Feds, state battle over river cleanup

'30 years of study, delay and inaction'

Friday, December 09, 2005

By ALEXANDER LANE

NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

A state plan to jump-start the cleanup of an Agent Orange byproduct in the Passaic River has re-ignited a long-running turf war with the federal government.

Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell hired engineers last month to design a plan to dredge up hot spots of the chemical dioxin, one of the most enduring and toxic compounds known.

Campbell also hired a high-powered Texas law firm to sue the successors of former Newark Agent Orange manufacturer Diamond Alkali Co., for a range of damages to the residents of New Jersey.

This prompted an angry response from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which has taken a slower, less confrontational approach to pollution in the Passaic. The agency has opted to study the river and consider launching a cleanup after 2015, though it has not ruled out requiring some short-term measures before then.

"He's prejudging that dredging is the solution," EPA Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg said of Campbell. "Dredging without the data doesn't make sense."

Steinberg wrote Campbell last month, calling the DEP plan "unacceptable" and "premature."

Campbell responded with a scathing letter of his own, calling the EPA's record on the Passaic "30 years of study, delay and inaction."

"It's kind of this endless cycle of study with no end," Campbell said. "All of the science shows the same thing, which is that every year the dioxin becomes more pervasive and diffuses more and more into the harbor."

Campbell said he had hired the Louis Berger Group, an environmental consultant, to design a dredging plan for dioxin hot spots in the lower six miles of the river within one year. He also retained the Houston-based law firm Connelly Baker Maston Wotring Jackson LLP, which successfully sued Diamond Alkali successors for pollution in the Houston Ship Channel, to force them to pay for the Passaic study, and to pay various other damages to the state.

Diamond Alkali dumped a form of dioxin known as 2,3,7,8 TCDD in the river when it manufactured Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, at its Newark plant between 1951 and 1969.

The EPA believes dioxin causes liver damage, weight loss and a suppressed immune system in the short term, and infertility, birth defects and possibly cancer in the long term.

Environmentalists, including the New York-New Jersey Baykeeper and the state Sierra Club, support Campbell. Tierra Solutions Inc., one of the corporate successors to Diamond Alkali, prefers the EPA plan.

"There are numerous contributing factors to the condition of this river, so why is the DEP limiting itself in going after just one party?" said Mike Turner of the MWW Group, a spokesman for Tierra.