Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- Ron Freemyer admitted he was "just curious" about ongoing cleanup operations at the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. Superfund site.
So yesterday Freemyer, who lives in Berkeley's Holiday City adult community, joined more than 40 other people for a bus tour of the sprawling site off Oak Ridge Parkway.
The tour was led by Romona Pezzella, the federal Environmental Protection Agency's remedial project manager for the Ciba site. The property is now owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp.
"I've been reading about this forever," Freemyer said of the cleanup operation at Ciba, a former industrial dye- and resin-making company that operated on the Dover property for more than 40 years, until December 1996.
Lakewood resident Robert H. Salvesen said he had never been to the Ciba site before. Retired after working for years in the research department at Exxon in Linden, Salvesen said he has been involved in a lot of cleanup operations and wanted to see how things were being done at Ciba.
"I'm interested in this because I've done a lot of cleanup work," Salvesen said as the group watched a large machine, an Allu, turn soil piles on an asphalt pad outside the main soil treatment building.
Pezzella explained that the excavated soil is moved to the outdoor secondary treatment pad after primary treatment, which typically takes three to five weeks.
Contaminated soil on the site is being treated through a bioremediation process, which uses existing bacteria on the property to break down and consume contaminants. The excavated soil is mixed with wood chips, which helps the bioremediation process.
The soil mixture is then spread in rows in the primary treatment building, where it is sprayed with water to keep it moist. Air is forced through the rows. Air and water also help speed up the bioremediation process.
After primary treatment is done in the 1 1/2-acre main treatment building, the soil is moved to the outdoor pad, where it will remain for an additional two to three months. The Allu, essentially a giant Rototiller, regularly turns the soil piles to make sure they stay aerated.
Workers from Sevenson Environmental Services -- the Niagara Falls, N.Y.-based contractor hired by Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp. to do cleanup work on the site -- yesterday sprayed water on the soil piles while the Allu turned them.
Salvesen said Ciba is doing a good job cleaning up the site, but like many area residents, and Dover Township officials, he believes that all drummed waste should be removed from the property.
Nearly 35,000 drums have been removed from an unlined 5-acre landfill on the Ciba site, but current cleanup plans call for more than 30,000 drums of waste to remain on the property in a lined and monitored landfill.
Drum removal began in December and was expected to last nearly two years. But it has gone better than expected, and Pezzella has said she expects all drums to be removed from the excavation area by the end of the year.
The soil excavation work began in July.
The Township Council has called on the state Department of Environmental Protection to revoke a monitoring permit for that landfill, which contains both hazardous and non-hazardous waste materials.
Last year, the township sued Ciba in an attempt to force the company to remove all drums from the property, and Mayor Paul C. Brush said he has had fruitful discussions recently with state officials in an attempt to convince them to make sure all the drums are taken off the property.
Ciba officials initially estimated the cost of the site cleanup at about $92 million, but that was before an additional 7,000 drums were discovered in the drum disposal area. Removing those drums and cleaning up the surrounding soil will raise the cost by several million dollars, company officials have said.
Ciba has already spent more than $200 million to develop and implement a groundwater treatment system at the site. About 2 million gallons of polluted groundwater is pulled from the ground each day, treated to remove contaminants and discharged onto the northeast corner of the property.
Pezzella said the source-area cleanup is aimed at greatly reducing the number of pollutants entering the groundwater.
Jan Larson, who heads Dover's Environmental Commission, said she came on yesterday's site tour so she could learn more about the cleanup. Larson lives in the township's Oak Ridge neighborhood, which has been affected by the plume of groundwater contamination that migrates off the Ciba site.
"It was very well done," Larson said at the end of the tour. "It's an excellent opportunity for the public to learn and see first-hand what is going on so they don't have to rely on rumors."
Published in the Asbury Park Press 9/16/04
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