Tag / Gowanus Canal

by Frank Maduri

Zero Hour: EPA Superfund Follow Up

The EPA Superfund program has come under fire recently from the new Trump Administration which has cast a shadow of doubt over the future activity from this vital program. The significant amount of sites still being actively contained and remediated by the Superfund program has caused concern within residents of those areas.

The concern comes from the potential budget cuts for the program that could come from the Trump Administration in the coming months. The Superfund provides focused attention on the most contaminated or hazardous areas from past industrial, chemical, or other types of pollution.

The program also has a National Priorities List (NPL) designation for these sites as well. The specifics on the list and the foundation of the program can be found in my earlier article series on the Superfund program.

The follow up to that series will focus on some sites that have made the news recently, particularly in my home state of New Jersey and the New York metro area. The State of New Jersey has the most Superfund sites of any other state in the country.

The main misconception with Superfund sites from certain factions of the federal, state, and local governments as well as some groups of the general public is that the program is not producing results. The rationale behind that misconception is largely because of the many years it can take for a site with that level of contamination to be remediated.

The other component involved is the sheer time it takes for the entire Superfund process to move through all of the necessary steps prior to remediation work even beginning to take place. This process and the various steps it takes through the public and community input stages can be found in my earlier article series on the Superfund program.

The reality is that the program is effective in maintaining, treating, and remediating very complex areas of environmental contamination. The multiple steps involved are necessary – and the process, while taking a significant time horizon to transition from start to finish, has been proven to work in rehabilitating sites of increased pollutant exposure.

The EPA is currently focusing their efforts on the NPL sites that have been progressively difficult to contain and clean in particularly contaminated industrial areas throughout our country.

Diamond In The Rough

A Superfund site that is recently in the mainstream news here in the Northeast, is the former Diamond Alkali site in Newark, New Jersey. The site is part of the Passaic River Superfund cleanup focus area as well. It is a particularly complicated site because of the types of chemicals used there, and the level of widespread contamination of those chemicals and industrial materials.

The site has housed production of chemicals since the 1940s, when according to the EPA studies, DDT was manufactured there on the premises. The Diamond Alkali Company made several products there in the 1950s and 1960s including the herbicide known as “Agent Orange”, which the process to manufacture creates a dangerous by-product known as dioxin.

The company eventually sold the land, and the EPA conducted site studies in the early 1980s which yielded elevated amounts of dioxin, PCBs, and other dangerous toxins. The plan for the site, as with any other Superfund designated location, included immediate, interim, and longer term countermeasures to contain and remediate the area.

The process took many years and several steps and is still ongoing. The most recent plan to fully remediate the Diamond Alkali site and the greater Lower Passaic River project is slated to take 10 years to complete. The project made headlines recently when the EPA and municipal government officials announced that the companies involved in the pollution of the Passaic River are going to foot the bill for the cleanup.

The Lower Passaic River site encompasses an area of eight miles and it will take, according to NJ.com and other sources, 1 year to negotiate and 10 years to conduct the actual cleanup and remediation work. The cost of the entire project is $1.4 billion (yes billion with a “b”) and any enthusiasm regarding the corporations allegedly involved picking up the tab should be tempered by the fact that none of them have signed up to do so at this time.

The plan calls for dredging and draining of sediment from the river. The sediment will then go through a process known as dewatering, then the sediment will be transported to a remote area for disposal by train. Finally, the entire stretch of the site identified as the Lower Passaic River site (the entire 8 miles) will be capped, which is the process I described in my initial article series, it involves the application of a sand and stone barricade of about two feet in depth to seal off the area.

The companies involved will be in negotiations with the EPA regarding the cleanup costs, and I am certain that the pressure of public opinion will also help benefit this project. It is a long term and large scale job, but the proper cleanup of that site requires that type of diligence.

Ring of Doubt: Ringwood Ford Site

The EPA does not always enjoy the benefit of positive public opinion. The situation in Ringwood, New Jersey is a case in point of that type of scenario. The EPA, the residents, and the municipal government are all at odds over the course of action needed in the Ford site along a river in Upper Ringwood.

