Monday, August 9, 2010
Last updated: Monday August 9, 2010, 9:06 AM

BY JAMES M. O’NEILL
The Record
STAFF WRITER

DuPont expects to remove up to 80,000
cubic yards of mercury-laced sediment and
soil from Pompton Lake and its shoreline in a
project that will take more than four years.

The mercury was deposited into the lake
over many decades by the Acid Brook, which
runs through DuPont’s former munitions
factory in Pompton Lakes.

State and federal agencies want DuPont to
remove the mercury because it is a toxic
metal that can harm humans who eat
contaminated fish from the lake. The lake is a
popular fishing spot known for its pike, bass
and carp.

Pompton Lake, which is ringed by homes,
also serves as a backup water supply to
reservoirs that provide drinking water to
many North Jersey towns. Many residents
recall swimming in the lake as children.

“Our ultimate goal is to do the job safely with
minimum impact to the community,” said Bob
Nelson, a DuPont spokesman.

DuPont estimates that up to 90 percent of the
mercury-tainted sediment will be removed,
according to a new work plan it filed recently
with the state Department of Environmental
Protection and the federal Environmental
Protection Agency. The latter has primary
oversight of the cleanup.

The company had initially considered
removing the sediment “in the dry,” a process
that involves damming off the work area and
pumping water out so the sediment can dry
before removal. But at the DEP’s request,
DuPont explored dredging the sediment in a
wet state and has now chosen that course.

“We’ve had an ongoing dialogue with the
agencies and experts about the wet versus
dry approach, and we’ve concluded the wet
method is more beneficial,” Nelson said.

“In the dry approach, the sheer volume of
water we’d need to pump out of the work

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What you haven’t been told about chemicals polluting the aquifer that serves Del., Md., N.J.

By JEFF MONTGOMERY
The News Journal

online videos, interactive graphics

Tainted groundwater is spreading across thousands of acres in northern Delaware and has reached the Potomac Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to people across much of Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey.

In some areas of the upper Potomac near Delaware City and New Castle, concentrations of benzene, vinyl chloride and chlorinated benzenes are so high that exposure poses an immediate health threat. Elevated levels of these industrial byproducts significantly increase the risks of cancer. Sustained exposure could kill.

Northern Delaware is home to some of the worst chemical dumping grounds in America, a legacy of broken promises and corporate misdeeds. Regulators working for Delaware and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have long claimed that the deep clay layers above the aquifer protected it from the foul waters discharged by chemical and petroleum manufacturers.

Those assurances have proved false.

The protective layer over the aquifer, scientists now say, is full of holes.

To prevent a public health disaster, the state has banned public use of groundwater under or near the Delaware City petrochemical complex.

Toxic pollutants, though, are now moving near the edge of that containment zone, outside the properties of Metachem, Occidental Chemical, Formosa Plastics and the Delaware City Refinery, and toward schools and houses.

One plume of chemicals has traveled a mile south of the refinery’s main production area and has seeped 190 feet into the earth.

While millions have been spent to test and track the spread of potentially lethal chemicals, little has been done to keep residents informed about the threats to their drinking water. Some of the worst polluters have walked away, leaving cleanups to taxpayers.

Public health officials have barely begun to gather the epidemiological data and household research that could connect environmental toxins to the higher frequencies of lung, prostate and colorectal cancers found from Wilmington to Dover and around Millsboro.

The News Journal spent a year investigating groundwater contamination and toxins moving through the soil. The investigation uncovered a damning history of corporate mistakes and lax government oversight, especially in the corridor bordered by the Delaware River, Du Pont Highway and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.

The newspaper obtained thousands of pages of corporate documents, consultant reports, hydrology and geology studies, well-water monitoring reports and ecological tests on fish and plants. The majority of the documents were gathered through state and federal Freedom of Information Act requests. Most have never been distributed to the public.

