Dissatisfied with the pace of a Superfund site cleanup in Old Bridge, the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency said the EPA was taking over a study how to remediate a Raritan Bay beach from the company found responsible for its led contamination.
“At its core, EPA’s Superfund cleanup program is about protecting people’s health,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told a crowd of three dozen reporters, environmental activists, and local, county, state, and federal officials gathered Thursday at the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund Site.
“We must address the elevated levels of lead at this site, specifically,” Regan added. “A legacy of using slag to build walls and jetties is unacceptable. We’re also sensitive to the fact that this important work impacts the availability of a treasured local resource: the beautiful beach behind us.”
Lead has been found to cause learning disabilities and other ailments in children.
In 2009 the EPA found lead levels in three nearby locations along the Raritan Bayfront in Old Bridge and Sayreville to be more than 100 times acceptable levels, a contamination cluster collectively known as the Raritan Bay Slag Site.
Dallas-based NL Industries, which was formerly known as National Lead and operated a now-defunct plant in Perth Amboy, had provided lead slag used as fill in the 1970s for construction of a sea wall immediately north of the Old Bridge beach.
The EPA eventually named NL as the party responsible for lead contamination of the site, and in 2014 the agency ordered the company to clean it up or face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
NL, which in the past has denied responsibility for the contamination, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Thursday.
The company filed a lawsuit in 2013 asserting it had merely supplied the slag and did not dump it. Rather, the suit asserted, local, county and state officials were aware of the situation and should be the ones responsible for the cleanup. Officials said Thursday that the case still had not been settled.
EPA officials said Thursday that NL had produced successive design studies, first in June 2020, and then, following agency comments, in April, which lacked sufficient detail and were otherwise unacceptable. Rather than continue to the back-and-forth, the agency decided to complete the cleanup design study itself.
“It’s more a question of the quality, they submitted the design to us twice, after the first submission, we provided comments, and when we submitted the second submission not all those comments were addressed,” Eric Wilson, deputy director of the EPA’s Region II Superfund program, said after Thursday’s event.
The beach at Middlesex County's Old Bridge Waterfront Park has been closed since the EPA found lead there in 2009 at concentrations of more than 100 times acceptable levels, concluding it had come from slag used as fill in construction of the sea wall visible beyond the beach.Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media For NJ.com
Walter Mugdan, the EPA’s regional administrator for the area that includes New Jersey, said the agency hoped to complete the design study by the end of 2022, though factors including the availability of funds would then determine when the actual cleanup would take place.
He and others said the federal infrastructure bill approved by the Senate and now before the House was likely to contain waterfront clean-up money that could finance the Raritan Bay project and other cleanups, before the agency would then seek to recoup the costs from the responsible parties under Superfund guidelines.
Greg Remaud, director of NY/NJ Baykeeper, an environmental group that has followed the Raritan Bay slag project closely but did not take part in Thursday’s event, applauded the EPA’s takeover announcement as “great news,” that would surely expedite completion of the study and, ultimately, the reopening of the beach.
“That doesn happen a lot,” Remaud said of the design study’s takeover. “But, frankly, we’re glad it happened, because NL is a recalcitrant party.”
Regan was making his first official visit to New Jersey since being appointed to the country’s top environmental post by President Joe Biden.
The setting was at Old Bridge Waterfront Park, the Middlesex County facility in the township’s Laurence Harbor section, where the discovery of lead had closed the beach 12 years earlier.
Shaded by a tree from Thursday’s sweltering sun, Regan stood against the backdrop of an empty beach and a chain link fence has kept visitors out since 2009.
The agency also found lead on the bayshore about eight blocks west of the beach, around a jetty near Cheesequake Creek in Sayreville, and on the sea wall’s eastern end, at Margaret’s Creek in Old Bridge. The Margaret Creek portion of the site was cleaned up in 2018.
The total cost of cleaning up all three portions of the site was estimate at $79 million in 2013, though officials said the final cost is likely to be much than that.
Thursday’s event was hosted by U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th District). It included Old Bridge Mayor Owen Henry, who thanked Regan for his announcement and told him, “We need your help.”
N.J. Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn Latourette was also on hand, and promised state assistance to fund the project if necessary. As was Teresa Szakielo, an Old Bridge resident who chairs the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund Community Advisory Group, who was praised by others for her diplomatic but determined efforts to see the cleanup through to its conclusion.
“We won’t stop until it’s done,” Szakielo told the crowd. Turning to Regan, she added with a smile, “That’s a promise.”
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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com
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