Gail Corvello and Jaeley, one of the youngsters at her daycare center at her North Tiverton home yesterday, where the backyard is covered with fake grass to protect the children from contaminants in the soil.

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The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

TIVERTON — On the eve of a federal trial, lawyers have reached a potential settlement of the most complicated and extensive soil contamination case in Rhode Island.

About 100 homeowners have sought remediation of a total of 50 acres of property in North Tiverton for the last 5½ years, ever since a sewer construction crew came across soil tinged a cobalt blue — a marker of cyanide.

Jury selection in the trial was to start yesterday.

But on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres heard from lawyers for the homeowner plaintiffs and the defendant, the Texas-based utility Southern Union, that they had reached a “potential settlement,” according to Torres’ clerk, Ryan Jackson.

He said Torres received the news in a “sealed hearing” and declined further comment, except to say that the trial has been taken off the judge’s calendar.

Robert McConnell, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, described the deal hammered out by the lawyers as a “conditional settlement.”

McConnell said he expected “that the condition will be met and the case will be resolved,” but he declined any additional comment.

Gail Corvello, the lead plaintiff in the case, said she and her husband, John, are “cautiously optimistic” that they will see an end to the seemingly endless ordeal which began in August 2002, with the discovery of the bright blue soil near their home on Bay Street.

Under the advice of their lawyers, the Corvellos also declined substantive comment on the potential settlement, with John Corvello warning that there “could still be a bump in the road.”

More than anyone, Gail Corvello has personified the travails of the Bay Street neighborhood in her role as president of a grass-roots group organized on behalf of residents affected by the contamination.

Unable to get a home-equity loan, she has drained her retirement plan to pay for a new roof on the family home.

Her home-based child-care business, once thriving, now struggles with low enrollment. Corvello has installed plastic turf in the back yard so that the children in her care do not walk on the grass. Everyone who enters the house must remove their shoes and wash their hands.

The chief spokeswoman for ENACT, the Environmental Neighborhood Awareness Committee of Tiverton, Corvello has insisted that its members would not accept any settlement short of full remediation of their properties.

And the state Department of Environmental Management has had the same goal, according to Director W. Michael Sullivan.

The DEM has said Southern Union is responsible under civil law for cleaning up the contamination, which resulted from wastes generated when coal was manufactured into gas during the first half of the 20th century.

Southern Union, the successor to the former Fall River Gas Co., has vigorously denied any responsibility, contesting its liability in exhaustive discovery proceedings on parallel tracks both in U.S. District Court and in an administrative appeal of a DEM clean-up order dating from January 2006.

Critical to the plaintiff’s case is eyewitness testimony that wastes from the manufacture of gas at the Fall River plant were dumped just over the city line in what would later become the Bay Street neighborhood of Tiverton.

The plaintiffs were also prepared to offer expert testimony that would address the cost of remediation and quantify the damages sought.

In addition to cyanide, the contaminants include lead, arsenic, naphthalene, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are known carcinogens, according to the DEM.

In a videotaped deposition, 88-year-old Jose Souza, a lifelong resident of North Tiverton, said he participated in a work crew that cleaned out the gas company ovens in Fall River and dumped the residue in North Tiverton during the late 1930s and for a brief time after World War II.

Southern Union’s cross-examination of Souza grew so contentious that opposing lawyers accused the company of trying to harass, confuse and humiliate the witness by asking him leading questions so that he would contradict himself and render his testimony meaningless.

At one point, arguments between lawyers for Southern Union and the DEM became so heated that Souza quipped, “Hope you guys didn’t bring any guns.”

Although the videotape in question was originally part of the administrative case before the DEM, a transcript of the proceedings was eventually incorporated in the file in U.S. District Court.

There have been three separate orders limiting Southern Union’s cross-examination of Souza:

•One by a DEM hearing officer who found the conduct of Southern Union’s Eric Herschmann “both unprofessional and discourteous.”

•Another by Superior Court Judge Alice Gibney, who denied Southern Union’s appeal of the DEM order, adding her own remarks that Herschmann made “gratuitous comments serving no purpose other than to disrupt and intimidate.”

•A third by U.S. District Magistrate Lincoln C. Almond.

Phone calls seeking comment from Southern Union and from DEM Director Sullivan were not returned yesterday.

DEM’s administrative case against Southern Union has crawled to a standstill in recent months as the federal court case has moved closer to trial, and the department’s chief legal counsel, Patty Alison Fairweather, recently resigned.

At the Bay Street neighborhood, both Gail Corvello and her daughter, Becky, 24, have auto-immune disorders affecting the connective tissue and must take steroids and painkillers.

Yesterday, it was business as usual at Corvello’s house, as she enjoyed an outdoor picnic lunch with two of her charges while her home phone rang off the hook.

She said she tries to put the legal developments in perspective.

“Tomorrow I go for a biopsy,” she said. “You never know what life will bring.”

gmacris@projo.com