Published in the Asbury Park Press
By KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- A month after the Ciba-Geigy Corp. and two of its executives pleaded guilty to pollution charges in 1992, workers in white coveralls and masks dug test pits to sample what was in thousands of steel drums buried at the chemical plant.
Last night, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revealed its plans to unearth and remove an estimated 35,000 drums of chemical waste from an unlined landfill that was used from 1972 to 1977, when there were few legal restrictions on burying the waste.
More than half of the drums stacked underground hold material that still has traces of solvents used when Ciba-Geigy manufactured dyes, epoxies and resins, said Romona Pezzella, remedial project manager for the EPA's Region II office overseeing the Superfund cleanup here.
"We will be testing, but based on what we know from the test pits and (Ciba-Geigy) information, we believe these will be characterized as hazardous waste" -- probably about 60 percent of the drums, Pezzella said.
About 40 people came to hear the EPA presentation. Several neighbors called for emptying out the still-legal lined landfill on the property, which holds nearly 38,000 drums and remains under monitoring for any leaks.
"Why not clean this area totally?" asked Maryanne Borthwick of Manchester. "Why come back into this area years later if there's a problem?"
"Fifty years from now, it will cost 10 times as much," added Frank Kenny of Toms River.
But the lined landfill is not part of the Superfund project, Pezzella said. Like other chemical companies' landfills, it's permitted under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, said David Williams, Ciba-Geigy's on-site project manager.
Ciba-Geigy would not likely empty the landfill voluntarily because "it would open the door to rewriting the law," Williams said. "It would be never-ending."
But under the federal Superfund law, Ciba-Geigy is compelled to pay for the $92 million site cleanup under EPA jurisdiction. A pump-and-treat operation to cleanse chemicals out of ground water under the plant is under way.
A six-year project
Starting in autumn 2003, one truckload a day of drums could be rolling out of the old plant driveway, headed for hazardous-waste incinerators or modern waste landfills; except for one chemical recycler in Elizabeth, all the disposal sites being considered by the EPA are in other states or Canada.
Beside the stacked drums, about 16,000 cubic yards of soil will be excavated from the pits and subjected to biological treatment on the Ciba-Geigy property. After that slow, six-year process, the soil will be returned to fill in the site, Pezzella said.
Soil from two nearby sites will be treated as well -- about 13,000 cubic yards from a 1.5-acre site where iron oxide sludge from dye making was dumped from 1961 to 1977, and 45,000 cubic yards from two acres where Ciba-Geigy disposed of crushed drums and other debris between 1961 and 1972.
Using company records and samplings from the 1992 dig, EPA workers estimate the drums hold 2,585 tons of caked and solid wastes from dye production lines, and 3,120 tons of epoxies and resins residue, Pezzella said. Another 852 tons of assorted waste, such as laboratory samples and trash, are probably mixed in, she added.
The drum removal will take about 18 months to complete, she said.
But many questions from neighbors focused on the lined landfill. Part of that landfill was cleared out after state officials brought civil and criminal complaints against Ciba-Geigy, charging the company with violating its permit.
Ciba admitted violations
In February 1992 two Ciba executives pleaded guilty to pollution charges and were fined but not imprisoned. The managers admitted to illegally allowing the disposal of thousands of samples of dyestuffs and resins produced at the lined landfill from 1981 to 1984, in violation of the company's landfilling permits. Ciba-Geigy agreed to pay $13.8 million in criminal and civil fines and committed $50 million to a cleanup fund.
By the late 1980s, the company had transferred more than 1,000 jobs south to plants in Louisiana and Alabama. Its ocean outfall line that carried waste water to the sea off Ortley Beach -- and inspired protests by local environmental activists and the international group Greenpeace -- shut down in 1991.
"I'd remind everyone there are still almost 38,000 drums" in the lined landfill, said Bruce Anderson of the group Toxic Environment Affects Children's Health.
"It's not considered an uncontrolled situation because it has a liner, a leak detection system and monitoring in place," Pezzella said. "It's not that it's too much trouble to remove those drums. We don't have the authority under the Superfund law."
The company should voluntarily empty the lined landfill, especially when Dover Township officials talking about acquiring the Ciba-Geigy property for public open space, said Carol Benson of Dover.
"That cell is 1,200 feet from our elementary school," she said. "They should remove cell 1. No liner is going to last. The liner in my swimming pool isn't going to last."
Other neighbors asked who would pay to deal with a failure of that landfill, if Ciba-Geigy is not around as a corporate entity years from now.
In the new world of corporate combinations, Ciba-Geigy is now owned by the multinational pharmaceutical group Novartis, Williams said, "If Ciba goes broke, they're responsible."
Published in the Asbury Park Press 5/30/02
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