Among The News Journal’s findings:

Delaware City Refinery (cleanup led by former owner Motiva Enterprises). After nearly two decades of investigation, a Motiva consultant acknowledged to state regulators in 2008 that cleanup engineers don’t know the direction or extent of pollution moving under the refinery, according to a document never publicly released. Engineers sought approval to inject nitric acid deep into the ground to neutralize a plume of sodium hydroxide. The company retracted the request after a Delaware City resident, unaware of the project’s true purpose, requested a public hearing.

Delaware Sand & Gravel (private landfill near Army Creek owned by a trust). The EPA in April threatened to take over groundwater cleanup work after discovering that bis 2-chloroethyl ether (BCEE), an industrial solvent also used to make pesticides, continues to spread out of control near a major public utility well that supplies water to tens of thousands in northern Delaware. BCEE is a probable carcinogen. The EPA demanded a new plan to deal with the threat in a private letter to DS&G, obtained by The News Journal, that has never been publicized.

Metachem Products (formerly Standard Chlorine). Despite repeated assurances that deep groundwater was safe from herbicide and pesticide ingredients spilled at the abandoned Metachem plant, EPA consultants this year confirmed finding extremely high levels of toxic contamination deep underground, some at nearly twice the depth seen five years ago. The result was drastically different than the picture painted in mid-2005, when government officials noted “no detections” in a mid-year sample from a shallower well.

Delaware City PVC Plant (includes cleanup work for Formosa Plastics, Stauffer Chemical and Akzo Chemical). Levels of ethylene dichloride used in the production of vinyl chloride have increased “significantly” in some wells near Du Pont Highway, according to a March letter obtained by The News Journal. State regulators did not publicize the developments, although they did send private letters just over a year ago to neighbors urging them to consider hooking up to a public utility to reduce the risk of exposure to the probable carcinogen.

Occidental Chemical. A consultant’s report filed with the EPA by Occidental Chemical speculated that mercury levels in sediments near the company’s shuttered chlorine factory could be high enough to pose a risk to insect-eating birds that feed in nearby marshland.

Nobody — not corporate consultants, not government regulators, not scientists — can say how badly the upper Potomac Aquifer is polluted or how long it will take these plumes of toxic chemicals to reach new drinking water sources. After decades of spills, explosions and dumping — and billions in corporate profits — most of the manufacturers along the Delaware River’s western border near Delaware City have closed or declared bankruptcy. The cleanup bill now belongs to a few corporate entities and to the public, which remains largely uninformed.

‘No fix’

Near Patti Bennett’s home, in a marshy hollow not far from Southern Elementary School, gasoline has pierced the Potomac and bled into Dragon Run creek, which meanders over several miles from Lums Pond to the Delaware River.

Monitoring tests conducted in 2006 found benzene and a since-banned gasoline additive at a level 160 times greater than the federal standard for safe drinking water.

The state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control never reported those findings, and the public still would not be aware of the danger if The News Journal hadn’t come across the report through a series of FOIA requests.

“I kind of know what’s out there,” said Bennett, whose relatives have owned land along Cox Neck Road, south of the refinery, since the early 1950s. “But nobody has ever come up and knocked at my door and said: ‘Look, we have a problem and you might want to check your water.’ ”

Many of the documents are held by DNREC or the EPA under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a law that allows government oversight of cleanups by active and ongoing businesses. Those cleanups, while publicly supervised, provide few avenues for public participation or briefings.

The federal Superfund cleanup law, while more attentive to public interests, creates projects that take decades to complete, with years passing between public notifications.

Delaware’s top environmental officer acknowledged that the state hasn’t communicated the scope of the problems well enough for the public to understand.

“I think that the focus of the department going forward has to be on the resource, not just on the property boundary,” said Collin P. O’Mara, state secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “We’re trying to shift that mind-set. A lot of the focus in the past has been on legal issues. Maybe we haven’t done quite enough looking at the migration of some of these plumes, to try to move beyond the legal boundaries.”

His agency is trying to develop more aggressive and protective approaches to water pollution investigations, efforts partly driven by concerns about state cancer death rates and recently identified contamination risks from other types of pollutants.

State regulators have made big strides recently in curbing industrial and power plant air pollution, some linked to cancer, O’Mara said. But work is only starting on other potential contributors to unexplained clusters of high cancer rates in parts of Delaware.

