EPA’s Last Minute Bait and Switch In Ringwood Superfund Site is a Blatant Abuse That Can Not Stand

The Ford scheme is so blatant an abuse and the EPA ROD so clearly deficient, I can only guess that Enck’s approval was dictated at a political level from Washington

[Update #2: 7/5/14 – The Record editorial nails it, read “Toxic Compromise” – end update]

[Update#1 below]

The Bergen Record reports today that EPA has “decided” to allow the Ford Motor Company to get away with a cynical scheme to avoid millions of dollars in cleanup costs and leave thousands of tons of toxic sludge in the ground, posing permanent risks instead of permanent remedies, see:

• EPA could allow Ringwood to build recycling center on top of contamination

In fact, EPA’s own Superfund program manager openly admits that Ford has proposed a scheme:

Opponents of the plan, including many members of the Ramapough Lenape Nation who live next to O’Connor, say the recycling center is nothing more than a way for Ford and the borough to get out of an expensive cleanup.

Even the EPA official who is allowing the capping plan agreed. “I have no doubt that’s the motivation,” said Walter Mugdan, an EPA official in charge of cleaning up Superfund sites in New Jersey and New York. “It’s certainly a very plausible view.” …

“I was unhappy to get this plan at the 11th hour and 59th minute, but it’s not my job or the U.S. government’s job to be in the business of local land use,” Mugdan said.

This seemed like such an outrageous abuse, on so many levels, that I decided to read what is called the EPA Superfund “Record of Decision” (ROD) for the Ringwood site, and look into EPA’s Superfund Guidance documents for ROD’s.

EPA is suggesting that they would agree – prospectively and conditionally –  to what is know, in ROD parlance, as a “Contingent Remedy”.

So, I read the ROD Guidance on what a “Contingent Remedy” requires.

EPA’s scheme in the Ringwood ROD does not come close to meeting EPA’s obligations under their own Guidance documents regarding “Contingent Remedies”.

In just one example of the egregious abuse, EPA Guidance for “Contingent Remedies” requires that EPA provide “Documentation of Significant Changes” resulting from the Ford scheme (plus a side-by-side comparison with the preferred remedy). The ROD not only failed to do that, the ROD states this whopper (on page 72):

How could the Ford scheme not constitute a “significant change?

I have not worked on the Ringwood site. So, without doing a thorough analysis and going into all the details,  in an effort to derail this nonsense, I fired off this letter to EPA Region 2 Administrator, Judith Enck.

Enck, who obviously knows better, should never have signed off on this ROD.

The Ford scheme is so blatant an abuse and the EPA ROD so clearly deficient, I can only guess that Enck’s approval was dictated at a political level from Washington.

There needs to be strong public denunciation of this scheme and public pressure put on EPA and Ringwood officials to repudiate it.

Dear Regional Administrator Enck:

I am deeply disturbed by EPA’s “decision” to propose a prospective and conditional “Contingency Remedy” in Ringwood.

In briefly reviewing the ROD, I note this: (@ page 67)

“If [prospective] actions taken by the Borough allow for implementation of the contingency remedy, EPA will appropriately document the change from the selected remedy to the contingency remedy. EPA will select the contingency remedy,Alternative 4A, if the following occurs: [emphasis mine – conditions omitted]