Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- Holding signs emblazoned with slogans such as "38,000 More Drums Need to be Removed," "Protect Our Children's Future" and "Remove Toxic Drums From Cell 1," Bruce Anderson and his family stood at the Oak Ridge Parkway entrance to the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. Superfund site Friday afternoon.
Anderson, his wife Melanie and sons, John, 20, and Michael, 23, are trying to draw attention to what they believe to be a little-known fact: that more than 30,000 drums will remain in a lined landfill on the Ciba site even after the Superfund cleanup is completed.
"We have to do it as long as it takes," Anderson said as a pick-up truck driver honked and waved his support, "to try to get these drums out."
Anderson, who is president of the group Toxic Environment Affects Children's Health (TEACH), is one of a group of residents determined to see all waste drums removed from the Ciba site. He has a personal reason to be concerned about the Ciba site: Michael is in remission after being diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia when he was 10 years old.
Anderson and his family also protested outside the Ciba site on the weekend of Sept. 11 and 12, when they were joined by West Dover resident Carol A. Benson. Benson has been leading a petition drive aimed at getting the state Department of Environmental Protection to demand that Ciba Specialty Chemicals, which now owns the property, remove all drums from the land.
Mayor Paul C. Brush and the Township Council also strongly support the removal of the drums. Under the current clean-up plan, more than 40,000 drums that were dumped in an unlined drum disposal pit on the site are to be removed and taken off-site for treatment of the contents and eventual disposal.
That work, overseen by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is proceeding faster than expected, and will likely be completed by the end of the year, EPA officials have said.
But more than 30,000 drums would still remain on the Ciba site in a lined landfill. The monitoring permit for that landfill is issued by the DEP, and last year, the township sued Ciba, claiming groundwater contamination from the company's former dye- and resin-making operations had reduced property values at neighboring, township-owned Winding River Park.
The lawsuit also sought to intervene in the ongoing clean-up operation at the site, in an effort to force Ciba to remove the drums from the lined landfill. That portion of the township's claim was dismissed earlier this year by Superior Court Judge Edward M. Oles.
The township's lawsuit argued that the DEP's own documents indicate the landfill's liner is leaking, and it notes that Ciba violated the terms of its initial permit for the landfill, which called for it to be filled with only nonhazardous waste.
DEP officials have said hazardous wastes were dumped in the landfill, but their own records show no evidence that the liner is leaking.
Brush said again Friday that while he can not publicly discuss conversations township officials have had with DEP officials, he remains "optimistic," that the drums will eventually be removed.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 9/26/04
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