“We’ve not studied nearly as much the link between water pollution and various health outcomes,” O’Mara said. “Water is probably the greatest environmental challenge facing the state right now.”

Longtime resident Alice Wilmoth said she knew little about the underground poison nearing her home until anglers began steering clear of fishing in Dragon Run and the large tidal marsh that borders it.

Wilmoth, 83, has run the family-owned Delaware Bait Center alongside Dragon Run at U.S. 13 since the late 1940s, before the refinery was constructed over a landscape of farms and swamps.

“It’s still really pretty. I used to fish a lot in there and I’d catch bluegill and pike — the fish with teeth,” Wilmoth said. “Now a lot of people are afraid to catch anything.”

More glaring problems have been found in Red Lion Creek, a waterway just north of Dragon Run and north of the refinery and Metachem Products Superfund site. In 2007, a consultant for the EPA concluded that both adults and children would elevate their lifetime health risks if they ate fish caught from the creek.

Researchers concluded that pollution from several dangerous chemical spills had reached the groundwater around Metachem and posed a cancer risk to workers at the site and potential trespassers.

Delaware Geological Survey scientist Tom McKenna said the only thing to do about pollution in the area now is to cut off the source, clean up as much as possible and wait to see how far it spreads.

“You’re not going to stop the tremendous volume of water from moving. You can’t possibly pump it all out. You just have to be able to predict where the water is going, so folks can be made aware,” McKenna said. “There is no fix.”

Scientific disagreement

Delaware City’s municipal drinking water is drawn from the Potomac hundreds of feet deeper than the private wells and a mile south of contamination from the refinery. Most homes and developments nearby today are served by public utilities that tap even more distant streams or wells.

The EPA contends pollution from the refinery, Metachem and the other nearby cleanup sites will take decades — or longer — to foul major public supplies.

Other experts say that scientists still don’t understand the geology of the area well enough to be confident in predicting how fast plumes of underground chemicals will move. They warn that the pollution may already have caused irreparable harm.

Llangollen Estates resident Barbara J. Bason firmly believes that tainted water harmed her family in 1977, a time when the nation was waking up to the dangers of toxic spills and tainted groundwater.

The problem hit home when Bason’s infant son, Chris, grew violently ill every time he took formula made with tap water from her house just south of New Castle, long served by public wells near some of the most-notorious toxic landfills.

“Whenever I used canned formula, there wasn’t a problem,” Bason recalled. “When I had to use tap water, he had projectile vomiting.”

Bason began hauling in water from public springs miles away, and eventually installed a heavy-duty home filter.

Not long afterward, news emerged about the thousands of leaking drums and chemical wastes seeping out of the nearby Delaware Sand & Gravel industrial waste dump and into water supplies.

“People were terribly upset,” Bason said. “They were finding serious stuff in the water that was apparently leaking out of what was dumped there.”

After years of cleanup work, the Environmental Protection Agency declared DS&G under control, in the mid-1990s, going so far as to include the project among its Superfund “Success Stories.”

By 2000, a toxic plume from the same landfill fouled Artesian wells serving Llangollen Estates and thousands of other homes near New Castle. State and federal officials ordered new remedies, only to admit earlier this year that groundwater threats remain out of control.

The spread of pollution can be impossible to predict in multilayered aquifers like the Potomac, said Rutgers University geologist Ken Miller.

“The Coastal Plain is notorious, because it has sands that are relatively unconsolidated that can transmit things a long distance,” Miller said. Believing pollution to be safely confined can be a serious mistake.

“That’s deadly,” Miller said.

On May 10, 2008, DNREC banned any new public or private wells for drinking water over roughly eight square miles around the refinery. Although state environmental officials admit that pollution at the petrochemical complex north of Delaware City is vast, they insist it isn’t hurting anyone.

“Right now, nobody is using groundwater from the area around the refinery or Metachem, and we believe the contamination is contained for the most part,” said Marjorie Crofts, DNREC’s acting Air and Waste Management Director. “All of the public wells in the area are much deeper, and it would take a very long time for any pollution from the refinery area to reach those supplies.”

