MONTVILLE -- Bonnieview Lane in Montville is home to many children, although few are ever seen outside, even on the sunniest summer day.
The swing sets are generally empty, and the plush green lawns are void of baseballs, footballs and hockey nets. There's no laughter rising from the backyards, no shouts and shrieks of children at play.
It's been that way for six years.
"You just don't see them because nobody goes out on their lawns," said Sharon Perrone, the mother of three young girls who say they can count the times they have walked in their yard.
The neighborhood is poisoned -- at least that's the fear of the more than a dozen families who live in the center-hall, brick colonial homes built a decade ago on both sides of the hillside lane.
Since they learned in 2003 that pesticide concentrations in the soil exceed state safety standards, most people living on Bonnieview Lane have tried to live their lives on the concrete part of their property and their wood decks. Many leave the neighborhood when they want to do something outdoors.
"It would have been nice to have a pool, like we planned, and hang out back. But I go to my friends' houses and swim at Lake Valhalla, where one of them is a member of the club there," said Caitlan, Perrone's 16-year-old daughter.
Six years ago, 14 families on Bonnieview Lane filed a federal lawsuit over the pollution in their 33-acre development, after it was discovered by Montville Township in conjunction with soil tests the township conducted on an adjacent 100-acre parcel it purchased in 1999 for parkland. The homes and the park were all once part of a family-run peach and apple orchard operated from the 1940s until the more than 130 acres was sold in the 1970s.
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Montville Families Stay Off the Grass Due to High Pesticide Levels
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By Brian T. Murray
New Jersey Star-Ledger, Aug 25, 2009
Straight to the Source
