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Politics & Government

Superfund Site Cleanup Been Taking 'Far Too Long'

Preliminary indications show flood waters from Hurricane Irene did not cause leakage of hazardous chemicals.

Most township residents would not be able to recognize what East Main Street in Bridgewater near the Bound Brook border was like 40 years ago.

and had not even been started and the was still more than two decades from being built.

Instead, more than 3,000 employees came to work in three shifts at the 435-acre American Cyanamid plant, where 800 different chemicals had been manufactured since 1915. South of Main Street and the Central Jersey railroad, and north of the Raritan River, were the factory buildings—on the hill where the Bridgewater Promenade is today were the offices and labs.

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The parking lot for the factory was where the ballpark is. Along with Johns-Manville, American Cyanamid was one of the largest employers in Somerset County.

But 40 years ago this month, not much work was being done at the plant. Workers were still cleaning up the plant after floodwaters from Tropical Storm Doria had inundated the facility.

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Ironically, 40 years later to the day, Hurricane Irene flooded the site again.

There are no more buildings or employees on the property that is now owned by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The corporation obtained the site in 2009 through its acquisition of Wyeth, whose predecessor company, American Home products, bought American Cyanamid in 1994.

And again the site is being cleaned up after a flood.

The American Cyanamid site, across the railroad tracks from the TD Bank Ballpark, was declared one of the nation’s first Superfund sites in 1982, a year after most of the operations at the plant ceased. For more than six decades, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, about 800,000 tons of chemical waste was dumped into lagoons and containment areas.

And the cleanup is continuing at a “glacial pace,” said Walt Sodie, a spokesman for CRISIS, a community group that has been monitoring the site for more than 20 years.

CRISIS was started in 1988 to oppose a plan to site a hazardous waste incinerator at the American Cyanamid site, with the ash being deposited in the quarry off Chimney Rock Road. When that proposal died, CRISIS shifted its oversight to overseeing the progress of the Superfund site.

At the end of August, Hurricane Irene drenched the site with about five feet of floodwater as the level of the Raritan River approached the record flooding of Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The river reached nearly 42 feet, more than four feet about the crest in Tropical Storm Doria.

According to Pfizer, which is working with the federal Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the property, sampling of the floodwaters both upstream and downstream of the site found no significant levels of hazardous chemicals, and the EPA has approved the controlled drainage of the water into Cuckhold’s Brook, a tributary of the Raritan River.

“We’re still waiting for more specific testing results,’’ Sodie said.

Though “it remains to be seen” if the flooding had any impact on the Superfund site, Sodie said any chemical leakage from the site would have been “diluted” by the rapid flow of the Raritan River.

According to the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service of the National Weather Service, the flow of the river reached almost 41,000 cubic feet of water per second during the height of the flood.

No public health hazards have ever been associated with the American Cyanamid site, Sodie said.

Pfizer working to prevent water from being contaminated

The flood came just over a month after Pfizer agreed to install a system for collecting and treating contaminated ground water from the Superfund site. According to the EPA, the system will be designed to prevent the round water from seeping into the Raritan River, Cuckhold’s Brook and Middle Brook.

In March, Pfizer, according to a corporate statement, discovered contaminated groundwater seeping into the Raritan River “through a natural phenomenon, commonly known as a seep, where groundwater reaches the ground surface.”

“This agreement requires the company to build a system that will protect the Raritan River and the people who enjoy it,” said EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck. “When this seepage problem was first identified, a system was installed on the Raritan River bank using activated carbon to mitigate the contamination as an emergency temporary solution. Now we are requiring this further step to prevent further contamination in the near term, while seeking a comprehensive cleanup for this site in the long-term.”

Pfizer also agreed to perform studies to determine the movement of the contaminated ground water to see if there are additional impacts to the rivers. Pfizer agreed to pay all EPA oversight costs.

“They’re doing as much as they can be doing now, “ Sodie said.

But the progress of completely remediating the site has been frustratingly slow, Sodie said.

In 2004, CRISIS “signed on” to an agreement between Wyeth and the EPA that outlined the remediation of the ground water contamination. The rest of the site had been cleaned up in 1998.

"But it’s been seven years down the road and we still don’t have a feasibility plan,” Sodie said.

In a statement, Pfizer said construction on the system is anticipated to begin by November.

CRISIS keeping track of the progress

But Sodie said CRISIS is still waiting.

This new system will replace the activated carbon bags that were installed in March 2011 as a short-term immediate step when Pfizer discovered impacted groundwater seeping into the Raritan River through a natural phenomenon.

That groundwater, Sodie said, contained benzene, a solvent that is a carcinogen.

Sodie said he hopes that Pfizer will soon schedule a public hearing on its plans. The last public hearing on the cleanup was a dozen years ago, he said.

”This has been going on far too long,” he said. 

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