Federal and state regulators, though, frequently have overstated their ability to contain and control plumes of toxic chemicals. The government’s response has been too slow and too weak, said Jane Nogaki, a member of the New Jersey Environmental Federation and Clean Water Action.

“A permit to operate isn’t a permit for an industry to pollute,” Nogaki said. “With our population continuing to grow, there’s no assurance that we won’t be needing all our sources of drinking water, and all groundwater should be treated as a potential source of drinking water.”

Complex network

Around northern Delaware, the most important water-bearing aquifers are underground seams of sand, clay, silt and pebbles that settled out of tidal and river waters millions of years ago. As coastlines changed and oceans receded, the most-recent layers became dry land.

Below ground, some older layers opened channels for water sinking from the surface. The makeup and type of material — sandy or rocky or clay-like — determined how fast and in what direction water flowed.

Michael Boynton, a scientist now researching the Potomac near Delaware City for the EPA, said that aquifers in northern Delaware sometimes are more like a chaotic marble cake than a neat layer cake, complicating water movement and mapping efforts.

“It’s very complex. The environment in the past that laid down the sediments in the first place were very high-energy. River materials can move around very rapidly and conditions can change as they’re laid down. Trying to figure out where channels may be isn’t easy.”

At Delaware City, Boynton said, “the interpretation has changed over the years, and we’ve all learned that it’s more complex. We’ve had to refine how we look at the water and the movement of the water and any contaminants that are associated with the water. It does take time.”

In mid-2005, state and federal officials wrote in a progress report on the cleanup at Metachem that testing to date had found “no signs of site related contaminants” in a well 70 feet below the surface.

At the time, officials said they foresaw little, if any, risk that highly toxic chlorinated benzenes would soak into the Potomac from the soils above, where pesticide and herbicide ingredients had fouled dozens of acres, including wetlands adjacent to Red Lion Creek. Some of those toxic chemicals were found in a very shallow Potomac well before and after the 2005 report, officials admitted. But nothing pointed to deep aquifer contamination.

Until last fall.

The News Journal learned earlier this year that in September tests of water from a well twice as deep as those sampled in 2005 found four pollutants at levels up to 800 times higher than any previously reported. Concentrations of one toxic compound, benzene, were 5,200 times higher than levels considered safe by the federal government.

Neither the EPA nor DNREC released the full report to the public at large, although the findings were posted six months ago by DNREC to a hard-to-find state Web page. No public hearing has been held to examine the new dangers.

At the Delaware City Refinery, contractors working for Motiva admitted to state regulators in 2008 that they still do not know enough about the geology of the area to estimate how badly the Potomac already has been polluted in southern areas of the plant. DNREC has never publicly released this report, but The News Journal obtained a copy during its investigation.

The problem is so great that refinery consultants said they have been unable to identify all sources of the benzene, toluene, naptha, perchlorethelene solvents, sodium hydroxide and other hydrocarbons percolating under the plant.

They also cannot say how far the pollution has spread through an underground “paleochannel” that connects shallow and deeper Potomac water layers.

“Based on current data, the horizontal direction of groundwater flow and lateral connectivity of sand unit(s) within the Potomac Formation cannot be fully defined,” the consultants wrote in 2008. “The extent of the [dissolved pollution] … is currently unknown.”

Unsettling news

Some federal summaries of the cleanups near the refinery have asserted that the public has shown little interest in groundwater contamination there. Motiva provided DNREC and the EPA with a public participation plan in 2005, but since then has provided only a few limited updates to members of the plant’s Citizens Advisory Committee.

At the shuttered Occidental Chemical plant, where toxic mercury pollutants are a major concern, the public’s interest has been shrugged off.

“To date, there has been little interest expressed in this site by the local community,” a summary on the EPA’s website noted.

But more than a dozen residents who live nearby told The News Journal they had no idea plumes of chemicals were headed their way.

“It’s very hard for the public to grasp what’s going on down there,” said Seth Ross, a Delaware Nature Society member who has followed the issue for years. “If they don’t have enough information, it’s hard to have an interest.”