The residents are upset because the EPA has seemingly changed course over the plan to recover the site from years of pollutants. The original plan was for the excavation and remediation of over 160,000 tons of polluted soil from the site.

Instead, the proposal from the EPA is now pushing for the town to put a recycling center on the site. The pollutants would be contained by a “cap” and would not be excavated. The recycling center would cost the township about $5 million and the remediation work will cost the town around $30 to $35 million depending on the estimates.

Ford used the site as a waste dump essentially for all the chemicals and other toxic products from their plant in nearby Mahwah.

The 500 acre site has been relisted numerous times on the Superfund NPL because of repeated attempts to remediate the widespread contamination of the site. This latest plan by the EPA to cap the site has resulted in upset groups of local residents that want Ford to be held responsible for the cleanup and for the site to be remediated in a more comprehensive way.

The general public sentiment is understandable, the feelings of distrust of the EPA can also be completely valid in this case. Ford is a multi-billion dollar corporate goliath that used that land to get rid of waste from their plant for decades, and now they want to shirk the cost of the cleanup.

The resolutions proposed by the EPA would both entail the taxpaying residents foot the bill for the recovery of the site. This is patently unfair, and this is a case study example of why the EPA has been under such intense scrutiny in recent weeks. The two resolutions they provide in this Ringwood Superfund site will not address or solve the underlying pollution there in an effective manner.

The EPA has to consider other remediation alternatives, determine a whole new course of action, and they need to get Ford involved in the cost of the cleanup process. The whole situation there is a literal and figurative mess.

The legal ramifications of the process are another area where this situation could be very troublesome for all parties involved. It definitely merits watching in the weeks and months ahead.

Down to Zero

The new proposed federal budget from The White House carries huge cuts to a variety of agencies including the EPA. This obviously casts a doubt on the future of the agency and the Superfund program.

The cuts, according to CBS News and other major news sources, to the EPA budget are around 30% and the Superfund projects currently open or active face a great deal of uncertainty. The budgetary constraints take on an added significance when you take into account the duration of time it requires to remediate many of these highly polluted sites.

The Gowanus Canal site in New York City was one of the projects I featured in my series of articles on the Superfund. This project was in the news again on Tuesday with the Attorney General of New York and other Congressional representatives who held a media event at the site urging Congress to reject the budget.

The Gowanus Canal site is one of the worst in the nation as far as pollutant levels and toxicity. They have commitments from several companies to cover about $500 million in cleanup costs, according to estimates from the site proposal. The budget cuts could defund the entire project, which is in the “design” phase with remediation work set to begin in 2018.

In the event that the program was defunded that would essentially waste four years of time that many entities committed to pursuing a solution for this environmental disaster. I understand that big government waste is a real issue, but it should not come at the cost of environmental safety.

Conversely, there are other programs that function well, that is the real cost of some of these cuts: the time, money, and resources already dedicated by countless groups of people. Those groups include volunteers, concerned citizens, local government officials, and numerous professionals from a variety of backgrounds. In this specific case of the Superfund, the cuts or the defunding of the budget create a scenario where there are tax dollars already utilized to evaluate the respective site and develop the cleanup procedure, so the cuts essentially compound the waste of resources.

The future of the EPA and the Superfund program hang in the balance as the budget proposal moves through the legislative mechanism in Congress. The future of our environment, the potential for neglect of catastrophic waste sites, and the very real possibility of untold amounts of chemicals causing illness to Americans is all at stake.

The Superfund program, for the most part, was an example of a government program which actually was effective. The program got the polluters to pay for the damage they caused, which is also a novel concept when applied to a big government run scenario.

The sad reality is that without the Superfund in place, these big corporations would never comply with paying for the damage they caused to the environment. In the event that anyone thinks that these corporate giants will comply in the future, without the enforcement of the Superfund, they are sorely mistaken. That type of negligence comes at a cost, a huge cost, to our American society.

by Frank Maduri

Superfund: Cleaning America – Part 4

The article series on the Superfund has provided a detailed view of the foundation of the program, the types of contamination commonly found on industrial sites, the enforcement methods used by the EPA against the parties responsible for the pollution, the involvement of the community, and spill response protocols. The previous section, Part 3, looked at New Jersey, the state with the highest number of Superfund sites and explored the state level program for environmental cleanup compared to the EPA program.

