WILLIAMSTOWN, Vt. (AP) – A pollution problem that has plagued a neighborhood for more than two decades has earned the company that caused it a “Dirty Dozen Award” from a New England-wide environmental group.

Toxics Action network gave the designation to UniFirst Corp., which once ran a dry-cleaning plant on a hill above the village. The company still maintains the facility, but no longer does dry cleaning there, officials have said.

“UniFirst’s contamination has been around for more than 25 years,” said Horace Duke, who lives across the road from the UniFirst plant. “It’s time for UniFirst to take responsibility and clean up their mess.”

In the early 1980s, it came to light that for a decade or more, UniFirst had been discharging contaminated wastewater to a leaky manhole and disposing of sludge in a pit on the plant site.

Health Department tests in 1983 found cyanide, naphthalene, tolulene and several members of a family of chemicals known as chloroethylenes. A dry-cleaning solvent known as perchlorethylene was, by far, the most prevalent of that family of chemicals.

Corrections were made, but many in the neighborhood believe they weren’t enough. Special drain systems and a filtration plant were built. UniFirst removed tons of contaminated soil from the site for proper disposal at a hazardous waste disposal plant in New York.

But the problem persists, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation last year moved to declare groundwater under 58 properties, including the town’s elementary school, Class 4, undrinkable groundwater. The line was later redrawn after residents complained and now encompasses 23 properties.

Residents have been questioning that decision and the state has yet to make it final. Some in Williamstown complain that the state hasn’t done enough testing to be sure where the boundaries of the contaminated area are. That would raise the possibility that some properties that aren’t contaminated are being unfairly devalued, and that others where pollution exists aren’t being included, critics of the reclassification say.

“UniFirst must be required to do comprehensive testing and additional cleanup,” said Alyssa Schuren of Toxics Action. She said the state needs to push the company harder on that front.

UniFirst spokesman Brian Keegan did not immediately return a message left for him at the firm’s headquarters in Wilmington, Mass.

Schuren said her group is continuing to talk with state officials about the issue. “We want comprehensive testing and remediation before reclassification and that’s what the conversations are about,” she said.

Rodney Pingree, water resource section chief at the Department of Environmental Conservation, said the company had been cooperating with state officials. “UniFirst has been responding very well to what we’re asking them to do to clean it up and (the level of) contamination has been going down over most of the site,” he said.

Martha Aldous, whose 93-year-old mother, Violet Jeffords, lives a bit down the hill from Duke, said she and some others are growing concerned about air quality tests showing possibly worsening air quality.

Tests in the home’s basement showed 1.5 parts per billion of trichloroethylene in the air in July of 2003; that figure had risen to 2 parts per billion a year later, a chart of test results showed.

State officials said Monday the reclassification has been delayed while they draft a response statement to numerous public comments they have received from Williamstown residents and others who have been watching the issue.

“We’re doing a lot of testing at the site as it is,” said George Desch, hazardous sites manager for the department. He said the state had expanded early tests in keeping with a court order agreed to by the state, the town and UniFirst in 1997.

“We have expanded the scope,” Desch said. “Are we anticipating going beyond the scope covered under the (current) management plan? Right now we’re not.”

Pingree said he feared residents would not be satisfied until the state tested “every square inch” of the dozens of acres affected. He said the department had done sufficient sampling, likening the work to a public opinion poll that doesn’t put questions to everyone but has a statistically reliable sample.

“I would think there comes a point where … based on scientific principles, you reach enough testing,” Pingree said.

AP-ES-11-28-05 1553EST