Ford asks to buy old dumping ground - NorthJersey.com

BY JAMES M. O'NEILL

Ford Motor Co. wants to take ownership of about five acres of Ringwood State Park as part of its continuing cleanup of toxic paint sludge and other waste it dumped in the area in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The proposal has drawn the ire of environmentalists, who worry that Ford wants to take over the property, known as the Peters Mine Pit area, so it doesn't have to be completely cleaned up. They have gathered more than 65,000 signatures on an Internet-based petition calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to make Ford remove all the toxic waste and dispose of it off-site.

A Ford subsidiary gave the Peters Mine property to the state in the 1970s. Ford's old dumping grounds have since been declared a Superfund site. The Peter's Mine property is a particular concern because of the possibility that the pit was packed with toxic waste.

In an Aug. 5 letter to the state, Ford said it "concurs with the NJDEP that transferring ownership of the Peters Mine Pit area would streamline" cleanup efforts.

But the state Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the state parks, said on Wednesday that it has no intention of handing over the property to Ford.

Transferring the property to Ford is "not something the DEP is considering," Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman, said.

In its online petition, the environmental group Edison Wetlands writes that "Ford may be trying to make backroom deals that would allow them to steal this historic area and gain ownership to use it as long-term disposal of their chemical poisons, never restoring it back for the public's use."

"If Ford is successful in obtaining the Peters Mine Pit property, they could try to use it for long-term disposal of toxic waste," said Robert Spiegel, executive director of the group.

"It would be a lot easier for them to say just leave the toxic waste in the ground because they own the property and could monitor it."

He said leaving the toxic paint sludge in the ground is unacceptable because it could affect groundwater that feeds a watershed serving 2.5 million North Jersey residents.

A Ford spokesman, Jon Holt, said that Ford would "absolutely not" use the land in question for toxic dumping.

"Ford is simply seeking to regain ownership of the small part of land near the Peters Mine that the company donated years ago to more effectively implement the remediation plan for the site and reduce the administrative burden on the Parks Department that would be associated with any ongoing maintenance of the property," Holt said in an e-mail.

Link to Mahwah plant

The paint sludge and other waste had been byproducts of Ford's former Mahwah automobile manufacturing facility. Ford subcontractors dumped the waste in the mountains and abandoned mines around Ringwood. The sludge contains high levels of arsenic, lead, benzene and other contaminants. Benzene levels remain elevated in water samples in the ground and in a mine airshaft, where readings are 30 times above safety standards.

Ford notes that Ringwood Realty Corp., a former Ford subsidiary, owned the Peters Mine Pit property, along with about 870 acres in the area, from about 1965 to 1973.

Ford documents from the early 1970s show that executives at the time were wary about what continued ownership of the property could mean to the company in the future.

"The area used as a dumpsite for numerous years is leaching into a public water supply and represents a contingent liability," reads a June 1972 memo authored by R.S. Lawson of the facilities department.

The contaminated land was later given to the state and the borough.

Five hundred acres in Ringwood, including parts of the state park as well as a residential area, are part of the Superfund site. Ford contractors have removed 47,000 tons of sludge and tainted soil the past six years five times more than was removed during cleanups dating back to the 1980s. The Superfund site is the only one in the country that the EPA delisted, then later relisted because it was not properly cleaned.

The EPA plans to discuss seven preliminary cleanup options for the Peters Mine Pit area during an community meeting on Tuesday. The options range from no action to placing soil or a more impermeable cap on the area to full excavation and removal of the toxic material.