Date: / 10/28/2007 11:34:02 AM Central Daylight Time
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Two Ford Paint Sludge sites have been cleaned up this year in Ramapo, monitored by the NYDEC and the Rockland County Heath Department (RCHD). One of these sites I found last year with help from Cathy Quinn of the RCHD and a Ramapo College class lead by Professor Chuck Stead. Our search was based on an phone interview I conducted with a witness found by the Bergen Record. Three other sites, all in Torne Valley, are being studied (site characterizations) and cleanup plans will soon presented and finalized. All these areas will be replanted with native vegetation, where necessary, and will then remain as protected open space along the Ramapo River and Torne Brook as part of the Town of Ramapo Open Space Program. This effort will also help preserve and protect the Primary Aquifer and the 14 public water supply wells located in Torne Valley and extending southward along the Ramapo River Valley through Suffern New York. The Toxic Legacy of Ford Paint Sludge in Rockland County, New York is coming to a much better resolution than has occurred in Bergen County, New Jersey. If anyone has information about other paint sludge sites please contact me at 712-5220 or .
Thanks,
Geoff Welch
Ramapo River Watershed Keeper
Sunday, October 28, 2007
By LAWRENCE AARON
RECORD COLUMNIST
THERE'S ABUNDANT local evidence that the Environmental Protection Administration has betrayed its mission.
We know that from the recent inspector general's report on the agency's botched cleanup of Ford's industrial dump site in Ringwood, indications of arsenic concentrations, allegations in the Ramapough Mountain Indians' suit against Ford, and health records of the residents who have been living the toxic nightmare.
The agency is also getting a reputation for poor performance at other locations on the National Priorities List, which contains the country's most contaminated industrial sites.
The EPA's lack of funds is one explanation, according to the former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Bradley Campbell. After serving as environmental commissioner in the state with the most Superfund sites in the country, he speaks with the voice of experience.
But insufficient money wasn't the only factor in the disastrously poor cleanup of the Ford site in the Ringwood Mines area, which was relisted as a Superfund site because severe problems remained after multiple attempts at decontamination.
Bob Siegel, executive director of the environmental watchdog group Edison Wetlands Association, said the fate of Ringwood and other Superfund projects depends on more than just beefing up the EPA's budget.
Siegel blamed the agency's problems on "not only the lack of funding but also the lack of political will, and that's coming from the very highest offices within the EPA."
The Superfund subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard Campbell's testimony this month while considering a "polluter pays" law to replace the one allowed to expire a decade ago. The law assessed a tax on petrochemical companies for cleaning up toxic sites. Cleanup money now comes from tax dollars, meaning the public, not the polluter, shoulders cleanup costs.
Underperforming
Ford funded the initial Ringwood cleanup attempts, but the EPA let the company get away with understating and underperforming its obligation.
The EPA's betrayal can be measured in tonnage. The 24,000 tons of contaminated debris removed in the past two years show how wrong the agency was in declaring the site decontaminated and delisting it in 1994.
Even though earlier reports noted the EPA's failure to keep the residents in the loop, no discussion with the community has taken place since the inspector general's report came out. Some things never change.
The EPA inspector general's recent report -- itself full of holes -- said contamination of Ford's toxic dump in Upper Ringwood was never thoroughly documented, and that the EPA took Ford's word without checking independently.
The EPA may be strapped for cash, but many of the obvious omissions shouldn't depend solely on the costs.
What costs are associated with environmental racism? Neither the EPA's Environmental Justice Team nor the inspector general has ever satisfactorily answered the allegations by residents' advocates that the lackadaisical cleanup resulted from the belief that Ford could get away with a less than thorough job in a "colored" neighborhood. Save your money, it's just the Ramapoughs.
Three members of New Jersey's congressional delegation continue to press the EPA's inspector general to answer questions about environmental racism. The agency has scoffed at that notion several times, a position the inspector general echoed.
Still on the case
New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-Monmouth, are still on the warpath over this issue, as is evident in a letter they sent Wednesday to the inspector general:
"We disagree with the methodology it [the Inspector General's Office] used in determining whether racial, cultural or socioeconomic status played a role in EPA's inability to properly remediate the Ringwood site," the letter says. "... Rather than searching for a motive for EPA's negligence, the IG should be looking at the results and the effects of the unacceptably poor cleanup on the Native American population."
The argument that the EPA doesn't have the money is not good enough to excuse the agency's dishonesty in leading the people of Ringwood to believe they were on the case. The EPA may be strapped for cash, but bureaucrats keep collecting their paychecks while the high cost of their negligence is being paid by the residents.
Lawrence Aaron is a Record columnist. Contact him at . Send comments about this column to .
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