Update on waste cleanup is urged

Tuesday, June 29, 2004
By JAN BARRY
STAFF WRITER


RINGWOOD - Community leaders think it's time for another face-to-face update from federal officials overseeing the planned cleanup of toxic waste still littering the former iron-mining area in upper Ringwood.

And so does Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to "immediately convene a public hearing on the latest test plan for cleaning up the continued contamination of the former Ringwood Mines/Landfill Superfund site."

But EPA officials disagree, saying the project is still in the planning stage.

"At this time, we feel it would be more appropriate that any public forums be held as the project proceeds along," Jim Haklar, an EPA spokesman, said Monday.

Joseph Gowers, the EPA project manager, said his agency is still working out a plan. It is also awaiting access agreements from residents, he said, so investigators can look for more buried waste like the clumps of lead-based paint sludge residents exhibited earlier this year. The clumps came from one home's lawn and adjacent lands owned by the borough and Ringwood State Park.

"We would prefer to have a meeting after we have some data or additional information to provide to the public," Gowers said.

Most of the 550 area residents are Ramapough Indians whose families have lived in the mountain area along the New York border and near the Wanaque Reservoir for generations.

Residents recall when Ford Motor Co. dumped lead-based paint sludge, solvents, and car parts from 1967 to 1974. Ford undertook an EPA-monitored cleanup, and the area was officially declared safe in 1994.

But residents continued to find sludge in their yards and on nearby borough-owned land, and Ford removed more waste in 1995 and 1997.

Residents raised a renewed outcry last year through a law firm that is pressing for a thorough cleanup and a study of residents' health concerns.

Many neighborhood residents died of cancer or now have it, according to information compiled on the tribe's behalf by the Philadelphia law firm of Sheller, Ludwig & Badey. Asthma also is rampant, as are skin ailments, residents report.

Mayor Wenke Taule said Monday that neighborhood residents are wary of past promises to clean up the toxic waste.

"They do not trust the EPA. They [the EPA] need to be shown why they should," Taule said. "We were hoping [EPA] would agree to a meeting if the senator would be there."

Agency administrators vowed last month to retest the 500-acre site for contaminants and direct Ford to remove all paint sludge that can be located.

The fact that the EPA is back in Ringwood a decade after the site was declared clean prompted Lautenberg to request a public hearing to discuss the issue.

"Ringwood residents have valid concerns and questions about whether their illnesses may be linked to long-term exposure to the toxics and heavy metals in local soil, surface and ground water," Lautenberg wrote to EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt last week.
Copyright © 2004 North Jersey Media Group Inc.