This installment of the series will examine the criticisms facing the Superfund program from the American public and business community. It will then focus on the Gowanus Canal site in Brooklyn, one of the most challenging sites the Superfund has ever faced.

 

 

Criticisms of Superfund

 

The critics of this government program for environmental cleanup of the worst and most heavily polluted sites in the country feel that the Superfund program is too costly and that it is overly bureaucratic.

 

These criticisms can be easy for someone outside of the system to make without the full knowledge of what the EPA and the Superfund set out to accomplish. On the surface, it can look like a very expensive program with too much “red tape” and regulations.

 

However, the reality is that the levels of pollution and toxicity are so rampant and have permeated so deeply into some of these sites, the approach to cleaning them properly is often unclear. In some cases, the polluted materials have sat there for several years, even decades, which creates conditions which are very complicated to remediate.

 

The argument could be made that the Superfund program is so expensive because of the negligence of the actions by the corporations or entities that operated on the respective sites.  The regulations involved in Superfund are necessary because these types of site cleanups are highly complex and that requires a multi-layered approach to insure the integrity of the process is maintained.

 

In the event that some of the regulations were relaxed in relation to the Superfund procedures, then the risk of an error in the process would bring a tremendous amount of scrutiny to the entire program. The money involved has the tendency to create an environment where they could have wasted resources involved in the process. The “red tape” creates safeguards to prevent funds from being spent incorrectly.

 

The types and methods for cleanup of these highly polluted sites characteristically are very time consuming in order to be done thoroughly. This long duration of time involved in the remediation of the respective site also creates a situation where the program is criticized, and sometimes harshly criticized.

 

America is defined by a society of instant gratification where results are expected in a very short time frame. The Superfund site remediation process requires several years of activity from start to finish. This lengthy process timeline can be criticized by members of the government, the media, and the general public.

 

In response to this criticism, the EPA has made a concerted effort to maximize the news of their successful remediation projects from the Superfund program. The news of this type of success can have very positive impact on the public opinion of the Superfund program. It is easy for most people and groups to get excited about the news of a clean and safe area which used to be polluted with toxic materials.

 

 

The Gowanus Canal Site

 

This site already has generated a great deal of news headlines over the years since it was added as a Superfund site in March 2010, but especially in the closing months of 2013 when the EPA announced their plans for the final stages of the remediation of this heavily polluted area.

 

In my view, the component of this particular site which is the most compelling is that it is located within such a densely populated area in Brooklyn. This setting made it very difficult to clean up, yet a pressing priority to do so, amidst some very complex circumstances.

 

Additionally, the canal site was further complicated by the sheer volume of the contamination there which took place over a period of over 150 years. The canal was most heavily trafficked from 1860 -1960 and residents complain of the smell emanating from the area in recent years (www.nytimes.com).

 

This site will be one of the biggest challenges for the EPA since their first site remediation project at Love Canal in upstate New York. It would require them to go back to the drawing board with multiple plans for the site cleanup based on community and state government feedback.

 

The Plan to Clean the Canal

 

The EPA plan for the remediation of the Gowanus Canal site was just recently finalized, and according to a variety of media sources and the EPA press release, the cleanup will take place over the course of 10 – 12 years and cost $506 million.

 

The plan calls for the removal of contaminated sediment, a cap on the dredged areas, and the disposal of most of the sediment will be done out of the area at another facility. The original plans called for the construction of a facility to handle the disposed waste on the shores of the canal in the Red Hook area, but through community input, that plan was scrapped.

 

The canal has very high levels of contamination from the industrial activity that took place there as well as from sewage discharge from overflows in the New York City sewer system. The EPA estimates that the Gowanus site might be one of the worst and most polluted waterways in the entire country.

 

The industrial contaminants involved include: PAH, PCBs, and coal tar. All of these substances are very hazardous on their own, but this site has each one of them present. PAH is a group of chemicals caused by the incomplete burning of coal, oil, gas, wood, and garbage (www.epa.gov). PCBs are a group of chemicals which were contained in coolants and lubricants used in transformers and other electrical equipment until their use was banned in 1979. Both of these chemical groups are cancer causing.

