This article highlights three Superfund (hazardous waste) sites in NJ. One of the sites mentioned, the Lipari Superfund site, is where I currently work as a Safety Officer. In 1982, when it was listed on the National Priorities List (which racks the severity of these sites), it was ranked #1 WORST in NJ, and #3 WORST in the US.

Decades later, Superfund remains but does the sense of urgency?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
By Siobhan A. Counihan
scounihan@sjnewsco.com
http://www.nj.com/gloucester/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-3/121714894329...

Over a quarter century ago, it put Gloucester County on the map.

The Lipari Landfill was rated the most toxic Superfund site in the state, and ranked third in the nation.

The Mantua Township landfill is one of eight Superfund sites hidden in every corner of the county including the second-, eighth- and 10th-most-dangerous sites in the state, as rated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Many of these sites remain on the EPA's National Priority List (NPL) after being listed more than 25 years ago. To this day, there has never been a ribbon cutting in Gloucester County declaring any of these sites officially cleaned up and there may never be.

While cleanup continues, so do questions about the safety of living near these sites and about why it's taking so long to take them off the NPL.

In December 1980, the U.S. Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, otherwise known as the Superfund legislation, which established the means by which the nation would address its toxic sites.

Former Gov. James Florio authored the Superfund bill during his time as a congressman representing New Jersey's 1st Congressional District. The Superfund bill "provided the authority and the funding for cleaning up toxic waste dump sites all across the nation," said Florio in a recent interview.

"This established the law that said if you disposed of materials inappropriately, even though it wasn't illegal at the time, you still have the responsibility to go back and shoulder the burden to clean it up," Florio said. "If a chemical company got the benefit of cheap, inappropriate disposal systems, it should have equitable responsibility to clean it up."

The law came after a "great awakening" in the 1970s that toxic waste had been deposited at sites across the country, causing great harm to the environment as well as to people's health, he said.

"One of the things that we all discovered in the 1970s is that if you dig a hole, dump junk in it and cover it up, it doesn't go away," Florio said. "We were just starting to get an understanding of that."

A good example, Florio said, is the Love Canal disaster which touched off a firestorm of response when it was discovered in the late 1970s that 100 homes and a public school had been built on a former industrial dump on the banks of the Niagara Falls, N.Y., canal. Residents suffered miscarriages and leukemia, and children were born with alarming rates of birth defects and that was only the tip of the iceberg, Florio said.

"All of a sudden, people started discovering these places," Florio said. "New Jersey, having been in our past life the center of the chemical and petrochemical industry, had more of these sites than any other state in the union."

To this day, New Jersey remains the state with the most Superfund sites, according to the EPA.

"Nobody thought there would be as many sites as there are around the nation," Florio said. "New Jersey at one point had 110. The significance is that these Superfund sites are not just dirty sites. These are sites that meet the extensive criteria to be designated as an imminent hazard to people's health and the environment. These are serious sites."

"If you make the Superfund list, you've got a dangerous place," he added.

The 16-acre Lipari Landfill site, nestled behind a peach orchard in Mantua Township, includes an inactive landfill that, from 1958 to 1971, was filled with household waste along with liquid and semi-solid chemical waste. The chemicals that were deposited there seeped into the ground, contaminating the groundwater and, eventually, nearby Alcyon Lake in Pitman. It was one of the first sites in Gloucester County to attain its place on the National Priority List.

Michael Hannum, who was mayor of Pitman when the site was identified, said the lake had been closed to the public long before the landfill was named a Superfund site, but residents had no idea it was connected to a toxic dump site. Still, as Florio pointed out, the chemicals had essentially turned it into a "dead lake," killing much of the wildlife and aquatic life in or near it.

"The lake was closed long before I came into office," said Hannum, now a Harrison Township resident. "The origin of the pollution wasn't clearly defined. Everybody said, Oh Well it's just polluted, you can't use it anymore.' In part, they blamed it on the explosion of population around that area, which wasn't quite all of the facts."

Hannum said that residents were surprised to find out how toxic the Lipari Landfill had become. "Then, surprise turned into concern," he said, "and the level of concern elevated, where people started worrying about it, what it was doing to whoever got near the lake."

"A lot of kids fished down there," Hannum said. "For a while, we attempted to stop people from fishing, and that sort of thing went on."

Residents also started to suspect that illnesses could be connected to the pollution, and a survey was conducted to determine whether there were cancer clusters surrounding the site. The result of the survey, though, "wasn't definitive," Hannum said.

But, "you worry about it," Hannum said. "It's human nature."

Hannum credited Governor Florio for bringing attention to the site and making it Priority Number One.

"Florio recognized it as a toxic dump site, and the investigations started by him and through him to identify the biggest polluter of the lake," Hannum said. "We were fortunate enough to have the Lipari Landfill designated number one, so the worst one on the list got dealt with first. We were very lucky."

"It was an interesting time," he added, "working in government and actually getting something done, which is a miracle."

