Friday, October 21, 2005
By JAN BARRY and BARBARA WILLIAMS
STAFF WRITERS
As two front-loaders scooped up tons of toxic paint sludge and soil, workers in white jumpsuits, respirators and hard hats sprayed white suppressant foam over the dark brown piles.
Still, an acrid chemical stench hung in the air.
Other workers held air monitoring devices recording the level of industrial solvents escaping into the air as Ford Motor Co. waste was dug up Thursday from a section of Ringwood State Park high in the reservoir country of Ringwood.
Work began this week to remove extra-toxic paint sludge containing high levels of solvents including toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene, which can cause headaches, dizziness and damage to vital organs. The sludge also contains cancer-causing PCBs, arsenic and lead.
Plastic orange fencing and warning signs surround the excavation area, which is slightly larger than an acre. In addition to the hand-held units, about a dozen air monitoring boxes are staked around the perimeter and another is on a pole near residents' homes about a block away.
"We're constantly checking the air monitoring devices," said Kevin Brozyna, a supervisor for Ford's contractor, Arcadis. "We have experienced people who have been trained for hazardous removal work from all over the country working here, and everyone is being extremely cautious."
Work on the site was stopped this summer by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, when the spongy sludge was discovered in a wooded area near several homes. The site is off Peters Mine Road on a section of land where Ford dumped car parts, paint sludge and solvents from 1967 to 1971. Ford subsequently donated or sold the contaminated ground to the state, borough and utility companies.
Before cleanup work could continue, a more stringent work safety plan had to be developed and a facility found that could accept the waste, said Joe Gowers, EPA's site manager. The sludge and contaminated soil being dug up this week is being trucked to Michigan for treatment, then sent to the Clean Harbors Inc. landfill in Sarnia, Ontario, for permanent disposal, he said.
"We needed to get the air monitoring in place, and tell the residents what was going on," Gowers said. "Sirens are there, and the police and residents know who to call in case there's a problem. If the sirens go off, work will stop immediately until workers find and fix the problem."
The wet sludge, as Gowers refers to it, apparently never dried out like the hardened lava-like sludge found at this site and several others across the 900-acre tract that Ford once owned in Upper Ringwood.
At a recent meeting with neighbors and borough officials, Gowers said the wet sludge was found buried 1 to 8 feet deep. Trees and thick underbrush were removed from this site after a ribbon of sludge was seen last spring under a seep of water flowing into a stream feeding the nearby Wanaque Reservoir.
Despite cleanup efforts since the 1980s, which the EPA says have removed 13,000 tons of waste, the former iron mining area still contains acres of paint sludge. It is clearly visible on residential properties and the public and utility lands. Residents in the area, particularly members of the state-recognized Ramapough Mountain Indian tribe, have long complained of high numbers of cancer cases, early deaths, asthma and skin rashes, which they attribute to the contamination. No link has been established between the toxic waste and the illnesses. But the state health department said men in the area have more incidences of lung and bladder cancers, and men and women have higher rates of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Arcadis recently completed a survey of the area showing sludge remains in 12 locations, not including the residential neighborhood.
Following The Record's "Toxic Legacy" series, which detailed the history of incomplete cleanups, the state Department of Environmental Protection is taking over investigation and cleanup of residential lots. Homeowners and the EPA, after 18 months of negotiations, could not agree on a cleanup plan. Based on past experiences of being told by the EPA that all the sludge was found and removed at landfill sites, residents are dubious.
The survey report to the EPA notes that Arcadis workers confirmed that paint sludge and drums are at three sites - Peters Mine, Cannon Mine and the O'Connor Disposal area - where a Ford hauler was known to have dumped waste from Ford's Mahwah plant. The survey workers also found sludge dumps in nine other spots scattered over more than a mile of mountain terrain just west of Ringwood Manor.
At a recent community meeting, resident Roger DeGroat said he was amazed at how much sludge was dug up and removed earlier this year from deeper in the woods.
"I was surprised at how much they dumped in the park," said DeGroat, 56, who grew up in the neighborhood. "They must have dumped at night while we slept."
DeGroat, whose home is within sight of the current cleanup area, said he would like every part of Ford's former tract closely looked at.
"Our hearts go out to those people hiking those trails" in Ringwood State Park, he said. "But we'd like the stuff that's been here more than 30-some years got out of our yards. We want it out ASAP."
Back at the work site on Thursday, Arcadis' supervisor was determined to get it all this time.
"After it appears visually that we've removed all of it, we'll take soil samples to be sure it's all gone," Brozyna said.
E-mail: barry@northjersey.com and williamsb@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2005 North Jersey Media Group Inc.