 

Coal tar is present as a result of the heavy burning of coal which took place in the factories and plants along the canal during the Industrial Revolution. The coal tar remained at high levels and is a very hazardous material particularly when it penetrates underground, as it has at the Gowanus Canal site. When coal tar is gasified it releases cancer causing vapors (www.epa.gov).

 

The EPA has segmented the canal into 3 portions for the cleanup process:

 

  1. Upper: includes the area from the top of the canal to the 3rd Street Bridge
  2. Middle: includes the area from the 3rd Street Bridge to Hamilton Ave Bridge (this section is the most highly contaminated part of the site)
  3. Lower: includes the Hamilton Ave Bridge to the mouth of the canal (this section is the least contaminated portion of the site)

 

The canal was once home to gas plants, tanneries, chemical plants, and dye manufacturing plants. The industrial pollution coupled with the rainwater runoff from the storm drains as well as the previously mentioned sewage overflows created horrible conditions in the canal.

 

The finalized remediation plan for the Gowanus site requires that the EPA will dredge from the upper and middle portions of the canal a total of 307,000 cubic yards of very highly contaminated sediment (www.epa.gov).

 

Then, the EPA will take the liquid coal tar that is still bubbling out of the sediment and mix it with cement. Then they will use multiple layers to clean and remediate the site. The “active” layer uses absorbent material designed to remove PAH contaminants.

 

The “isolation” layer is made up of gravel and sand which insulates the remaining pollutants from exposure. The “armor” layer consists of heavy gravel and stone to prevent erosion of the other layers caused by boats and the changing water currents.

 

Finally, a layer of clean sand will cover the “armor” layer and serve to restore the canal bed to a natural habitat.

 

The same process of layering will be repeated in the lower section where the EPA anticipates dredging 280,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment. In the lower section, the 1st Street turning basin will be remediated by the removal of contaminates and the restoration of 475 feet of the basin (www.epa.gov).

 

The 5th Street turning basin will be completely excavated and restored.

 

Any liquid coal tar found in the sediment will be removed and transported to a treatment facility out of the area. The EPA also wanted to insure that sewage control mechanisms were put in place as part of the final plan for the cleanup of the site.

 

Consequently, the EPA will be installing retention tanks at two outfalls in the upper segment of the canal in order to reduce the overflow of contaminated sewage. If these tanks were not installed then the sewage overflow would contaminate the canal again soon after the EPA finished their remediation work.

 

I mentioned earlier the search procedures that EPA and the Superfund conducts to identify the parties responsible for the pollution at a given site. That component was a point of contention in the Gowanus Canal site because the State of New York wanted to handle the remediation themselves and raise the money through city and state taxes. The state government argued that they could do the Gowanus cleanup faster than the EPA because they were not going to pursue any of the corporate or industrial entities potentially responsible for the pollution.

 

The EPA ended up gaining the responsibility for the site and they have identified some responsible parties including the State of New York, and the large energy supplier known as National Grid. National Grid purchased the land from other companies in three highly polluted lots along the canal several years ago and took no action to clean up the area (www.epa.gov). All three lots were the former location of three separate natural gas production facilities.

 

Several other responsible parties have been identified by the EPA and are being pursued for the funds needed to begin the dredging and cleanup, which some news sources are reporting will not begin until 2016.

 

In the end analysis, the Gowanus Canal site is a catastrophic area of pollution that had to be addressed and remediated in the correct way. In this era of recessionary economic activity, shrinking wages, chronically high unemployment levels, and a high cost of living in New York; the solution of using more taxes to fund the cleanup of the canal would not have been feasible.

 

The EPA through the Superfund designation offered the terribly polluted site the best chance to be cleaned and thoroughly remediated to restore the canal appropriately. It may take a longer amount of time for the EPA to complete the project, but it will be done in a highly effective manner by people who have the expertise needed to fix a site as badly contaminated as the Gowanus Canal is in its current state.

The next and final component of this article series will take a look at the feedback I have received before and during the process of writing this article series. It will conclude with a look at the future prospects of this important environmental protection program.