Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- The removal of thousands of drums from an unlined disposal area at the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. Superfund site has been completed more than six months ahead of schedule.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that 47,055 drums have been removed from the drum disposal area at the Ciba site, which is now owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp. The nearly 1,400-acre property, off Route 37 west and Oak Ridge Parkway, also includes more than 30,000 drums stacked in a lined landfill.
"This marks a major milestone in the ongoing cleanup of this site," said acting EPA Regional Administrator Kathleen C. Callahan. "By removing these drums, we have also removed a source of the contamination and have taken a big step toward completing the cleanup."
Drum removal began Dec. 9, 2003, and was expected to last at least 18 months, according to EPA and Ciba officials. It was completed in a year, even though workers from Sevenson Environmental Services discovered thousands more drums in the disposal pit than they had initially expected.
Sevenson is the Niagara Falls, N.Y.-based contractor hired by Ciba Specialty Chemicals to excavate the drums. EPA and Ciba officials had initially expected to find about 35,000 drums of chemical waste and nonhazardous materials in the pit, but more than 47,000 were discovered.
Ciba spokeswoman Donna Jakubowski said Tuesday that company officials are very pleased with the pace of the drum removal.
"I think it's a testament to the planning that went into it at the front end, there was a lot of design work and very careful planning that was done," she said.
Excavated drums have been opened, checked to determine their contents, then shipped off-site for disposal.
The off-site disposal location was 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, EPA officials have said.Now, empty lined landfill
Linda L. Gillick, who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said that while she is pleased the drums have been removed from the unlined area of the property, she remains adamant that more than 30,000 drums stacked in a lined landfill should also be removed from the Ciba site.
"As far as I'm concerned, all the drums are not removed," Gillick said Tuesday. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are tens of thousands of drums still in there."
Gillick, who is also executive director of Ocean of Love, a support group for families of children with cancer, said the township's long history of groundwater contamination and the discovery in the late 1990s of elevated levels of some childhood cancers here should force officials to remove the remaining drums.
"We shouldn't have to wait until there is a leak that affects the health of this community again," Gillick said. "You would think that after what happened here in Dover Township, lessons should have been learned by the government."
Mayor Paul C. Brush and the Township Council have repeatedly asked the state Department of Environmental Protection to force Ciba to remove the drums from the lined landfill. The DEP issues a monitoring permit for the landfill, which has not been operational in many years.
The township sued Ciba last year in an attempt to force removal of the drums from the site.
Brush has said recently that he has held fruitful meetings with DEP officials and believes there has been progress made toward removing the drums. Camelot Drive resident Carol A. Benson has collected hundreds of signatures on a petition asking that the drums be removed, and Benson has also joined another resident, Bruce Anderson,
in picketing outside the main gate to Ciba's property, off Oak Ridge Parkway, to demand the drum removal."I remain concerned that only half the toxic drums on the Ciba site are being removed," Anderson said Tuesday. "The EPA and DEP have failed to protect this community by allowing this waste to remain on site. When will the children and the community be protected?"
Phase 2 of the cleanup
The second phase of the site cleanup began in July with the excavation of thousands of yards of polluted soil. The soil will be treated using bioreme-diation, which involves using existing bacteria on the site to break down and consume con-taminants.
The excavated soil is removed to a 1 1/2-acre main treatment building, where it is 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, turns the soil piles to make sure they stay aerated. Water and air also help speed up the bioremediation process.
After about three weeks, soil is moved to a secondary treat-ment site located outside and adjacent to the main building.
There the piles are also sprayed and aerated until pol-lutant levels in the soil are low enough that the soil can pass a "leaching test." That test is giv-en to determine that there are no longer enough contaminants in the soil to impact ground water that flows beneath the Ciba site.
Ciba already has spent about $200 million to clean up its property. The company, once Ocean County's largest employ-er, 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 sys-tem, 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.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/15/04
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