Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Trucking tainted Ciba soil out or state could be a long process, environmental officials say.
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- It could take up to a dozen years to transport contaminated soil from the Ciba-Geigy Superfund site for treatment at an incinerator out of state, and return clean soil to the Route 37 site, the technical director of the Ciba cleanup said last night.
Once you start this scenario, you are giving up a large part of your control over your job," said David Williams, technical director at the Route 37 site owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals, formerly known as Ciba-Geigy. "You have to work with the incinerator."
Williams was speaking at the third in a series of meetings held by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to discuss cleanup technologies that could be used at the Ciba property, where 15 to 20 areas are believed to be the sources for a massive plume of ground water contamination.
"What guarantee do you have that these commercial incinerators will be in business in four or five years?" Bill Eckel, a consultant with Ocean County Citizens for Clean water, asked later in the meeting.
"None," said William Muszynski, deputy regional administrator for EPA's Region II. Muszynski said that is one of the factors EPA officials, as well as the community, will have to take into account when choosing cleanup methods for the Ciba site.
Williams and Romona Pezzella, EPA's remedial project manager for the Ciba site, said that commercial incinerators do not normally deal with a cleanup project of this magnitude. There are about 200,000 cubic yards -- the equivalent of 250,000 tons -- of material that would have to be removed from the Ciba site for treatment or disposal.
Pezzella said preliminary estimates by the EPA indicate about 100,000 cubic yards of that material could require incineration, which involves heating soil and other materials to temperatures as high as 1,500 to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to destroy contaminants.
Incinerators are efficient at destroying organic contaminants, but are not effective in treating metals. Both types of contaminants can be found on the Ciba property.
The remaining 100,000 cubic yards of material could be disposed of in a landfill off-site.
Pezzella and other EPA officials have indicated that four to five different remediation technologies are likely to be used at the Ciba site, with one to two technologies being the principal cleanup methods.
A draft feasibility study for the site cleanup is expected to be released by late August, Pezzella said.
The material to be incinerated would have to be transported, either by rail or truck, to a commercial incineration facility. The nearest such facility is about 500 miles away, in Ohio, while other commercial incinerators are located even farther away, in Missouri and Texas.
If the material was shipped in a large dump truck, capable of holding up to 17 cubic yards, it would take about 24,000 truckloads to remove the contaminated soil and bring back clean soil for fill at the Ciba site, Williams said.
Williams said it is difficult to estimate the exact amount of time it would take to transport the material because the timetable would be dictated by the amount of soil the incinerator could take during a given week. The contaminated material from Ciba would have to be blended with other material in order for the incinerator to operate properly.
Williams said incinerator operators gave Ciba officials wildly varying estimates of how many truckloads of contaminated material they could accommodate from 8 to 60 truckloads a week. Using the low figure of 8 truckloads, it could take up to 12 years to transport the material to an incinerator and bring the clean fill back.
But Williams said he believes four to five years is a better estimate of the amount of time required.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: June 18, 1999
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