Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- Thermal treatment may be the most technically feasible method for cleaning up contaminants at the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. site, but it also seems likely to raise the most opposition.
At an information forum yesterday that focused on the various cleanup options for the former dye manufacturing plant, several residents raised concerns about thermal desorption, which involves heating soils to 500 to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit to vaporize and remove contaminants.
Peter L. Hibbard, a member of Ocean County Citizens for Clean Water, said even if the community agreed to support thermal treatment, neighboring towns such as Berkeley or Manchester could object, delaying the process through years of litigation.
"The timetable is going to have to include litigation from other communities," Hibbard said.
He said he believes bio-remediation, which involves using microbes to break down pollutants, is the safest of the treatment methods under consideration, and could also prove to be the fastest if lawsuits tie up implementation of heat-treatment plan.
In a draft feasibility study released in early September, Ciba proposed seven alternatives for cleaning up about 21 potential sources of pollution on its site off Route 37.
The alternatives range from doing nothing, and letting natural processes break down the chemicals, to excavating contaminated soil and other material and trucking it to out-of-state incinerators, at a cost of about $201 million.
Romona Pezzella, the federal Environmental Protection Agency's remedial project manager for the Ciba site, said EPA officials have made no decision about which cleanup method will be used at the site. In response to several questions, Pezzella insisted the agency is not leaning toward thermal desorption over other technologies.
"The no-action alternative, or natural attenuation, those don't really do much," Pezzella said. "Those are out of it."
The EPA will evaluate the other alternatives using a series of nine criteria, including cost, feasibility, and community support.
Thermal desorption is very effective at removing organic contaminants from soils. Bio-remediation is not as effective and may not be able to be supplemented with another technology, EPA and Ciba officials have said.
Dover resident Walter Wojcicki also spoke against thermal desorption, saying if that method were selected, "I guarantee you the real estate (values) will drop 50 percent."
David Williams, technical director at the Ciba site, said thermal desorption has been used throughout the country without having a drastic effect on property values.
One of the major goals of the treatment process is to reduce and remove the sources of a massive plume of groundwater pollution that seeps off the Ciba property. A groundwater treatment system, in operation for more than two years, removes and treats about 2.7 million gallons of contaminated water daily.
If nothing is done to remove the sources of the pollution plume, it would take hundreds of years for natural processes to clean the groundwater, according to the feasibility study. Under a best-case scenario that includes treating the sources of contamination, the ground water could be cleaned in about 30 years.
Pezzella said EPA will schedule a January meeting to review all the cleanup alternatives.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: November 11, 1999
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