Residents who live near the site today said they're confident that the most harmful toxins have been removed and haven't affected their health or their families. In 1998, the federal Department of Justice reported that the state Department of Environmental Protection and federal EPA had recovered more than $120 million in cash and cleanup work then almost 90 percent of the $140 million total cleanup costs from responsible parties for capping the landfill, treating groundwater, and removing contaminated lake, marsh and creek soils, according to federal Department of Justice documents. A number of responsible parties were identified, the primary one being Owens-Illinois, a manufacturer of glass and, formerly, plastic containers.

"Since it's been cleaned up, I don't feel too worried about it," said Karen Albers, a 15-year resident of Howard Avenue in Pitman, which is in close proximity to the site.

Kerin Forsyth, another resident, has lived in Pitman on and off for roughly 17 years, always in the direct vicinity of the landfill. She also lives on Howard Avenue, right near the site. She said the uncertainty of when the site will be completely remediated, if ever, doesn't worry her.

"I have confidence in the activity to clean it up," Forsyth said. "The activity has been good, they've been trying to clean it up. I am assuming, or hoping, whatever was most deadly has already been removed. I'm not too concerned about it."

Still, Hannum said, he noticed that nobody swims in the lake, despite the fact that it was reopened in 1995.

"I don't know what the problem is," Hannum said. "How clean it is today I couldn't begin to tell you."

The Helen Kramer Landfill rated the second-worst Superfund site in the state and the sixth in the nation is also nestled away in Mantua Township, unidentifiable from nearby roads as the former dumping site for municipal, industrial and hospital wastes along with sewage, causing contamination of groundwater, landfill gas and surface water.

A former sand and gravel pit, it became a landfill sometime between 1963 and 1965 with wastes being dumped directly into the ground instead of into containers, according to EPA documents. It operated that way until a court-ordered closure in 1981, the same year that an underground fire at the site burned for two months.

The Kramer site was added to the National Priority List in 1983.

The EPA declared site construction complete in 1993, and $123 million has been spent on remedial construction costs. Groundwater treatment is ongoing and the responsible parties agreed on a 26-year long-term maintenance plan in 1998. However, Dolores Thompson, a 35-year-township resident who lives very close to the landfill, said she worries that the site's upkeep has been neglected.

"Like everything else, it's forgotten about," said Thompson. "I don't think any of them (Superfund sites) are taken care of the way they should be."

At the Shieldalloy Corp. site in Newfield, the site's radioactive slag pile Ð which is not part of the Superfund site Ð has dominated the news and public consciousness in recent months. While local, county and state officials have called for the complete removal of the slag pile, a decommissioning plan to keep it on the site is currently being reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

A decision in the case isn't expected for at least another year.

Newfield Mayor Joe Curcio said that while the slag pile has drawn attention away from chromium contamination at the site, cleanup continues and he believes it could potentially be a success story.

"The fact that it's in the groundwater and a health concern, obviously that's a reason to worry," Curcio said. "But maybe this will be one of our success stories. Maybe they do clean it up 100 percent in 20 years and we do see it as a success."

The Shieldalloy Metallurgical Corp. produced chromium alloy at the Newfield site at one point in time. It was designated a Superfund site due to massive groundwater contamination as a result of process wastewater that was released directly into an unlined lagoon. The contamination plume threatens areas where drinking water is drawn, according to EPA documents.

Since the site was listed in 1984, in excess of $30 million has been spent on remediation, according to Shieldalloy spokesman Pete McDonough. The company also recently awarded a $16.9 million contract to TRC, a remediation specialty company, to complete activities at the site.

"It's probably better now that TRC is taking ownership of cleaning it up, because it will expedite that cleanup," Curcio said. "So that's a real positive. Plus they've looked into other things that could spread the contamination plume. They've taken it to another level, they're really trying to clean it up as fast as possible. That's the feeling that I get. That's positive."

Looking back at his Superfund legacy and how far the cleanup has come, Florio said there have been some successes.

"The biggest success is that we've been helpful and successful in changing the ethic of the nation with regard to what is appropriate and inappropriate," Florio said. "Forget legal and illegal. Part of the national ethic and business ethic is that it is no longer acceptable to do bad things with your waste product. The vast majority of people in industry understand that."

Still, he said, the law hasn't been enforced to the fullest extent possible, so there's no way to know for sure whether it was a success or failure and that "there's more that we can do."

"We have not had a prolonged, vigorous commitment to enforcing the law since 1980 when the law went into effect," Florio said. "Over the last 20 years, it was very reluctant enforcement. You could make the argument that if we get an administration that is enthusiastic about enforcing this law, we will have a good opportunity to see if the law can really be enforced well."

"I'm optimistic that it's gonna get better, regardless of the outcome of the (presidential) election," Florio added. "There's a whole bunch of people in Washington who are good on these issues. The hope is, come next January, we'll have somebody at EPA and, more importantly, in the White House that believes in the mission of protecting the environment."

Staff writer Felicia Homan contributed to this report.
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