Delaware City resident Pamela Martin said she was unaware of problems in Dragon Run, which runs alongside the tiny, scenic home and horse stable that her family owns, about a mile southeast of the refinery.

Martin’s property includes a patch of wetland threatened by plumes of gasoline and benzene.

“I bought this property a few years ago, and nobody told me anything about that,” said Martin. “If there’s stuff like that in the water that’s going to be a detriment to the wetlands, it’s something that we need to know about now.”

Mark Summerfield, who has lived south of the refinery for nine years, also was unaware of the spreading pollution until a reporter questioned him. He said he found the news unsettling.

“We’d like to be made aware,” Summerfield said. “It might get more people out to public meetings when these issues come up.”

Kenneth T. Kristl, who directs the environmental law clinic at Widener University, said the public needs to know more about the problems around Delaware City.

“The fact of the matter is, if you have warning signs, the public may have a different view of the urgency of the situation,” Kristl said. “An industrial site is used for industry, but I don’t think that any fair reading of state or federal environmental laws says that, just because I have an industrial site, I get to pollute.”

Additional Facts
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By Jan Hefler
Inquirer Staff Writer

Kiddie Kollege, a day-care center that opened inside a heavily contaminated building in Gloucester County with a fresh coat of paint and little else, is about to be razed, nearly four years after state inspectors discovered the contamination.

Workers in protective jumpsuits and masks have been preparing for the demolition, which is expected to start early next month, now that legal hurdles have been cleared. State, county, and local officials welcome the removal of the building, which has stood as a constant reminder of an embarrassing and troubling saga.

“Our concern for the welfare of these children will be ever-present, but at least we can get the site itself cleaned up and ensure it won’t cause any more harm,” State Sen. Fred Madden (D., Gloucester) said in a statement. “I don’t want any more lives put at risk.”

As many as 100 babies and children were exposed to toxic mercury vapors in the former Accutherm thermometer factory, a one-story concrete building in Franklinville, after it opened as a day care in January 2004. When the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered it shut in July 2006, 60 children who were tested had mercury in their bodies.

Mercury can cause damage to the central nervous system.

Over time, the mercury levels in the children dropped, but DEP reports revealed the building had harbored vapors 27 times acceptable limits.

Ed Putnam, an assistant director with the DEP site remediation program, said the boarded-up building would be knocked down with a backhoe and about 700 tons of debris would be taken to a toxin disposal facility in Indiana. Workers are deconstructing the interior, Putnam said.

Fog spraying will keep down the dust, and the air will be monitored to protect neighbors from mercury vapors.

The process, which is expected take more than 30 working days, will cost roughly $600,000 and is being handled by Atlantic Response Inc. of East Brunswick. New Jersey will pay for it and decide later whether to sue to recoup the money from the bankrupt factory owner and/or the former owner of the day-care building, Putnam said.

“We put them on notice to pay for it,” Putnam said, noting that neither party agreed to assume responsibility.

Diane Lilley, who lives behind the building, said she was happy to see the building go.

“Thank God,” she said last week, as a half-dozen workers were at the site. “It’s been a long time coming. I want it over and done with, and cleaned up the way it should have been done long ago.”

Lilley, a longtime resident, had warned Julie Lawlor, one of the day-care operators, about mercury spills in the old factory and said that the building was never properly cleaned up. But Lawlor, who had rented the facility, said in a 2006 interview that she had dismissed Lilley’s remarks as a rumor. She said her landlord, real estate broker Jim Sullivan III, had assured her the place was cleared for occupancy.

Lawlor is now a fugitive on unrelated embezzlement charges and was last seen in Ireland.

Sullivan testified in a court hearing earlier this year that he had misinterpreted documents that said the building was contaminated and said he believed it posed no health threat. He and family members acquired it in a tax foreclosure.

A year ago, Sullivan had blocked demolition by the DEP when he denied access. After lengthy litigation, the DEP a few months ago won approval to proceed.

