Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Drum removal at the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. Superfund site in Dover Township is running well ahead of schedule, even though workers on the property have found more drums than expected in an unlined landfill there.
Romona Pezzella, the federal Environmental Protection Agency's remedial project manager for the Ciba site, said about 32,500 drums have been removed from the 5-acre drum disposal area on the property.
"We had estimated that there were about 35,000 drums there," Pezzella said. "We are going to be about 20 percent over." Pezzella said officials now believe there are 40,000 to 42,000 drums there.
Drum removal began on Dec. 9 and was initially expected to take up to two years. Pezzella said yesterday that she believes all drums will be excavated by the end of the year.
"We're ahead of schedule," she said. "The work is going well."
All the drums are opened, checked to determine their contents, then shipped off-site for disposal.
The off-site disposal location is chosen according to what is inside each drum -- primarily hazardous materials connected with the dye-making operations that went on until about 1977.
About 60 percent of the drum contents have been labeled hazardous, while about 40 percent are considered nonhazardous materials, Pezzella said.
The second phase of the site cleanup on the property began in July with the excavation of about 7,500 cubic yards of polluted soil. The soil will be treated using bioremediation, which involves using existing bacteria on the site to break down and consume contaminants.
Ciba and EPA officials have scheduled a tour of the site for 1 p.m. Sept. 15. Interested residents will be able to view the drum and soil excavation areas, as well as the main treatment building and secondary treatment area.
To register for the site tour, call (732) 914-2850, or send an e-mail to Pezzella at pezzella.romona@epamail.epa.gov or to Pat Seppi of EPA at seppi.pat@epamail.epa.gov on the Internet.
Pezzella said the first area of soil excavated came from the backfilled lagoon area on the Ciba site, which is now owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp.
Dave Williams, Ciba's on-site technical director, said the backfilled lagoon area was used to dry out material that had been removed from a wastewater treatment plant on the property.
Pezzella said soil excavated from the lagoon area is among the least contaminated that will be treated with bioremedation. It contains about 500 parts per million of pollutants, whereas soils located in the most polluted areas have contaminant rates in the thousands of parts per million.
"We wanted to start out with fairly low contamination levels to make sure the system is working properly," she said.
The excavated soil was removed to a 1 1/2-acre main treatment building, where it was mixed with straw and wood chips, then spread in rows. The straw and wood chips help promote the bioremediation process.
Water is sprayed on the piles to help keep them moist. A large machine called an Allu, which is basically a giant rototiller, turned the soil piles to make sure they stay aerated. Water and air also help speed up the bioremediation process.
After about three weeks, part of the first batch of excavated soil had been cleaned enough so that it could be returned to the site. The remaining soil was taken outside the main treatment building to a secondary treatment site that is located outside and adjacent to the main building, Pezzella said.
There the piles are also sprayed and aerated until pollutant levels in the soil are low enough that the soil can pass a "leaching test," Pezzella said. That test is given to determine that there are no longer enough contaminants in the soil to impact ground water that flows beneath the Ciba site.
Pezzella said that once the bioremediation process moves into full gear, with the most polluted soil being excavated, officials believe the dirt will have to remain in the primary treatment building for about five weeks, and then spend an additional two months outdoors on the secondary treatment pad.
The entire bioremediation process is expected to take four to six years to complete.
Ciba Specialty Chemicals is paying the entire cost of the site cleanup. Initially the clean-up cost for the pollution source areas at Ciba was estimated by company officials at $92 million.
But Williams said yesterday the discovery of the additional drums, along with more contaminated soil around those drums, will raise that cost by several million dollars.
Ciba already has spent about $200 million to clean up its property off Route 37 west and Oak Ridge Parkway. The company, once Ocean County's largest employer, manufactured industrial dyes and resins for more than 40 years before all production ceased there in December 1996.
The source area cleanup is aimed at reducing the amount of pollutants from the site leaching into the ground water. A groundwater treatment system, which has been in place since 1996, pumps up about 2.6 million gallons of water a day, treats it to remove pollutants and then discharges it onto land on the northeast corner of the property.
The pump-and-treat system is expected to continue for several decades.
A pine bark and carbon mixture that is being used as an air filter in the main treatment building at Ciba is working well, Pezzella said. Ciba officials had said the biofiltration system would be successful if it removed 50 percent of contaminants from the air.
So far, testing indicates the biofilter is removing more than 80 percent of the pollutants, Pezzella said. The remaining contaminants are removed from the air by huge carbon filters, before the air is released to the atmosphere.
A meeting has been scheduled for 7 p.m., Sept. 14 to update progress at the Ciba site. The meeting will be held at the Quality Inn, Route 37 west.
More information on daily activities at the Ciba site, the site's history, and photographs, are available on the Internet at www.ciba-geigysite.org
Published in the Asbury Park Press 8/26/04
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