Tons of Dioxin To Be Buried At a Site In Newark

Copyright 1998 New York Times August 6, 1998

The Environmental Protection Agency has approved burying tons of dioxin-contaminated dirt at a former Agent Orange factory here. But the agency considers the burial only an interim solution until a more practical remedy emerges, Rich Cahill, an agency spokesman, said.

The Superfund site along the Passaic River was the home of the Diamond Alkali Company, which made pesticides from 1951 to 1969, as well as ingredients for the military defoliant Agent Orange.

"During the Vietnam War, it was a 24-hour operation, seven days a week," Mr. Cahill said.

Dioxin is a cancer-causing compound that is a byproduct of chemical processing. Diamond Alkali and other companies released dioxin into the water, putting the lower Passaic River on an environmental group's list of the nation's most endangered rivers. A ban on eating and selling fish from a six-mile stretch of the river remains in place.

The E.P.A. approved the burial plan on Tuesday, after rejecting incineration proposals. The approval was first reported in The Star-Ledger of Newark today.

The cost of the $22 million project will be paid for by the successor to Diamond Alkali, the Occidental Chemicals Corporation, based in Dallas. The contract is to be awarded within a year, and the work will take about two years to complete, Mr. Cahill said. Occidental has already spent $46 million on cleaning and sealing the Diamond Alkali site, which is under 24-hour guard.

Some 70,000 cubic yards of polluted dirt and debris, some now encased at the four-acre site and the rest stored there in 932 cargo containers, are to be buried.

The E.P.A. wanted to burn the dirt at a toxic waste incinerator in Coffeyville, Kan., Mr. Cahill said, but the volume is too great to be handled now.

Although a mobile incinerator could have been used, residents in the surrounding Ironbound neighborhood were against it, said Arnold Cohen of the Ironbound Committee Against Toxic Waste.

Although the E.P.A. says burning removes 99.9 percent of the dioxin, a mistake or problem poses an unacceptable risk in a densely populated area, Mr. Cohen said.

The community group favored moving the contaminated material for storage elsewhere, but the agency maintains there is no place for it.

"This was the cheapest of the potential remedies that were proposed," Mr. Cohen said.

The Ironbound Committee now wants to insure that residents and the river are not endangered when workers move and empty the cargo containers to form a burial mound, Mr. Cohen said.

The mound would be sealed, but quite visible, Mr. Cahill said. The plan includes a flood wall and a groundwater treatment system.

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