Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- The federal Environmental Protection Agency could select a final cleanup remedy for the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. Superfund site by August or September, EPA officials said last night.
Of course, EPA representatives, most of whom have spent years dealing with contamination issues at the Ciba site, admit that it may be a bit optimistic to believe that a final decision can be made that soon.
"It is all dependent on the extent of the public comment period," said Romona Pezzella, the EPA's remedial project manager for the Ciba site.
The EPA must select a cleanup method or methods from seven alternatives proposed by Ciba officials to clean up about 21 potential pollution source areas on the site of the former dye-manufacturing plant, off Route 37.
The alternatives range from doing nothing and letting natural processes break down the chemicals -- a plan that Pezzella said the EPA is not seriously considering -- to excavating and trucking all the waste to treatment facilities and landfills off-site, at a cost of about $201 million.
By Feb. 18, EPA hopes to have received all written comments on the feasibility study released by Ciba in September, which listed the seven alternatives for cleaning up the site.
EPA has set a late April or early May deadline for preparing a final feasibility study, which will include the agency's cleanup plan for the site.
Several public meetings will then be held to discuss the EPA's proposal before the final plan is put in a record of decision that will govern future cleanup actions at Ciba.
One of the major goals of the cleanup proposal will be 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 was done to remove the sources of the pollution plume, it would take hundreds of years for natural processes to clean the groundwater, Pezzella said.
Any remedy selected by EPA will include placing a cap on soil in the filtercake disposal area to eliminate contact with the contaminated soil, Pezzella said.
About 150,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil on the Ciba site must be treated or removed to prevent the leaching of pollutants. There are also about 35,000 drums buried in Ciba's drum disposal area.
No matter what the cleanup remedy, the drums will be excavated, moved to a building, opened and sampled to determine their contents. Depending on the remedy the EPA chooses, drum contents could be heated to high temperatures to vaporize contaminants, or exposed to chemical-eating microbes that consume waste products.
A portion of the drummed waste will be trucked from the Ciba site for disposal elsewhere, Pezzella said.
Published: January 21, 2000
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