EPA seeks data on oversight of Ford dumping

EPA seeks data on oversight of Ford dumping
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
By JAN BARRY
STAFF WRITER

RINGWOOD - Is the borough to blame for old industrial waste still polluting upper Ringwood?

Federal environmental authorities want to know. They have ordered Ringwood to produce records of its oversight of dumping by Ford Motor Co. and others.

The recent order by the Environmental Protection Agency comes amid a probe into leftover lead-based paint sludge and other industrial toxins at a former Ford dump site the EPA certified as clean in 1994. Specifically, it targets old municipal landfills and what part borough officials played in accommodating the waste in an area that now drains into the Wanaque Reservoir.

In reaction, borough officials are hiring an environmental engineer to represent their interests and are seeking assistance from the state Department of Environmental Protection. And they question whether the EPA aims to shift responsibility for waste that a Ford contractor dumped three decades ago on company property that was then gifted to the borough.

"We basically want to make sure we are not held accountable for removal of materials we feel are not our responsibility," Borough Manager Ken Hetrick said Tuesday.

Borough Attorney Joseph Maraziti said he has sent copies of a number of files to the EPA and is searching through more records.

"We are going to fully cooperate with the EPA, as we expect Ford is as well, to make sure this analysis is fully done," he said.

In spring 2004, the leftover pollution was brought to light in stories by The Record. The stories also reported claims by the resident Ramapough Mountain Indian community of a plague of sometimes fatal diseases since the dumping took place. That prompted renewed intervention by the EPA and state agencies, and pressure by state and federal lawmakers to have the site totally cleaned and the community's health concerns addressed.

Ford wastes were dumped near the community and in mine pits over an area of more than 500 acres from 1967 into the 1970s. Pressed by borough officials backed by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., the EPA recently agreed to inspect all 48 residential properties for paint sludge, and ordered Ford to fully inspect its original 900-acre tract and remove hazardous material that came from its operations.

But EPA documents indicate that Ford contractors did not map dump sites, and the contents of Ringwood's own small landfills in the immediate area an unknown.

"The municipality is a potentially responsible party," Joe Gowers, EPA project manager for Ringwood, said of the request for municipal records dating to the 1960s.

The EPA sued Ford and Ringwood in 1991 as responsible for agency expenses in the original cleanup in 1987-90. Ringwood, which accepted a large part of Ford's dump area in 1970 as a gift of land, paid a $144,700 penalty.

The borough may be on the hook again, Gowers said, because documents provided by Ford indicate that municipal officials invited Ford to dump waste from its Mahwah assembly plant at municipal landfills operated in the 1970s.

"We received new information from Ford Motor Co. that led us to believe the borough may have had more involvement than was previously believed," Gowers said.

That information is based on a 1970 letter from then-Mayor John Kulik to Ford offering to accept waste from the Mahwah plant if Ford would sell its land to the borough to open as a landfill. Ford later donated the land and the borough opened its own landfills. It remains unknown if any Ford sludge went into those landfills.

Another reason for requesting borough files, Gowers said, is that "there might be some additional information in the municipality's records that might show where material was buried at the site."

Mayor Wenke Taule said she also has sought to inspect old municipal records, but mainly to understand why hazardous material still litters the upper Ringwood area, which includes a neighborhood of 48 homes, about 200 acres of borough-owned land and a section of Ringwood State Park.

"Our responsibility is to make sure [the cleanup work] keeps going forward in a positive manner and to look out for the welfare of the residents," Taule said.

As part of that effort, state Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell is to speak at a community meeting at 6.p.m. Monday in Borough Hall. Campbell has previously criticized the cleanup as inadequate.

Taule is still upset that she led an Earth Day hike last year on a trail through the upper Ringwood area and then later learned that buried paint sludge lined a section of the trail in the state park.

"What is the state doing? What's going on here?" she said.

Bob Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association, a non-profit group that conducted independent tests in the former Ford dump area and found elevated levels of hazardous substances in several sites, questioned Gowers' explanation of the new order to the borough.

"You might consider this to be standard if it was done 15 years ago," Spiegel said. "Why now? It looks like they are trying to intimidate the community."

Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. of Paterson and Frank Pallone of Long Branch have called on the EPA to put the Ringwood site back on the national Superfund priority list for cleanup. But EPA officials said they see no need to do so.

Kathleen Callahan, the acting regional EPA administrator, wrote to Pascrell last week that "EPA expects Ford will continue to fund future cleanup actions at the site."
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The problem, possible solutions

* What happened? Industrial waste from Ford's Mahwah plant was dumped from 1967 into the 1970s in a former iron mining area in upper Ringwood that a Ford subsidiary owned. Despite a series of federally ordered cleanups in the 1980s and 1990s, paint sludge, drums and other debris still litter a residential area and a section of Ringwood State Park. Soil and water tests in the past year found industrial toxins including lead, arsenic, benzene and PCBs.

* What now? Following health complaints by the resident Ramapough Mountain Indian community, the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Ford to inspect the 900-acre tract it previously owned and remove its industrial waste. The federal agency, which says no dump mappings were done by Ford contractors, also has ordered Ringwood to produce records of local involvement in landfills where Ford and others dumped debris. Meanwhile, state health officials have begun to probe the numerous cases of serious and sometimes fatal illnesses in the community. No link between the illnesses and pollution has been established.

* What's next? State environmental officials are to address these issues at a community meeting at Ringwood Borough Hall on Monday. Both Ford and the EPA, pressed by state and federal lawmakers, have pledged to ensure that the site will be cleared of all waste from the company. Advocates for the Ramapough community also continue to press for thorough testing of homesites for pollutants and for the addressing of the health concerns.


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