DEP Settles For Just $78,775 and 112 Acres Of Wetlands Restoration At Duke Farms’ Private Property
DEP Settlement Implements Mike Catania’s Corporate Green Ponzi Scheme
(Caption: This is Mike Catania’s Model, taken from an annual Report by his organization, CRI)
Unlike the recent controversial sweetheart settlement with BASF for Natural Resource Damages (NRD) at the notorious Ciba-Geigy Superfund site in Toms River, in the DEP’s most recent corporate sweetheart deal with American Cyanamid at their Superfund Site along the Raritan River, there was no self congratulatory press release issued by DEP, and no environmental groups cheerleading to provide green cover.
Amazingly, DEP just proposed a draft NRD Settlement with American Cyanamid for ….. wait for it ….. $78,775 and 112 Acres Of Wetlands Restoration.
Read the DEP Public Notice and the DEP Proposed Draft Settlement Agreement and Appendices which identify the “restoration projects”.
The public comment period is open for 60 days after the December 18, 2023 NJ Register Notice. It is telling and outrageous that DEP issued this settlement not only quietly, but during the Holidays and over New Years.
Almost all of this “restoration” is located UPRIVER from the Cyanamid site (e.g. impossible to restore downriver damages) and it is being conducted on PRIVATE PROPERTY on billionaire Duke Farms Foundation land.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The American Cyanamid site is huge, 435 acres, heavily contaminated, and located on the flood prone banks of the Raritan River.
The contamination at the Site was allegedly caused as a result of waste storage and disposal impoundments at the Site that contain or contained hazardous substances, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), and/or metals. Investigations also found hazardous substances, including VOCs, SVOCs, polychlorinated biphenyls, and metals in soils at the Site, and that the groundwater underlying the Site contains metals and VOCs, such as benzene, chlorobenzene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. This contamination led the United States Environmental Protection Agency to add the American Cyanamid Site to the National Priorities List of Superfund Sites in 1983.
I have not read the NOAA NRD damage assessment documents yet, but there can be no doubt that there has been off site release and migration of toxic pollutants to the Raritan River that has resulted in the poisoning and lost use of wildlife (fish and birds), aquatic biota and ecosystems, groundwater, and river sediments (including perhaps drinking water supplies).
So how is it possible that DEP can settle for peanuts for decades of this massive toxic assault on the Raritan River?
Once again, there is no information at all provided by DEP in the public notice or the draft Settlement agreement.
There is no document published by DEP that provides a science based assessment of natural resource damages or the economic value of these damaged resources or the nexus between the NRD damages and the restoration plan or how the public will be compensated fully for those damages.
Adding insult to injury, the settlement is part of a longtime corporate scam by Mike Catania, formerly head of Duke Farms (see:
This is another in an outrageous pattern of negligent enforcement of the DEP’s NRD powers as Trustee of the State’s natural resources.
This is exactly what one might expect from a former corporate lawyer who represented corporate polluters in successful legal challenges of DEP NRD claims and has refused to disclose that fact and recuse from DEP decision-making in NRD cases.
Forget it Jake, its Chinatown.