The First Family Of Pollution

The business world has produced few dynasties as perverse as the Franks of New York City. Call them America's first family of water pollution. For 25 years, Frank-owned companies have defied environmental regulators. Time and again, the family's waste-hauling and processing companies were cited, enjoined, and even convicted--but they kept right on polluting. "If you ask me, the Franks are the worst polluters in the history of the United States," says Guy I. Molinari, borough president of Staten Island, a longtime Frank foe.

For years, matriarch Evelyn Berman Frank, 81, commanded the family's tugboats and barges by shortwave radio from her Staten Island home. She became known as "the Dragon Lady" for her belligerence and salty tongue, which could be heard by all who plied the New York waterways. Mrs. Frank, who inherited the marine transport empire her father built up in the 1920s, liked the nickname so much she named one of her tugs Dragon Lady. In time, she was followed into the business by her three children. Although better educated and more refined than their mom, Peter, now 52, Jane, 49, and Susan, 43, compiled a poor compliance record in their own right.