Sixty-nine Dover Township, New Jersey families will share over $13 million in a settlement reached last month with two chemical companies and a public water provider. For years, Dover families claimed that environmental contamination caused by Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp., Union Carbide Corp. and United Water Toms River led to cancer in their children. The settlement figures were finally made public yesterday.

During the sixteen years that the companies operated, over ninety cases of cancer were reported in local children, twenty-three more than health officials would have expected from the 80,000-person township. Doctors reported above average numbers of leukemia, brain cancer and central nervous system cancers.