Ford sludge is found in Ringwood mine pit
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Thursday, August 10, 2006
By BARBARA WILLIAMS
STAFF WRITER
Paint sludge from a long-closed Ford Motor Co. plant has been found 65 feet below ground in a Ringwood mine pit, but government and company officials are downplaying its effect on Wanaque Reservoir, which is a half-mile away.
Michael Barnes, assistant director of the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, which oversees the Wanaque and Monksville reservoirs, said he learned only this week about the sludge. But he said the commission had already been doing additional testing and had found no contamination.
"When all these concerns came up about the site, we went to monthly testing instead of quarterly," Barnes said. "We test for a number of things including metals, volatile chemicals and sometimes PCBs and nothing has entered our property."
Environmentalists and residents, however, questioned how the area's water could be unaffected.
"We know from tests done 10 years ago that there's contamination in the groundwater on the site," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey. "We don't know how far it's traveling -- it may be in the springs, in the fish people are catching."
Barnes said "multiple stagnant pools" between the dump and the reservoir would trap any contaminated sediment. Sally's Pond, in particular, is a large, tranquil body of water that would be an ample host for just such sediment. The water commission tests it on a regular basis, and Barnes said no contaminants have been detected there.
"This isn't an immediate concern because we haven't found increased contamination in our test results," said Ben Barry, a spokesman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. "We're not removing it now since it's below the ground. We're concentrating on the areas where there is exposure on the surface."
The sludge was mixed with cardboard, wood and general refuse.
"We expected to find it, and it was just chunks, not huge deposits of it," Ford spokesman Jon Holt said Tuesday.
The 100-foot-deep pit was the entrance to the Peters Mine, and stretches diagonally from the surface to the opening of a 2,000-foot-deep shaft. Rail cars traveled the pit to bring iron ore to the surface.
Neighbors have said that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, dump trucks backed up and let lava-like sludge pour into the huge cavity. A bulldozer once toppled in and was never recovered, they said.
Officials have not determined whether a deeper investigation, into the mine shaft itself -- which is deep enough to hold the Statue of Liberty -- is necessary.
Ford has always said the shaft was sealed before it started dumping. EPA concurs.
"We haven't determined if we will investigate the shaft; it might not be necessary," said Barry, the EPA spokesman. "We're waiting to see more test results."
Jack Walker, who lives today in the same house next to the site that he did when he watched the dump trucks come in every night, said he knows there's sludge in the mine shaft.
"That pit has been filled with water; how could they have capped that?" Walker asked. "It's never been sealed or capped."
An incomplete Superfund cleanup that ended in 1994 left sludge heaps scattered throughout 900 acres of the wooded hills in Upper Ringwood. Ford's contractors have carted away more than 17,000 tons in a renewed cleanup begun in 2004. The mine shaft pierces Hope Mountain, a short way from that surface cleanup site.
The lead-based sludge contains arsenic and toxic chemicals linked to cancer and nerve damage. Some of the excavated surface sludge has had a rubbery consistency and has reeked of chemicals.
Neighbors, many of them Ramapough Mountain Indians, say the waste continues to cause serious illnesses and premature deaths in their community. No link has been officially established between the waste and their health problems.
Nevertheless, the sludge find in the pit prompted more testing for any contamination leaching into channels that feed the Wanaque Reservoir, about a half-mile away. The reservoir supplies water to 2 million North Jersey residents. That testing includes four new monitoring wells.
Samples will be taken in September from them and others near the pit, Holt said.
Despite the renewed attention to the site, residents mistrust the overseeing Environmental Protection Agency and Ford, and have asked that the state take a more active role in monitoring the cleanup.
Indeed, a state representative released the information about the pit's contamination Friday, when Governor Corzine visited the site.
EPA and Ford staff said the information would have been made public when all test results from Peters Mine were compiled in a report.
EPA staff said its tests also show the contamination is not leaving the general site. Cleaning the pit is not a priority, they said, and more testing will be done before any decisions on whether or how to remove the sludge.
Ken Petrone, case manager for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said a state technical crew would work this week with the EPA and Ford to determine whether the pit sludge should be removed.
Holt said that by law, Ford may not have to remove the sludge.
"Superfund doesn't mandate taking it [the waste] all away," he said. "If there's no exposure on the surface and no impact to the groundwater, it may be able to be capped."
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Reprinted with permission from North Jersey Media Group