A class-action lawsuit filed by parents and the day-care employees accuses Sullivan, the DEP, Franklin Township, the factory owner, and others of negligence. It is awaiting trial.

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Sunday, December 13, 2009

Three Democratic state legislators are reaching out to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to request a meeting on a “troubling report” from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS) that there is an increased incidence of certain types of cancer among residents who live in a contaminated area of the borough known as “the Plume.” U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez released a letter late Friday afternoon to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson calling for this meeting of agency officials, congressional staffers and community leaders.

“We believe that the situation in Pompton Lakes is a serious public health concern and needs immediate attention,” the letter stated.

Meanwhile, NJDHSS is expected to schedule a special hearing to discuss the latest findings on illnesses for residents who live in the area where there is groundwater contamination, known as “the plume.”

On Dec. 10, the NJDHSS and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released a report that concluded that there were two statistically high elevations of kidney cancer in women (but not in men), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men (but not in women) between 1994-2006 in the plume area.

To make this conclusion, the NJDHSS analyzed 13 individual types of cancer from 1979 to 2006 in the plume area. All other cancer rates were similar to statewide rates.

This report explained that since the rates for these two cancers were not elevated in both men and women, no conclusive link could be established between the cancers and the groundwater contaminants.

However, the contaminants cannot be ruled out as a potential cause of the elevated rates because other risk factors, such as tobacco use or occupational exposures, could explain the elevations, the report explained.

Mayor Katie Cole said she does not want to leave this as it is and will go to federal officials to find out more information to see if these elevated numbers are results of the contaminants.

“The Department of Health is not able to take it to the next level to confirm a conclusion, so I reached out to Congressman (Bill) Pascrell’s office to find an agency possibly on the federal level that could help us,” said Cole. “I feel that a door has been open where I feel that there is a possibility, although there is not a definite possibility that it is so we need to get answers for the residents.”

“The findings are not surprising to many of us long-time residents here. I am elated to know that some of the information is finally being unfolded. Unfortunately I think it is just the beginning,” said Councilwoman Lisa Riggiola.

Regina Sisco, president of the Citizens for a Clean Pompton Lakes group, said, “If they do a real intense study and go door-to-door to everybody that lived in town and do a history of people that moved out of the area, they will find a lot more and I wish that could happen.”

This past April the NJDHSS performed a survey of this area and initially reported that cancer-related illnesses in the Plume area are not the result of contaminants in the ground water.

“It (the NJDHSS report) is a big step in the right direction that they finally documented that. We do have clusters of illnesses in the area. If you can be happy about the situation we are happy that finally things are moving in the right direction and that people are believing us and doing a thorough job this time,” Sisco also said.

This study sprung from a request made by Mayor Cole after Plume area residents learned the volatile organic compounds (VOC) Tetrachloroethene (PCE) and Tricholorethene (TCE) were seeping into the air from the contaminated groundwater.

In the 1980s contaminants were found in the groundwater below 450 homes originating from the DuPont Company, which manufactured explosives at a facility in the borough for many decades. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ordered the company to remove these pollutants. As part of this cleanup, since the late 1990s, DuPont has been treating the contaminated groundwater on the site of its former manufacturing plant and pumping treated water back into the ground to prevent further spread of contaminants off-site.

To treat the TCE and PCE, DuPont has been arranging with every homeowner in the affected area to test the air and install a vapor mitigation system that would remove these pollutants.

The NJDHSS report explains that residents can decrease their current and future exposures to these chemicals by participating in the vapor mitigation system. According to this report, so far 368 of the 450 homes in area either have the system installed or they are preparing to do so.

If these systems are not installed, the NJDHSS has concluded there is a potential that the TCE and PCE could affect the health of residents. The report explains that if conditions such as temperature, wind or moisture change, these gases can enter their home.

On Dec. 11, DuPont’s Public Affairs Manager Bob Nelson said that DuPont is still reviewing the NJDHSS report.

“We agree with their recommendation that all homes above the contaminated groundwater Plume get a mitigation system installed to eliminate the health risk from Plume contaminants,” he said.

