N.J. Deals Faces Buried Toxin Problem
January 4 , 2007
In the mid-1980s, residents of Gloucester County, New Jersey found out that the wells from which they drew their drinking water were contaminated with manganese, mercury, benzene, lead, chloroform, and other dangerous chemicals that were leaking from a nearby sanitary landfill that had been abandoned for years.
Residents were outraged and demanded to know how 30 of their homes came to be built next to a toxic dump. They still don’t have an answer 20 years later, and the Franklin Township landfill that troubles nearby residents still has not been cleaned up.
“This is irresponsible,” said the director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Bill Wolfe. “These landfills don’t just take municipal garbage. They also accepted industrial wastes.”
The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) stopped monitoring groundwater under 180 old dumping sites about two decades ago, said Wolfe.
The DEP used to keep a list of toxic sites. It contained a listing for the Franklin Township landfill, and a recommendation that it be cleaned up in the most recent list, but that was in 1994. The cleanup was never performed.
The EPA steps in
When the Environmental Protection Agency learned that chemical maker, FMC Corp. had dumped 5,000 truckloads of pesticides and other waste there, it stepped in and began to monitor the site.
Within the next few years, inspectors found manganese, lead, cadmium, arsenic, benzene, and other highly hazardous substances in the groundwater.
But the EPA did not order a cleanup using federal money, nor did it require their findings be disclosed to people buying homes near the dump sites. Instead, they suggested the site be fenced off, cleaned up, and monitored by state authorities. None of this ever happened.
Local officials and residents say they were never told of the history.
Director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, Jeff Tittel said that the state’s unwillingness to take care of this kind of thing is creating many new problems. Housing developments are being built dangerously close to old dump sites in areas all over New Jersey, he said.
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