The federal Environmental Protection Agency, now overseeing Ford's fifth cleanup, has been under fire over past incomplete cleanups and announced the re-listing on Tuesday.
In its ongoing efforts to correct matters, the EPA's own Office of Inspector General has invited the public to a hearing next week on how the agency has interacted with residents of the dump area.
Dump Returns To Superfund list
~ Jan Barry and Barbara Williams, The Record (NJ)
RINGWOOD -- Ford's former toxic dump is officially back on the list of the country's worst polluted spots, making national history as the only Superfund site ever relisted. The federal Environmental Protection Agency, now overseeing Ford's fifth cleanup, has been under fire over past incomplete cleanups and announced the re-listing on Tuesday. In its ongoing efforts to correct matters, the EPA's own Office of Inspector General has invited the public to a hearing next week on how the agency has interacted with residents of the dump area. Of specific interest is any public perception that EPA staff supervising cleanups were influenced by the fact that the majority of residents near the remote site in Upper Ringwood are minorities and members of the Ramapough Mountain Indian tribe. Meanwhile, New Jersey's senators and a congressman have told the federal government to get paint sludge, left from Ford's dumping four decades ago, out of parts of Ringwood State Park given to the state by Ford. In a letter this week, Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. asked EPA Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg to "remove the sludge and other toxics" found in recent tests of a flooded pit at the long-abandoned Peters Mine. The mine, at the end of Peters Mine Road, is next to a hiking trail in the state park and is adjacent to several homes.
FAST FACTS
* The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has relisted Ford's former dump site in Ringwood as a national Superfund site. * New Jersey's senators are calling for all of the toxic waste to be removed from Ringwood State Park. * In response to residents' complaints about the cleanup effort, the EPA's Office of Inspector General is holding public comment meetings Oct. 5 at the Ringwood Library, 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. "Leaving contamination from a Superfund site within a state park which is used by thousands of people is completely unacceptable," the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent Monday. They also pointed out local residents' concerns that raise "serious questions about how much additional sludge may be in various mine shafts around the area and how much of a risk it may present to the Wanaque Reservoir, a drinking water source for 2 million people." The reservoir is about a mile downstream of the dump area. Saying it is the EPA's duty to "determine the full extent of the contamination," the lawmakers stated "it would be unacceptable to walk away from the site, only to discover once again that massive amounts of sludge were still left behind." EPA spokesman Ben Barry said the agency is having Ford's contractors drill more holes to test the water in the Peters Mine, but no further soil investigation is scheduled. "The sludge we found there is not predominant material so we're not sure if it's impacting the water," Barry said. "But there is an ongoing investigation of the groundwater in the pit area." Ford spokesman Jon Holt also said the pit is being investigated and that "Ford intends to appropriately address all issues related to its historical disposal at the site." The sludge came from Ford's Mahwah assembly plant, which used the Ringwood site as a landfill in the 1960s and 1970s. Ford has had to return repeatedly in the past dozen years to remove contamination found by residents. The area was declared a Superfund site in 1983. Last year, The Record found in its Toxic Legacy special report that the EPA, which was supposed to supervise the cleanup, instead relied upon Ford's claims that it had thoroughly investigated the site and removed the most dangerous materials. Based on that claim, the EPA removed Upper Ringwood from the Superfund list in 1994. "While cleanup work has been progressing all along, now that this is an official Superfund site, the community can apply for grant funds to obtain technical assistance to help them better evaluate the ongoing work at the site," Steinberg said in a statement on Tuesday. Kevin Madonna, one of the lawyers representing the residents in a suit against Ford for personal injury and property damages, said relisting the site "really vindicates our clients' claims that the hazardous waste remaining in the community is a grave threat to human health and the environment." The relisting had been expected since April. A month later, the federal government recommended health tests of neighborhood residents to see if lead, arsenic and hazardous chemicals in Ford's waste contributed to illnesses in the community. The EPA is doing an investigation into why the site was declared clean in 1994. It is also looking at whether "racial, cultural or socioeconomic factors" contributed to the incomplete cleanup.
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Two Sites Added to Superfund List
~ Victoria Hurley-Schubert
NJBIZ Staff
A Gloucester County metal re-cycler and a dumping ground in Passaic County have been added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list. Matteo & Sons in Thorofare, an 80-acre property consisting of a metal-recycling operation, and Ringwood Mines/Landfill in Ringwood were added to the list, according to documents published on the EPA Website.
Contamination at the Thorofare site includes: “Approximately 224,000-square-feet pile of crushed battery casings, an approximately 260,000-square-feet inactive landfill in the north central portion of the site, and lead and PCB contaminated soil located throughout the property. The crushed battery casings have been deposited directly into the Hessian Run, as well as into wetlands along the Hessian Run, thereby altering the shoreline,” says the Website.
The Ringwood site consists of 500 acres that includes abandoned mine shafts and pits, inactive landfills and open waste dumps. “During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the site was used for various periods of time by the Borough of Ringwood, Ford and others (including illegal third-party dumpers) for the disposal of a large variety of waste materials including commercial and municipal wastes, abandoned cars, appliances, paint sludge and other miscellaneous waste and debris,” says the Website.
Ford cleaned the site in the late 1980s, removing 7,700 cubic yards of paint sludge and soil, according to the EPA. In 1990, Ford removed approximately 600 cubic yards of paint sludge as well as 54 intact and crushed drums; since then there have been other clean up activities at the site as well. Since December 2004, an additional 16,400 tons of paint sludge and soil have been removed from the site as part of the ongoing cleanup effort, says the EPA.
The Superfund program aids in the cleanup of uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. There are about 140 sites in New Jersey on the National Priorities List, which contains known releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants.
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