“Since June 2008, we have actively encouraged homeowners, in cooperation and coordination with the DEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to have the mitigation systems installed at no cost to residents as a remedy that is protective of human health. We will continue remediating our historic contamination in Pompton Lakes and will do so in a responsible and science-based manner that is protective to the environment and to the safety and health of residents of Pompton Lakes,” said Nelson.

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By COLLEEN O’DEA
GANNETT NEW JERSEY

Experts disagreed whether electromagnetic fields from power lines cause cancer or other health problems, as they testified at the final state Board of Public Utilities hearing on Public Service Electric and Gas Company’s proposed line upgrade.

Shortly after the discussion of EMFs, the utility and opponents of the $750 million, 47-mile Susquehanna-Roseland project wrapped up five days of testimony Monday in front of BPU Commissioner Joseph Fioraliso. The entire board is expected to decide Jan. 15 whether PSE&G should be allowed to add 500-kilovolt lines to the corridor, which passes through Morris County.

No studies have proven that EMFs from power lines cause leukemia or other health issues, testified PSE&G’s expert, William H. Bailey, a scientist, although he did say some studies have found an association between the fields and childhood leukemia.

Martin Blank, an expert for eight municipalities, two school districts, environmentalists and a citizens group opposing the project, said there is much evidence that fields at lower levels than those expected on the new line could lead to leukemia, breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

“Because of the wide range of biological systems affected, the low response thresholds, the possibility of cumulative effects by repetitive stimulation and the inadequacy of exposure standards, it is urgent that the proposed power line be moved to a distance where the anticipated magnetic fields will not pose a hazard to the community,” Blank, a professor at Columbia University, said in his written testimony.

In response to a lawyer’s question, Blank said there has not been enough research to determine what a safe distance from EMFs is.

“All I know is, the farther away you can get, the better off you are,” he said. Blank cited studies that found correlations between cell phone use and head cancers, and between an electrified railroad and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dueling statistics

PSE&G’s lawyer, David Richter, asked Blank about the criticisms several international groups have made against a report Blank referred to in recommending safe exposure levels of no more than 4 milligauss. That’s less than one tenth the maximum of 48.6 milligauss expected at the edge of the line’s right of way when using monopole structures, which PSE&G plans to install exclusively on the eastern portion of the line.

Kyle G. King, the utility’s EMF expert, testified that the median field measurement is expected to be 19.3 milligauss, but it would be as high as 120 milligauss directly beneath the 500-kilovolt lines.

Bailey said even that maximum level would be below the limits recommended by two international bodies. Based on numerous studies that looked for a link between EMF exposure and cancer, Bailey said, “the evidence does not support a cause and effect.” He said, though, that there is a “statistical association” between long-term exposure and childhood leukemia.

Saying he has not seen any proof that power lines are responsible for any cancer clusters, Bailey also discounted the suggestion by the lawyer representing the eight municipalities that the current line is to blame for the cancers that have struck every family living on one street along the line in East Hanover, saying, “Based on the weight of the scientific evidence, I do not see a basis for that allegation.”

“It’s not a coincidence,” countered East Hanover Mayor Joseph Pannullo, who attended the morning session. “Why not err on the side of caution? We’ve given them an alternate route, out of Troy Meadows and away from the homes. They’re more worried about a delay.”

PSE&G recently offered to abandon plans for a new switching station in East Hanover, but still supports its chosen route along the current 230-kilovolt lines, from Pennsylvania to Roseland, as minimizing environmental impacts.

The line — on towers as tall as 195 feet — would pass through Jefferson, Rockaway Township, Kinnelon, Boonton Township, Montville, Parsippany and East Hanover in Morris County.

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Hopewell Council gets Rockwell plan update

Rockwell Automation has no immediate plans to sell Somerset properties and is unconcerned about possible rezoning in the area

By Aleen Crispino, Special Writer

Posted: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:19 AM EDT

   Representatives of Rockwell Automation — owner of at least four and possibly seven vacant residential properties on the south side of Somerset Street in Hopewell Borough — say the company has no immediate plans to sell the properties and is unconcerned with the possibility, being explored by the borough Planning Board, of rezoning.

