Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- Superfund workers at the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. site have begun excavating drums of hazardous waste from an unlined landfill, a significant step in the cleanup at the Route 37 property.
Employees of Sevenson Environmental Services removed 39 drums from the landfill Tuesday and took out 96 more yesterday, said Romona Pezzella, the federal Environmental Protection Agency's remedial project manager for the Ciba site.
Most of the drums have been "overpacked," or placed in larger, protective containers, and transported to a drum handling building about one-quarter-mile from the excavation site, Pezzella said.
"It's going really well," Pezzella said of the first two days of excavation.
She said the project is on schedule and bioremediation, the main cleanup method to be used at the property, will likely begin in the spring.
Bioremediation involves using bacteria occurring naturally at the site to break down and consume contaminants. Construction is to begin shortly on the massive bioremediation building, which will cover about an acre.
The drum removal is to take about two years to complete. About 35,000 drums of hazardous waste from Ciba's industrial dye- and resin-making operations will be removed from the landfill, opened to determine the contents, and then shipped for treatment and disposal.
"Probably nothing will go off-site this year," Pezzella said.
She said representatives of disposal companies are expected at the site today. They will be allowed to sample the drum contents before making proposals to remove the containers.
The next step in drum excavation will be opening and sampling the drums that have been dug up, Pezzella said. That work is to take place today in the drum handling building.
Drums containing material classified as hazardous will be stored in one section of the building, separated from non-hazardous waste.
Pezzella said the first two days of drum removal were designed mostly to allow the contractor's workers "to get their feet wet." More extensive excavation is to start after Jan. 1.
Air has been monitored throughout the excavation. A portable air monitor is operated at the spot where excavation is going on, and another is set up about 300 feet away.
There are also stationary monitors around the perimeter of the Ciba site.
Soil excavation is to begin by early January, weather permitting, according to officials from Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp., site owner.
Roughly 200,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil will be excavated, treated using bioremediation to remove pollutants, and returned to the site. The bioremediation is to take four to six years.
38,000 drums to remain
About 38,000 drums will remain on the Ciba site in a lined landfill. The Dover Township Committee has filed a lawsuit against Ciba in an attempt to intervene in the cleanup and force the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Protection to have those drums removed.
The cleanup of 10 major pollution source areas on the Ciba property is intended to drastically reduce the amount of contaminants leaching into the ground water beneath the land.
Since early 1996, a groundwater treatment system has pumped up about 2.7 million gallons of polluted water each day, treated it to remove contaminants, and then dumped it onto a "recharge area" in the northeast corner of the 1,350-acre Ciba site. The water then seeps back into the ground.
Before the treatment begins, the water contains levels of chlorobenzene, trichloropropane and trichloroethylene that reach hundreds of parts per billion. But by the time the water flows back into the sandy upper reaches of the Cohansey Aquifer, the contaminants are virtually undetectable.
The treatment appears to have contained an underground plume of contamination that flows southeast from Ciba's site into the Toms River. The pump-and-treat system has kept the plume from expanding, but until the source areas are removed, the groundwater plume cannot be reduced in size.
After the source areas are removed, it is expected to take several decades to get rid of the pollution plume.
Pezzella said EPA and Ciba officials are pleased that the initial work has gone so well. Sevenson Environmental Services, based in Niagara Falls, N.Y., is an experienced contractor that has worked on remediation projects throughout the New York and New Jersey area, Pezzella said, including the Love Canal site.
Ciba is paying the entire cost of the source area cleanup, estimated at $92 million. So far the company has paid about $200 million for remediation at the site.
The company's dye- and resin-making operations ceased in December 1996. Ciba once employed 1,400 people, and for years the company was the county's largest single employer.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/11/03
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