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Buckeye Pipeline, Linden NJ

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Of the golden future time. ~~~~ George Orwell

This is a metaphorical and yet literal story about pigs – we’ll let the reader discern metaphor from fact – noun from verb.

Pigs were the “state of the art” in garbage disposal in 1930. Few people understand that back then, many U. S. cities still saved their garbage for pig slopping – despite the well-known relationship between trichinosis and garbage-fed pigs. When driving past Secaucus, New Jersey, the recipient of New York City’s garbage, one had to roll up one’s car windows to avoid the ghastly smell of the pig farms as late as the 1940s.

I recently traveled to Tremley Point in Linden NJ to take some photographs to support the work of the coalition opposing the proposed $5 billion “PurGen” coal plant.

ISP (former GAF) toxic site, adjacent to Dupont toxic site of proposed PurGen coal plant, Linden NJ. What is in those piles?

Exxon Bayway Refinery, Linden, NJ

Needless to say, shortly after I got off Route 1 on the way out to Tremley Point,  despite the nice new ramps on the Turnpike at Exit 12, I realized that I was in the belly of some form of beast.

Linden Landfill

I got out of my car, to take some shots of the neighborhood.

Park surrounded by oil tank farm and refinery - is that an untarped toxic soil pile?

Good thing I didn't bring my dog. Do the oil companies cleanup their mess like a "pooper scooper" law?

Having a smoke on the porch or in the backyard could get you killed.

National oil and gas pipelines end in Linden

Of course, seeing that I was in a federal Homeland Security Zone, the local police swooped in to question me. This time, I was greeted by a professional and friendly cop. After I explained my mission, he explained the critical infrastructure we were virtually standing on. It turns out – after I asked about all the smoke coming from behind the Public Works yard where they park the garbage trucks (across from the park and swingset) – the policeman explained that Linden is the terminus of national oil and gas pipelines. He went on to mention the practice of “blowing out the pig“.

It sounded polluting and unsafe – and I wondered why they didn’t blow out the pig back in Texas or Ohio or wherever the oil and gas lines come here from.

According to the Wikipedia entry on “pigging“:

“… cleaning pigs push contaminants from the pipeline such as wax, foreign objects, hydrates, etc, which must be removed from the pipeline. There are inherent risks in opening the barrel to atmosphere and care must be taken to ensure that the barrel is depressured prior to opening. If the barrel is not completely depressured, the pig can be ejected from the barrel and operators have been severely injured when standing in front of an open pig door. When the product is sour, the barrel should be evacuated to a flare system where the sour gas is burnt. Operators should be wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus when working on sour systems.“

So, in addition to all the industrial pollution sources that make Linden an environmental justice community, we now learn that there are pigs in Linden.

And I thought that NJ had ended the gross, unhealthy and embarrassing practice of using pigs to manage waste:

“According to state estimates, New Jersey pigs consume 1,500 tons of garbage a week – about the same as a small trash-to-steam plant. Much of it comes from Philadelphia, which has contracted with about 20 pig farmers, who collect an estimated 30,000 tons of garbage a year.”

(see: “Pigging Out“, Philadelphia Inquirer)

just another pipeline in Linden

Ship of State - Linden, NJ along Arthur Kill

Marcellus shale formation, NY State's southern tier and Catskill Park- targeted for gas drilling

Twenty five (25) years ago, as a graduate student at Cornell, my master’s thesis topic was titled: “Local Land Use Controls to Protect Groundwater Resources“. I applied that topic in Big Flats, NY, a portion of NY State’s southern tier border with Pennsylvania. (full disclosure: thesis never completed or approved, due to events beyond my control)

One of my objectives was to develop a model local ordinance for towns located over sensitive river valley aquifers. The ordinance would help to prevent certain land uses and development practices from polluting groundwater and water supplies with toxic chemicals.

Today, those same portions of NY’s southern tier are part of the Marcellus shale formation targeted for gas drilling, using a controversial mining practice known as “fracking”.

Fracking injects highly toxic chemicals under the ground to fracture shale and liberate natural gas for extraction.

Gas and oil industry lobbyists have convinced a corrupt Bush EPA (read EPA Report here) and Congress to exempt this polluting practice from the Safe Drinking Water Act. NY State’s Legislature and Department of Environmental Conservation appears to support the practice as well.

Ah, Progress!

NYSDEC hearing officer faces standing room only crowd of over 300 passionate and well informed opponents of fracking gas drilling plan.

I attended the first of 4 public hearings on the NY DEC draft Environmental Impact Statement in upstate NY on October 28.

This all makes me too weary to write about it right now (I will soon, when I can recover, and explain how and why NJ has a big dog in this fight).

Interested readers can learn more here:

Serious Investigative journalism and coverage by Propublica

NYSDEC – Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program

NY Times Editorial – A Watershed Decision

NY Times editorial – Shale and Our Water

Sign petition to ban drilling here

Dupont's Chambers Works facility in Deepwater NJ has poisoned nearby groundwater and drinking water

Not surprisingly, Dupont is pressuring EPA scientist who are developing federal drinking water standards for PFOA.

Dupont specifically targets the work of NJ DEP in setting a low 0.04 ppb guidance value as it proceeds to develop a State drinking water standard (MCL).

Dupont also appears to threaten to renege on their commitment and meet their legal obligations to develop less toxic alternative chemical substitutes if EPA takes tough regulatory action against PFOA.

Due to a lack of disclosure of these kinds of political lobbying efforts by Dupont, the public and independent scientists have no effective way of knowing about or rebutting these behind the scenes interventions.

So, to promote transparency that is vital to science and public policy, here is Dupont’s intervention:

These numbers (and others we can discuss) are clearly intended to be protective of long-term exposure and are in line with EPA’s existing Provisional Health Advisory of O.4 ppb. In fact our review of these long-term protective values shows them to range from 0.3 to 2.0 ppb, with the exception of a Preliminary Guidance Level of 0.04 ppb from the State of New Jersey designed to inform monitoring of the state’s public water supply while a permanent MCL is being set.

We also want to work in a transparent manner with you and the various offices in the Agency with interests in PFOA and other perfluorinated compounds. We have worked diligently, for example, with OPPTS to develop and implement the 2010/15 PFOA Stewardship Program. That stewardship program has been extraordinarily successful, resulting in significant reductions of PFOA emissions and product content since it began in 2006.

The Program is also driving an important industry transition to replace PFOA or products that may contain PFOA, its potential precursors and higher homologues with shorter chain and other types of perfluorinated alternatives that are less biopersistent and lower in human and environmental toxicity. The Agency reports that over 100 alternative compounds are already being evaluated via the TSCA PMN/consent order process toward this end.

Our research and the data required by OPPTS under TSCA shows that the various types of perfluorinated compounds are very different in physical, toxicological and environmental properties. These pronounced differences make it necessary to consider these compounds individually when addressing the regulatory aspects of the transition and OPPTS has done an excellent job of recognizing those differences as it manages the transition. We believe this same differentiation is important when determining water standards as well. Efforts designed to manage PFC’s in water without rcgard to these differences and to the benefits of switching to shorter chain homologues and other alternatives could have unintended negative effects on a successful transition under the Stewardship Program.

We pledge to work diligently vvith you as you seek to follow up on OST’s development of a provisional health advisory. Through frequent communication and with a genuine desire on both sides to ensure the application of the best available science, we believe that we can help the Agency achieve its mission of protecting public health and the environment.

Sincerely,

David W. Boothe .
Dupont Fluoroproducts

CC               Edward Ohanian- US EPA, Office of Water
Joyce Donohue – US EPA, Office of Water