By Chad Smith
Staff writer

Published: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 6:13 p.m.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A group of seven Gainesville residents on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against three companies responsible for the cleanup of a contaminated site near North Main Street, seeking $500 million to screen for diseases and decontaminate thousands of homes they believe have been impacted by the pollution.

The Cabot/Koppers Superfund site -- occupying 140 acres between Northwest 23rd and 39th avenues to the west of Main Street -- was for decades home to wood-treating and charcoal-production plants and has been on the government's contamination radar since the 1980s.

Investigators have since found contaminants such as arsenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and creosote compound there, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's profile of the site.

The lawsuit, filed in the federal courthouse in Gainesville, is seeking damages from two Pittsburgh-based companies that operated on the site in some capacity for decades -- Koppers Inc. and Beazer East Inc. -- and from Boston-based Cabot Corp.