   This information was reported by Councilman David Mackie and Borough Administrator/Clerk Michele Hovan to Hopewell Borough Council at its regular meeting Monday.

   Rockwell intends to apply to the Planning Board for permits to demolish the remaining homes on the properties, then “plant some trees and landscaping and maintain them as residential properties until the (groundwater) treatment is finished,” said Councilman Mackie.

   In a conference call Monday with Jennifer Elder Brady, project manager at the Cranbury-based environmental engineering firm Arcadis BBL, and John Persico, Arcadis BBL associate, Ms. Hovan and Councilman Mackie received an informal update on plans by the firm, hired by Rockwell Automation of Milwaukee, Wis., to build a groundwater treatment facility at 21 and 29 Somerset St. and to maintain the property surrounding it.

   ”They said their general procedure is they complete the remediation and then divest themselves of the property,” said Councilman Mackie. Exactly how long it will take to pump out and treat all of the contaminated groundwater is unknown. The project could be completed in “five, 10, 15, 20 years,” said Ms. Brady in June 2007.

   Rockwell Automation, which, as Rockwell Manufacturing Co., operated a plant at 57 Hamilton Ave. from the early 1900s to 1975, has been ordered by the state Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) to clean up air, soil and groundwater contamination by “volatile organic compounds,” primarily trichloroethene (TCE), in an area extending from Somerset Street south to Lafayette Street and from Hamilton Avenue east to The King’s Path development in Hopewell Township.

   As part of its effort to remediate the site, Rockwell has purchased two residential properties: 19 and 21 Somerset St., and has already demolished houses and felled trees in order to remove contaminated soil at these locations. In addition, the company has either purchased or is in the process of purchasing the five remaining homes on the south side of Somerset that lie within the borough, Mr. Persico said Dec. 20. The borough has received copies of deeds for 29 and 37 Somerset St., indicating that those sales have been completed, said Ms. Hovan in May.

   Rockwell plans to build a recovery well and an approximately 60- by 40-foot Cape Cod-style treatment building, constructed of pre-engineered metal, at 21 and 29 Somerset St., said Ms. Brady in December 2007. Before doing so, it would need to present an application and site plan and receive the approval of the borough Planning Board. Demolition of any of the remaining houses also would require approval from the board.

   At its last few meetings, the Planning Board has been holding public discussions of the 2007 Master Plan recommendation that the south side of Somerset Street be rezoned for commercial or industrial use. This recommendation was triggered by Rockwell’s purchase of the residential properties for its treatment facility as well as future plans by New Jersey Transit to create a railroad parking lot on the north side of the street for a reactivated West Trenton Line.

   Members of the Hopewell Woods Homeowners Association, whose members reside on Elm Street and whose back yards are adjacent to the south side of Somerset Street, have publicly opposed rezoning for anything other than park or recreation use, and have stated their desire to keep the south side of the street residential.

   Richard Friedman, of 31 Elm St., president of the association, presented the board Dec. 12 with a letter citing homeowners’ fears that rezoning would “adversely affect the quality of life on our street and in surrounding neighborhoods,” as well as that “this action would have a negative impact on property values,” which have “already suffered due to Rockwell’s pollution of the groundwater and soil in the Somerset Street area.”

   The Planning Board has said its main concern is to prevent unwanted use of the properties upon possible future sale by Rockwell. “My overriding concern is to be able to control what happens there,” said Planning Board Chairman Bob Donaldson in May, describing a possible scenario where the land is sold to a developer wishing to build townhouses or condominiums.

   Councilman Mackie said the views of neighborhood residents might be a factor in Rockwell’s future plans. “They’ve had some conversations with residents of Elm Street,” said Mr. Mackie, adding that this may have influenced the decision of company representatives to maintain the residential character of the property for the duration of the remediation effort.

   IN OTHER BUSINESS, council postponed a public hearing on the proposed 2008 budget to 7 p.m. today (Thursday) in the Hopewell Fire Department conference room on the first floor of the Municipal Building at 4 Columbia Ave.