(New York, N.Y.) More than 200 million gallons of…
(New York, N.Y.) More than 200 million
gallons of flood water has been drained from the American Cyanamid
Superfund site in Bridgewater, NJ and the system used to capture
contaminated ground water under the site is now functioning, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today. Ground water
under the site is highly contaminated with metals and VOCs, such as
benzene and xylene from the former manufacturing activities. EPA
continues to oversee the assessment, cleanup and repair work at the
site and previously scheduled cleanup work is
resuming.
“The devastating flooding caused by
Hurricane Irene posed a major challenge at this Superfund site, but
we are now back on track,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional
Administrator. “The system to pump contaminated ground water
to a nearby treatment facility is now up and running and we are
keeping the contamination from spreading.”
The ground water system is now pumping about 475
gallons per minute to the Somerset Raritan Valley Sewage Authority.
The system pumps this water from the ground and conveys it to the
sewage authority where it is treated and discharged into the
Raritan River.
EPA is also overseeing the restoration of and
improvements to the berms surrounding two large chemical waste
impoundments that were over-topped by flood waters from the Raritan
River. The work will be completed this week.
Work to install a system to prevent
contamination from seeping from the two waste impoundments into the
Raritan River, Cuckholds Brook and Middle Brook has resumed. EPA
estimates that the impoundments contain nearly 900,000 tons of
waste material, consisting mainly of volatile organic compounds
(VOCs), semi-VOCs and metals. The sludge and soil in the
impoundments contains metals, cyanide, and VOCs. EPA will oversee
the installation of a ground water capture system along the Raritan
River and Cuckholds Brook designed to capture and prevent ground
water from seeping into the water bodies. The work is expected to
be completed in the spring of 2012.
EPA is also evaluating options for cleaning up a
major portion of the site and expects to release a proposed cleanup
plan this winter. A separate study to determine options for
addressing the contamination from the two large chemical waste
impoundments is expected to be completed in late 2012 or early
2013. EPA will evaluate this study and will subsequently develop a
proposed cleanup plan for the impoundments.
The American Cyanamid Superfund site is located
in Bridgewater Township in Somerset County. The site currently
encompasses approximately 435 acres south of the New Jersey Transit
commuter rail line and adjacent to the Raritan River. Between 1915
and 1999, the site was used for various chemical manufacturing
operations. Numerous surface impoundments were used to store
by-products of the chemical production, dye production and coal tar
distillation processes that took place on the site.
The American Cyanamid Superfund site was badly
flooded as a result of Hurricane Irene, putting virtually the
entire site underwater and leaving more than 200 million gallons of
flood waters that had to be pumped from the site. The flood waters
damaged some of the berms and other structures on the site and
crippled the ground water treatment system.
For more information about the site, visit the
website at:
https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-2.
Follow EPA Region 2 on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/eparegion2
and visit our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/eparegion2.
11-136