Toxic avengers: meet a group of teen reporters who exposed a toxic-waste dump in their town.

For years, residents of Wallkill, New York, had no idea that massive amounts of poisonous chemicals were buried in their "backyard." But the truth surfaced recently when their local cable channel aired a dramatic documentary revealing the troublesome contents of a local landfill (a waste-burial site), which closed down 21 years ago.

Who got this scoop? Not reporters from 60 Minutes. The video was made by a team of concerned teenagers at nearby Middletown High School.

"It's taken us years just to get the story out," says Middletown junior Alison Miller. But the students feel their research, reporting, filming, and editing are finally paying off.

Inspired by a journalism course called "Electronic English," the students have produced three videos raising doubts about the landfill's safety. Their work has driven government officials to pay more attention to threats against public health.

JUNIOR JOURNALISTS

The Wallkill site, the students discovered, is just one of 14,000 landfills across the United States. In 1965, when Wallkill opened, few laws governed how towns should build landfills and what kinds of waste they could bury there. Most landfills were simply holes in the ground where workers dumped garbage and coverage it with dirt.

That policy changed in 1976, when the U.S. government passed laws requiring that (poisonous, cancer-causing, or radio-active refuse) be in landfills built plastic or clay The liners are supposed to prevent wastes from leaking the dump sites.

But the students covered evidence that the Wallkill landfill contains massive amounts of toxic waste that may be leaking through a liner. Two students sneaked into the landfill at night to collect water samples from the landfill's orange-tinged pools to test for contamination. (At this writing, they were still awaiting results.) Other students are investigating claims that a local family discovered sludgy, orange ooze seeping into their basement, possibly from the landfill site.

Perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence, however, came from interviews with former Wallkill employees. "There are thousands of tons of toxic waste in there," says Dutch Smith, a retired Wallkill worker. "Anything you can name, from radioactive waste to hospital waste, is in that landfill. I know because I buried lots of it."

Water contaminated by hazardous wastes, called leachate, can seep into underground water supplies, says wildlife pathologist Ward Stone. The leachate could contaminate the town's drinking water and damage local ecosystems.

The students claim that until recently, the town made no effort to alert area residents about the landfill's possible hazards. Town supervisor Howard Mills now admits that the landfill contains thousands of barrels of hazardous waste. But, he says, the town is "cleaning up the landfill exactly as we should." For instance, he explains, the town plans to install a protective cap over the landfill to prevent the flow of leachate into underground water supplies (see diagram, below). But the students argue that the town should go a step farther and install pipes and pumps under the landfill to collect and remove the leachate.

In the meantime, the tireless Middletown reporters continue to monitor the story. They say that no matter what happens, their efforts will be worthwhile if other teens follow their example. "You need to be involved in the problems going on around you," says Alison Miller. You can't just close your eyes and make them go away."