Residents concerned toxic cleanup will be too quick and not thorough enough

Monday, July 11, 2011
By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal


FELICIA COLLIS, Severn Willis and Joyce Willis discuss the cleanup at the Garfield Avenue toxic waste site in Jersey City.

When Jermaine Robinson was growing up on Randolph Avenue, on Jersey City?s west side, he dreamed of opening a skate park on part of a 16-acre empty lot blocks from his house.

That was before he knew the site was, until 1963, home to a manufacturing complex that officials say contaminated the area?s air and soil with chromium-laced waste.

Robinson now lives down the street from his childhood home, where his parents remain. He said he only became aware of the chromium contamination 10 years ago.
?I try not to let it worry me,? he said.

This year, PPG Industries, which owned the Garfield Avenue site until 1963, has removed 72,000 tons of chromium-contaminated waste from the site, part of a cleanup effort it says should end by 2014. Before the cleanup, there were 700,000 tons of chromium waste in the area.

Residents are pleased someone is finally taking responsibility for the cleanup, but they are wary the effort will eliminate the contamination.

?I don?t think they?re ever going to clean it up, because it?s all over,? said Margie Lovely, 74, who lived on Bergen Avenue, about a mile from the chromium site, for about 12 years.

In the 1980s, a pipe burst in her basement, spewing chromium-contaminated water into her home. Soon after, she was diagnosed with asthma that her doctor said was brought on by chemical exposure, said Lovely.

The Garfield Avenue site is one of 126 chromium-contaminated sites in Jersey City, 50 of which have been completely remediated, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Most of the chromium came from the production of coatings for machine parts, and from chromium-laced waste used as fill material at developments in the mid-20th century.

Hexavalent chromium, the most toxic form, can result in cancer, in addition to other health problems.

A December 2010 health assessment by state agencies found no evidence that city residents who lived near chromium sites from 1979 to 2006 were at an increased risk for stomach, oral or esophageal cancer, according to the DEP.

But many residents are suspicious about the pace of the cleanup, said Joyce Willis, a member of the Graco community organization, one of the parties that won a recent federal settlement that requires a far more stringent cleanup effort of the Garfield Avenue site, a settlement reached last year between PPG and the city.

There was too much contamination for too long for the cleanup to proceed so quickly, Willis said. ?You?d swear to look at it now they?ll be done before the end of the month.?
Mike McCabe, the cleanup?s court-appointed administrator, said there?s a lot more work to do and the neat area of asphalt residents see is merely a staging area for the trucks that are hauling waste from the site.

?I hope that they?re really doing what they?re supposed to do,? Robinson said. ?This neighborhood so badly needs a new start.