Water contamination news: USA

EPA Adds the Riverside Industrial Park in Newark, New Jersey to the Superfund List seven acre site along the Passaic River contaminated with PCBs and volatile organic compounds.

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Elias Rodriguez, (212) 637-3664, rodriguez.elias@epa.gov

(New York, N.Y. – May 21, 2013) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has added the Riverside Industrial Park in Newark, New Jersey to the Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. After a 2009 spill of oily material from the industrial park into the Passaic River, the EPA discovered that chemicals, including benzene, mercury, chromium and arsenic, were improperly stored at the site. The agency took emergency actions to prevent further release of these chemicals into the river. Further investigation showed that soil, ground water and tanks at the Riverside Industrial Park are contaminated with volatile organic compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Benzene, mercury, chromium and arsenic are all highly toxic and can cause serious damage to people’s health and the environment. Many volatile organic compounds are known to cause cancer in animals and can cause cancer in people. Polychlorinated biphenyls are chemicals that persist in the environment and can affect the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems and are potentially cancer-causing.

EPA proposed the site to the Superfund list in September 2012 and encouraged the public to comment during a 60-day public comment period. After considering public comments and receiving the support of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for listing the site, the EPA is putting it on the Superfund list.

“The EPA has kept people out of immediate danger from this contaminated industrial park and can now develop long-term plans to protect the community,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator. “By adding the site to the Superfund list, the EPA can do the extensive investigation needed to determine the best ways to clean up the contamination and protect public health.”

Since the early 1900s, the Riverside Industrial Park, at 29 Riverside Avenue in Newark, has been used by many businesses, including a paint manufacturer, a packaging company and a chemical warehouse. The site covers approximately seven acres and contains a variety of industrial buildings, some of which are vacant. In 2009, at the request of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the EPA responded to an oil spill on the Passaic River that was eventually traced to the Riverside Avenue site. The state and the city of Newark requested the EPA’s help in assessing the contamination at the site and performing emergency actions to identify and stop the source of the spill.

The EPA plugged discharge pipes from several buildings and two tanks that were identified as the source of the contamination. In its initial assessment of the site, the EPA also found ten abandoned 12,000 to 15,000 gallon underground storage tanks containing hazardous waste, approximately one hundred 3,000 to 10,000 gallon aboveground storage tanks, two tanks containing oily waste, as well as dozens of 55-gallon drums and smaller containers. These containers held a variety of hazardous industrial waste and solvents. Two underground tanks and most of the other containers were removed by the EPA in 2012.

The EPA periodically proposes sites to the Superfund list and, after responding to public comments, designates them as final Superfund sites. The Superfund final designation makes them eligible for funds to conduct long-term cleanups. The Superfund program operates on the principle that polluters should pay for the cleanups, rather than passing the costs to taxpayers. After sites are placed on the Superfund list of the most contaminated waste sites, the EPA searches for parties responsible for the contamination and holds them accountable for the costs of investigations and cleanups. The search for the parties responsible for the contamination at the Riverside Industrial Park site is ongoing.

EPA proposes to add Makah Reservation Warmhouse Beach dump to federal Superfund cleanup list.

Suzanne Skadowski, EPA Public Affairs, 206-553-6689, skadowski.suzanne@epa.gov

(May 21, 2013 – Seattle) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to add the Warmhouse Beach dump, on the Makah Reservation, in Neah Bay, Washington, to the Superfund National Priorities List. The proposed cleanup listing includes a public comment period from May 23 through July 23, 2013.

“Adding the Warmhouse Beach dump to EPA’s Superfund cleanup list will help protect the Makah Tribe’s treaty resources and the environment along the Strait of Juan de Fuca,” said Rick Albright, Director of EPA’s Region 10 Office of Environmental Cleanup in Seattle. “The Makah Tribe welcomes EPA’s efforts to assist in the Tribe’s longstanding effort to clean up the Warmhouse Beach dump, our highest environmental priority,” said Timothy J. Greene, Chairman of the Makah Tribal Council. “We look forward to working collaboratively with EPA to finally addressing the serious environmental and health risks that the dump poses to our treaty resources and culturally significant areas.”

The Warmhouse Beach dump was a 7-acre municipal and hazardous waste dump used in the 1970s-1980s by the Makah Air Force Station and by tribal and non-tribal members until the dump was closed in 2012. Contaminants found at the Warmhouse Beach dump and in nearby creeks include polyaromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, perchlorate, metals, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, and dioxins. Mussels at the beaches also contain elevated concentrations of lead. The Makah Tribe referred the Warmhouse Beach dump to EPA for Superfund cleanup based on concerns about harmful substances leaching from the dump to surface waters and the tribe’s traditionally significant shellfishing beaches.

Warmhouse Beach is an important natural and cultural resource for the Makah and they have used it as a traditional summer fishing camp and for subsistence harvest of sea urchins, mussels, and steamer clams. Warmhouse Beach is also used for camping, surfing, and other recreational activities. EPA’s Superfund program investigates and cleans up complex and uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites to protect people’s health and the environment, with the ultimate goal of returning them to communities for productive use. Information on the Warmhouse Beach dump: http://yosemite.epa.gov/R10/cleanup.nsf/sites/warmhouse

EPA Adds the Matlack, Inc. Site in Woolwich Township, New Jersey to the Superfund List.

