|
|
Ciba, EPA officials outline plans for cleanup of Superfund site
|
Published in the Asbury Park Press 6/23/00
By LYNN DUCEY
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- A handful of residents yesterday visited an informal question-and-answer session about the proposed $92 million plan to clean up the Ciba-Geigy Superfund site.
Maps, plans and outlines about the cleanup proposal and the 1,350-acre Ciba site covered the walls of a meeting room at the Quality Inn on Route 37 while representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Ciba explained what the documents meant.
Peter C. Hibbard, president of Ocean County Citizens for Clean Water, also attended to "provide a resident's point of view" to visitors about the proposal.
"We are listened to and there's no such thing as having too many people involved in this," Hibbard said.
"This was the option of choice for us," Hibbard said, referring to the plan to excavate and treat contaminated soil on the site using a process called bioremediation.
The informal session follows a June 15 public meeting discussing the cleanup proposal.
Area residents can attend a second public meeting on the proposal 7 p.m. July 12 at the Dover Township municipal building or can submit written comments to the EPA by Aug. 15.
"I'm interested in how the site is going to be developed in the future," said Clare Rutz, a Dover Township Planning Board member who raised the same issue at the June 15 meeting.
Rutz said she was worried about what would happen in the future, after cleanup crews have left the site. Previously, EPA officials said only a small portion of the acreage would contain restrictions regarding how the land could be developed years from now.
Rutz said she plans to submit a written comment asking officials to prohibit residential development along a narrow stretch of uncontaminated property adjacent to a polluted area.
"I was glad I came. I think it's important for residents to remain aware of what's going on," Rutz said.
The proposal recommended by the EPA calls for excavating about 145,000 cubic yards of soil from several areas and treating it inside a building on the property.
Existing microbes and bacteria within the soil would be stimulated by adding oxygen and mixing the soil to feed on the contaminants and speed up their decomposition, EPA officials have said.
The plan also calls for excavating an estimated 35,000 drums of material buried in a series of underground areas, opening them to reveal their contents, combining similar materials and removing the substances from the property.
The goal of the cleanup is to contain a plume of contaminated ground water that has migrated off Ciba's property, EPA officials have said.
A system now on the site extracts 2.8 million gallons of polluted water daily, cleans it to remove contaminants and discharges it back onto Ciba's property.
The soil and drum cleanup proposal is expected to reduce the time that the filtration system is in operation, cutting it down from 100 years to 30 years, officials have said.
The facility opened in 1952 as Toms River Chemical Co.; the company later was merged into Ciba-Geigy Corp., and the property now is owned by Ciba Specialty Chemical Co. The company, which at one time employed 1,400 people, made pigments, dyes, epoxies and other compounds before closing in 1996.
Asbury Park Press
Published: June 23, 2000
|
 BACK
||
CONTENTS
||
NEXT
|
|
|
