. 6, authorized a $252,600 contract to one of its on-call firms for "continued sampling of pool area and soil investigation" at the park, documents show. 

The firm, D&B Engineers & Architects, selected Sanborn Head, an engineering firm, as subconsultants, records show.

Cascade Environmental will dig borings into the roughly 15,000-square-foot pool's floor and surrounding area, which totals 90,000 square feet. The company will collect 47 soil samples, said Brian Nevin, a town spokesman.

In 2023, Oyster Bay filed a federal lawsuit against Northrop Grumman in a bid to force a more thorough park cleanup. Last year, a federal judge allowed the town to add new contamination concerns to its case — specifically, hexavalent chromium, a highly toxic substance found when the drums were discovered and removed.

For years, Grumman Aerospace used the property now known as Bethpage Community Park as a chemical- and waste-dumping ground. The company disposed of toxic wastewater sludge and solvent-soaked rags used in industrial operations.

The company's manufacturing and disposal practices caused a vast groundwater plume that is slowly moving south on Long Island.

The company donated the land to the town in 1962 for its use as a community park. The discovery of contamination in 2002 led to a brief closure of entire park. It was partially reopened later that year. The ballfield area has never reopened. 

The latest sampling effort is expected to take a few weeks, but town officials say the pool should open for its regular schedule next year. 

Saladino said that while the pool is outside the ballfield section, the town is "looking at the entire park, not piecemeal."

The town's plan to sample below the pool is a way for officials to gain a better understanding of contamination at the park, said Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a Farmingdale nonprofit.

"It's certainly better to be safe than sorry," Esposito said. "Doing a couple of extra samples is probably a good precautionary step to make sure they're being thorough."

A community's 'huge frustration'

Nevin, the town spokesman, said in a statement that the town was "moving forward to protect the public by examining every inch of the park."

Historical aerial photographs don't show the pool area was an active dumping ground, but that doesn't mean the soil isn't contaminated, said Bill Pavone, co-chair of the Navy/Grumman Community Participation Working Group, a panel focused on the park cleanup and wider efforts to treat groundwater contamination.

Most important, Pavone said, is reaching an agreement over how deep to excavate PCB-laden soil in the ballfield area.

"The town is certainly within their right to do it on their own dime," Pavone, of Seaford, said of the new pool sampling. "I don't think it's the most cost-effective data-driven analysis."

In late 2024, the DEC called on Northrop Grumman to come up with a more comprehensive plan to sample soil at the park, one that goes beyond the terms of an agreement reached in 2013. The agency later approved an enhanced testing plan, which included soil sampling in the pool and playground areas. The agency has said that investigation concluded with "no significant or unexpected findings."

The DEC said Northrop Grumman's contractor completed soil sampling in June 2025.

That testing found 72 samples in the pool area, out of 495, with PCB contamination above 1 part per million, the standard cleanup objective for treating residential properties.

Northrop Grumman's contractor collected 500 new soil samples through the park between March and June 2025, adding to a database of more than 4,000 soil samples. In September 2025, the agency created a 3D, independent analysis of PCB soil contamination, including in areas around the pool, and shared it with the town, according to the DEC.

The town and Northrop Grumman are privately discussing "a cleanup that exceeds" the 2013 agreement, the DEC said. The sides must come to an agreement before filing a joint application to remove PCBs with the EPA. 

While the cleanup effort slowly lurches forward, Bethpage residents' patience has been tested, Pavone said.

"There's a huge frustration from the community members," Pavone said.