BREAKING: EPA Withdraws Dupont’s Pompton Lakes Mercury Cleanup Permit

EPA Effectively Admits Legal Error 

Withdrawn Permit Moots Dupont’s Appeal

Unclear How Ecological Impacts and USFWS Concerns Will Be Addressed

The permit appeal process should not be used as hammer by Dupont to force EPA concession and it is not a permission slip for EPA to negotiate a cleanup plan Dupont will support behind closed doors. ~~~ Bill Wolfe, 8/30/13

Keep in mind that this withdrawal occurred after months of closed door negotiations with Dupont in response to Dupont’s legal appeal of the final permit last year. (see

• EPA Injects Further Delay In Dupont Mercury Cleanup of Pompton Lake

That chronology strongly suggests that EPA is folding and relaxing cleanup requirements, not merely correcting the minor procedural defect Dupont alleged. If the EPA intent was to remedy a procedural defect, they could have re-proposed the permit months ago.

From our friends at PEER:

Press Release 

For Immediate Release:  Thursday, May 1, 2014

Contact:  Bill Wolfe (609) 397-4861; Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337 

EPA Badly Fumbles Jersey Pompton Lakes Toxic Cleanup

Permit Withdrawal Throws Eco-Safeguards into Doubt While Adding Years of Delay 

Trenton — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is making one of the nation’s longest toxic removal operations even longer with the announcement that it is withdrawing its permit for the heavily contaminated Pompton Lakes area cleanup plan.  By going back to the drawing board, EPA raises serious doubts about both the scope and schedule for already 25-year old remediation of the former E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Company ammunition plant, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

After decades of ineffective state-overseen cleanup operations, EPA finally took over the cleanup operations last year.  EPA’s initial plan, however, was severely criticized by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for failing to address the fact that “significant levels of contamination will remain” from “mercury, which in certain forms is highly toxic and biomagnifies via the food web” flowing downstream from the old factory site.  In trying to rewrite its initial plan on the fly, EPA appears to have ensnarled itself in both substantive and procedural knots.  In yesterday’s press release, EPA stated:

“The EPA had previously finalized a plan, which was contained in a permit requiring cleanup of the Acid Brook delta along with certain other areas in the lake, but additional information including results of recent sampling in Pompton Lake have provided EPA the basis for revising that permit. The new permit requirements are currently being developed by EPA, with a goal of proposing a draft permit by the fall.”

“This is a major setback for the Pompton Lakes community as EPA’s stumble will prolong toxic removal work for at least two years,” stated New Jersey PEER Director Bill Wolfe who had pressed for the FWS review.  “Behind closed doors, EPA has been negotiating with DuPont to shrink both the size and thoroughness of the required cleanup which DuPont will have to pay for.”

Among the issues EPA will have to re-address are –

• The size of the cleanup which had grown from an initial 26 acres to embrace 40 acres;

• How downstream migration of chemicals will be handled; and

• What form of wildlife and ecological monitoring will occur to track ultra-high concentrations of mercury, lead, copper, selenium, zinc and other chemical in the food-chain and sediments,

“This raises questions far beyond Pompton Lakes about the public health safeguards for more than 3,000 similarly contaminated sites across the country for which EPA is responsible,” added Wolfe, noting that far more sites are covered by the less rigorous Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) than the better known Superfund program even though many RCRA sites, such as Pompton Lakes, are just as or even more contaminated than Superfund sites.  “This has all the earmarks of DuPont pulling strings behind the scenes.”

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Read the EPA press release

http://www.peer.org/assets/docs/epa/5_1_14_EPA_Pompton_News_Release.pdf

See U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service critique

http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2012/02/21/federal-wildlife-agency-flays-jersey-pompton-lakes-plan/

Look at toxic migration downstream

http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2012/01/26/dupont-pompton-lake-pollution-may-be-headed-downstream-/

Visit EPA’s Pompton Lakes web-center

http://www.epa.gov/Region2/waste/dupont_pompton/index.html 

View Pompton lakes and other Jersey toxic sites still in regulatory limbo

http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2012/03/05/epa-discloses-nine-more-superfund-eligible-sites-in-new-jersey/ 

New Jersey PEER is a state chapter of a national alliance of state and federal agency resource professionals working to ensure environmental ethics and government accountability