Sunday, September 25, 2005
By JAN BARRY
STAFF WRITER
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Ford Motor Co. have signed an agreement on a new round of addressing leftover paint sludge at the former Superfund site in Ringwood.
The EPA also ordered Ringwood to "participate with Ford in the investigation of the site."
In the agreement, Ford pledged to pay the EPA more than $226,000 for overseeing recent work in Ringwood that included removing buried sludge this year from Ringwood State Park. Ford also agreed to pay for work the EPA plans to handle to investigate 48 residential lots for buried sludge.
Albert Telsey, a borough attorney, said the EPA's order to Ringwood did not say exactly what the town is expected to do.
"It says be cooperative," Telsey said, adding that to him that means "we're making this guy [Ford] do the work and we're making you help them - which Ringwood has been doing and is not adverse to doing."
Mayor Wenke Taule said, "We've been willing to cooperate all along. We need to know what we need to do and what it's going to cost. We have no responsibility at all for removing the toxic material that was dumped there."
The borough has provided space for Ford's work trailer and excavation equipment.
Lawyers for the EPA, Ford and Ringwood have argued about who should pay for cleaning up toxic residue of wastes that were dumped in the former iron mining community in upper Ringwood in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Residents of the neighborhood - many of them Ramapough Mountain Indians - have complained of numerous illnesses and hired attorneys to press for health studies and a thorough clean up of toxic waste.
Ford removed tons of lead-based paint sludge in the late 1980s and the EPA took the site off the national Superfund list in 1994, declaring it safe.
But residents kept finding more sludge. Ford is removing piles of sludge for the fourth time in a decade.
"Ford is pleased that a settlement agreement has been reached with EPA," John Holt, a company spokesman, said Friday, "so that the company and its consultants have an approved comprehensive plan."
Holt said Ford has removed more than 3,500 tons of sludge and contaminated soil this year and is still surveying the site for toxic material.
EPA officials have been pressed in the past year by members of Congress and by state Environmental Commissioner Bradley Campbell to order a wider cleanup.
"EPA is committed to ensuring that the community is protected from the hazardous substances disposed of at the Ringwood Mines site," EPA Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg said Friday.
James Haklar, an agency spokesman, added that the "EPA has determined that further investigation of the contamination is necessary because additional wastes have been found at the site."
Haklar said Ringwood was ordered to cooperate in the investigation because the borough is "the owner of a large portion of the site." He said there was nothing specific that Ringwood was ordered to do.
A Ford subsidiary owned about 900 acres of land in Ringwood when waste from the auto company's Mahwah assembly plant was dumped in and around mine pits.
Ford donated a large tract to Ringwood in 1970.
It also donated other parcels to a non-profit housing corporation and to the state, which added its gift parcel to Ringwood State Park.
E-mail: barry@northjersey.com
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