TOXIC SECRETS INVESTIGATIVE SERIES ON NORTHJERSEY.COM

The Record and NorthJersey.com has launched "Toxic Secrets," a four-part investigative series that reveals the secret history behind DuPont's toxic pollution in Pompton Lakes. Go to https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/watchdog/2018/02/14/dupont-p mpton-lakes-pollution/806921001/ to read this series.

A review of 40 years worth of government documents shows DuPont engaged in a pattern of delay and pushback when regulators prodded the company to investigate the extent of its pollution migrating under a Pompton Lakes neighborhood of 400 homes from the company's now-shuttered munitions plant.

Along with the document research, reporters spoke to more than 70 current and former residents, regulators and elected officials.

The series features a multi-part video documentary on the health struggles of residents and the push for better oversight of the site that still threatens the health of hundreds.

It also looks at the history of the sprawling factory complex in Pompton Lakes that made ammunition to help the U.S. win two world wars and other conflicts over the course of a century. In the process, the company generated thousands of good-paying jobs for generations of middle class families in Pompton Lakes, a leafy suburban town nestled in beautiful hill country where former heavyweight champion Joe Louis used to train and bought local kids ice cream cones.

But DuPont simultaneously created a poisonous inheritance that many of those same Pompton Lakes families say caused numerous cases of disease and cancer, backyards laced with contaminants, a lake with sediment so polluted that fishing has been banned, and a contaminated plume of groundwater beneath 400 homes.