Report claims freeze
of bog cleanup funds
Completion of work at
Marlboro waste site
remains uncertain
By karl vilacoba
Staff Writer

Local and national officials expressed outrage last week over funding shortfalls they say will dramatically slow or stop cleanup efforts at several state Superfund sites, including Burnt Fly Bog, Texas Road, Marlboro.

Congressmen Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) released an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspec-tor General report listing 33 Superfund sites in 19 states that have not received their full funding requests, including 10 in New Jersey.

Burnt Fly Bog is listed as one of five New Jersey sites that have received no funding whatsoever during the 2002 fiscal year.

"The report also clearly contradicts EPA Administrator Christie Whitman’s statement last year claiming her agency would ‘continue to emphasize construction completion as a key priority for the Superfund program,’" Pallone said in a released statement. "If this sorry record shows a key priority within the EPA, I would hate to see what kind of attention the agency’s other ‘priorities’ are receiving."

Tina Freedman, who serves as chairwoman of Marlboro’s Burnt Fly Bog–Imperial Oil Citizens Advisory Committee, said she was puzzled as to why the federal government has passed over the Marlboro site. She is urging citizens to write to and call the offices of elected officials to push for cleanup efforts to continue at the town’s worst toxic waste site.

"We strongly believe the EPA and the Superfund program are responsible for cleaning this site by law. They can’t walk away and leave this town hanging in the breeze," Freedman said. "I don’t know how they’re coming up with these decisions, and they don’t even notify us in any official way."

Burnt Fly Bog, between Texas and Spring Valley roads in Marlboro and extending into neighboring Old Bridge, Middlesex County, was contaminated in the 1950s and 1960s with the direct dumping and spread of hazardous materials resulting from recycled waste oil operations, according to an EPA report. It is included on the Superfund list of the most polluted sites in the nation.

Contamination in the uplands area of the bog flowed downstream into the adjoining westerly wetlands. These wetlands are in a discharge area of the Englishtown aquifer, where ground water flows to the surface and drains into Deep Run via Burnt Fly Brook.

The soils on the site contain PCB’s and lead, according to the EPA report. People could be harmed by these contaminants by ingesting polluted soils or dusts, eating game, fish or berries from the bog, or inhaling the toxic fumes of burning PCB’s from a fire.

"What worries me is that with these drought situations something can happen there that we don’t even understand yet," said Township Council President Paul Kovalski Jr.

In April, the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) predicted the coming funding slowdown in a report titled "Can Superfund Continue to Protect Public Health?"

On the heels of the release of the NJPIRG report, U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), Pallone and several environmental activists held a press conference at the site and called on President George W. Bush to re-enact a tax on chemical corporations to pay for Superfund cleanups in cases when the culpable party was either bankrupt or could not be found.

Originated under President Ronald Reagan in 1980, the tax that paid for the nation’s Superfund cleanups expired during Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1995 and has not been renewed since.

"At that time there were literally billions of dollars in the Superfund, so it made sense to call a time-out on the tax," said NJPIRG’s Sam Boykin.

Reports have placed the money spent on cleanup efforts at Burnt Fly Bog between $40 million and $45 million.

"If we have spent $40 million of the people’s money, we should complete the task," Kovalski said. "It seems like insanity to stop when we’ve spent so much on cleanup and it’s so close to so many residents. To me, it’s a big ‘shame on you’ on the Bush administration."