(New York, N.Y. – May 21, 2013) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has added the Matlack, Inc. site in Woolwich Township, New Jersey to the Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. The site is a former truck terminal at which operations included truck maintenance and truck, trailer and tanker washing. As a result of past industrial activities, the soil and ground water are contaminated with volatile organic compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Many volatile organic compounds are known to cause cancer in animals and can cause cancer in people. PCBs are chemicals that persist in the environment and can affect the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems and are potentially cancer-causing. Contamination from this site is impacting the Grand Sprute Run stream and nearby wetlands that have been identified among New Jersey’s most significant natural areas.

EPA proposed to add the site to the Superfund list in September 2012 and encouraged the public to comment during a 60-day public comment period. After considering public comments and receiving the support of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to list the site, the EPA is putting it on the Superfund list.

“Placing the Matlack site on the Superfund list is an important step in protecting people’s health and allowing EPA to take action to clean up the site,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator. “By adding the site to the Superfund list, the EPA can do the extensive investigation needed to determine the best ways to address the contamination and protect public health.”

Located on Route 322 in Woolwich, New Jersey the site operated as a truck terminal from 1962 to 2001. Previous activities at the 70-acre facility included the cleanup of trucks and tankers used for transporting a variety of materials including flammable and corrosive liquids. The polluted cleaning solution was disposed of in an unlined lagoon behind the terminal building from 1962 until 1976 when Matlack Inc. began transporting the wastewater away from the site for disposal.

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Stockton: San Joaquin River -enforcing clean water a struggle – critics call for stricter oversight of state’s waterways.

The board in charge of enforcing the Clean Water Act has written hundreds of permits and issued more than $30 million in penalties since 1985.

But the goals of the law – under which virtually every stream in San Joaquin County is considered polluted – remain unrealized after four decades.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board regulates polluters up and down the Valley, from large city treatment plants such as Stockton’s, to smaller industrial facilities.

Violations are common. Eighty-four percent of the larger facilities reported at least one violation in 2010.

The water board issues far more warnings than fines.

“We have gone straight to penalties, but in general we tend to like to do the more progressive enforcement,” said Pamela Creedon, the board’s executive officer.

At least one critic calls for more aggressive oversight, looking at facts such as these:

» The board sent 210 notices of violation in 2010, while issuing 13 penalties;

» Fewer than half of the self-monitoring reports submitted by polluters were actually reviewed in 2010;

» The board inspected 76 percent of the major facilities but just 6 percent of the smaller “minor” facilities in 2010; and

» If penalties are issued, in some cases polluters can apply fines to environmental projects that help return them to compliance.

Bill Jennings, a Stockton environmentalist whose California Sportfishing Protection Alliance often clashes with the board, said this creates a “pay to pollute” system.

“The board enforces the Clean Water Act like the Highway Patrol enforces the speed laws between here and Sacramento,” Jennings said. “If you drive the speed limit you will be the slowest car on the highway.”

Staffing is a challenge, the water board’s Creedon said.

Lack of personnel makes it harder to renew permits in a timely manner – meaning some polluters continue to operate under older, less stringent rules.

Plans required under the Clean Water Act to remove rivers and streams from the list of polluted waterways have in some cases not been written or are not being aggressively implemented. And some rivers and streams have still not been tested to even determine the scope of the problem.

“We keep trying,” Creedon said. “In the age of budget cuts it’s difficult. We’ve been losing resources and staffing, but we’re doing a good job.”

The Environmental Protection Agency issued an action plan this year calling Clean Water Act programs “not adequate” for protecting the Delta.

But those programs alone won’t get the job done, said Karen Schwinn, associate director of EPA’s water division in San Francisco. She defended the regional board’s progress.

“Most of the flow of the San Joaquin River, about 90 percent, is taken off upstream, and the landscape of the Valley has been enormously changed,” Schwinn said. “Whether good or bad, it has impacted water quality. Those are things difficult, if not impossible, to get at with traditional Clean Water Act tools.”

A new concern

The Clean Water Act’s list of polluted waterways reflects only the roughly 200 chemicals regulated by the law. About 100,000 chemicals have been approved for use since 1980.

“These things are being synthesized at a pace where it’s really hard to keep up,” said James Cloern, an aquatic ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

These chemicals escape through treatment plants in minute concentrations – sometimes as small as 1 drop for every trillion drops of water.

They may not be lethal. But they may be harming species’ ability to reproduce, a long-term threat to their viability.

Susanne Brander, a former University of California, Davis, doctoral student, spent two years studying fish downstream from a wastewater treatment plant in the Suisun Marsh, west of the Delta.

She discovered the sex ratio for this population of fish, known as Mississippi silverside, had been “skewed male – significantly male.” Instead of about 50/50, the gender ratio was 70/30.

“We don’t necessarily know why,” Brander said.

A good suspect are pyrethroids, newer pesticides considered safer than their predecessors but are believed to alter reproductive systems. Pyrethroids have been detected in urban waterways in the Delta.

“You’d be surprised how many people dump extra pesticides down the drain to dispose of them,” Brander said.

Overall, water quality has improved the past 40 years, she said, but the effects of newer chemicals often aren’t known until they’re on the market.

“We’re always reacting,” she said.

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