Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- At first glance, it's just a field covered by dry, brown grass. There's no way to tell that buried beneath the surface are about 35,000 waste-filled drums.
The drum disposal area, where drums are buried beneath 10 to 25 feet of soil, is one of several pollution source sites that the public will be able to view during two upcoming tours on the property of Ciba Specialty Chemicals, formerly known as Ciba-Geigy Corp.
The tours will take place Saturday and Wednesday, and will include a bus trip to several of the pollution source areas on the property.
Those interested in signing up for one of the tours are urged to contact Debbie Mills at Ciba, (732) 914-2552.
The Saturday tour is scheduled to last from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., while the Wednesday tour will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
"We want to give people a sense of what is here," said Donna M. Jakubowski, external affairs director for Ciba's Toms River site.
The tours are being held now, shortly after the federal Environmental Protection Agency began holding public hearings to begin to address how to clean up the 15 to 20 sites on the Ciba property that are believed to be potential sources for the massive plume of ground water contamination at the plant.
Dave Williams, leader of the Ciba technical group that has been studying various waste disposal options, said visitors to the site may be surprised by what they see.
"People have the impression that we have running liquids and pools of waste," Williams said. "We don't have that here."
Williams said is that most of the contamination at the Ciba property took place years ago, and chemical wastes that were placed in landfills or dumped on the ground long ago seeped into the sandy soil. Many of the contaminants made their way into the ground water.
"We have a pretty big plume out there," Williams said.
EPA officials recently said the drums will be removed. Most of the drums are in good shape, and many contain materials not considered hazardous, like brick and concrete, and filtercake used in the company's dye manufacturing operations.
Other areas of the site are more contaminanted, including equalization basins that were part of the original wastewater treatment plant at the site, a filtercake disposal area, and a standpipe burner area where liquid solvents were disposed.
For more than two years, a state-of-the-art groundwater treatment system has been in operation at the Ciba site to contain the plume. Visitors who take the tours will also get to view the groundwater treatment system, which removes and treats about 2.7 million gallons of contaminated water a day.
The water is extracted from the ground, treated to remove pollutants, and then pumped through miles of pipeline to a recharge area on the northeast corner of the Ciba property.
The next step is to eliminate the source areas that are producing the groundwater pollution. Ciba officials are expected to submit a draft feasibility study for the site cleanup to EPA by late May or early June.
Before the report is completed, additional public hearings will be held to discuss cleanup methods being considered for use on the site. A March meeting focused on thermal desorption, which uses heat to vaporize contaminants and remove them from the soil.
A second meeting, set for 7 p.m. April 29 in the Dover Township municipal building, will focus on biological cleanup methods. Biological methods use chemical-eating microbes to consume waste products.
Ciba officials recently completed a 18-month trial of a biological treatment system at the site. Williams said the system was successful, with the microbes removing about 50 to 75 percent of 50 to 75 percent of contaminants like chlorobenzene, dichlorobenzene and trichlorobenzene from water.
Williams said Ciba officials hope to begin another biological study soon, and are preparing a proposal for the EPA that would use a composing technology for materials that can not be easily excavated or removed from soil.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: April 15, 1999
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