IBM, village residents reach settlement in pollution lawsuit involving underground toxic plume

A settlement has been reached in a $100 million lawsuit filed by businesses and residents of an upstate New York village where a toxic chemical from a former IBM plant polluted their neighborhoods.

Local media report that attorneys for the plaintiffs and Armonk, New York-based IBM announced earlier this week that the two sides had reached an out-of-court settlement in the lawsuit filed in January 2008 by property owners and residents in Endicott, just west of Binghamton.

Details of the settlement haven't been released.

The suit claimed that a subterranean plume of trichloroethylene from IBM's former microelectronics plant in Endicott had penetrated nearby homes and shops as a toxic vapor. The vapors were first detected in 2003.

Exposure to TCE, a metal cleaning solvent, has been linked to illnesses ranging from kidney cancer to brain damage.