My neighbor's yard is a Superfund site!?

[Badfish740]

I was looking for info on Heritage Minerals on google when I found a list of Superfund sites in New Jersey and my neighbor's (well, my parents' neighbor) house was listed. The entry is as follows-I'm not including the name or address because I don't know if the person living there now who is the named person's grandson would want this plastered all over a message board.

NPL Status: Not on the NPL (National Priority List)
Non-NPL Status: NFRAP (No Further Remedial Action Planned)
OU ID: 00
OU Name: Sitewide

It goes on to talk about site "actions" and says it was discovered 4/10/1984, a preliminary assessment was made 8/01/1984, a site inspection was done 3/28/1988, and the site was archived 01/31/1997. So basically it sounds like nothing was really done, but what would warrant such a rating by the EPA? A leaky septic/oil tank, etc...? I know the guy used to work at a junk yard and my dad told me that when he was a kid (he grew up next door to where my parents do now) once in a while he would bring a derelict car home that the kids would drive around the backyard/woods. When they were done with them they dumped two of them in a ravine behind the house and covered them with dirt. The ravine the cars are in was always known as "the dump", and I used to explore it a lot as a kid. There were some old washing machines, cabinets, etc...in there from years past but now everyone is a little more enviromentally sensitive and just throws yard waste into it. I'm not really all that concerned as my parents don't even have well water, and I doubt the contamination is very serious-I was just curious. I've seen some posts from Wis Bang about environmental cleanup topics so maybe he could shed some light on the subject?

Thanks,

Matt

 

[wis bang]

NFRAP...Sounds like they considered the contamination too small to really need remediation - or - they capped/isolated =/or removed what HAD to be removed. Now they'll monitor the ground water, if necessary, and open the site to brownfield re-use...oops pinelands commission use...They're done w/ the place.

Sometimes the best solution is to leave the pollution 'in situ'; situations where the cleanup might do more damage to adjoining fragile ecosystems.

anytime they leave little three inch capped wells; eventually someone will be scheduled to come back & withdraw water samples. I worked at a rail to truck yard that conrail had dirtied up & cleaned up when they moved. All the wells were close to the RR tracks & were eventually flattened by the drivers to improve access to the RR cars. Several years later some guys came & they were pissed that they could not get their groundwater samples...

 

[Badfish740]

Thanks for the info, but there's still some things I don't really understand. How would contamination in someone's backyard come to the attention of the EPA? Anonymous tip, etc...? Do you think it's because of the junk cars that were dumped in the ravine-as far as I know that was about 30 years ago and they've been completely covered since then as I've never seen them down there. Also, does this mean that my neighbor had been fined as a result of this at one time or another?

 

[wis bang]

They found something and NJ took some action which is part of the public record. They have a web page where you can look up contaminated sites by town. It is an eye opener to read...

Rural agricutlural places had ground contamination from leaking fuel tanks. Burried abandoned autos would get their interest too...

could be almost anything!

 

[Badfish740]

Update:

I talked to my parents and found out something interesting. Turns out that the guy and my grandfather used to work together at the local plastics plant which is now closed. The guy that owned the property allowed the company to dump flawed/damaged plastic sheeting (they used to manufacture the materials used in pool liners, landscaping plastic, drop cloths, etc...) in the back of his property along the treeline, and then covered it over with dirt. I guess someone got wind of it and called the EPA but since it's just plastic sheeting buried in the ground it's not too high on the list considering there are places like the ones in the pines to be dealt with. I told this story to a guy I work with who is originally from New Egypt, he told me about a farmer that had land somewhere just outside of New Egypt who he said used to let Maguire AFB dump fuel and other nasty stuff on back of his fields. At least that's what he had heard when he was a kid in the late 60s/early 70s. It's amazing what people got away with back then, and it makes you wonder how we didn't manage to utterly destroy the planet with all of the careless dumping and disposal of chemicals. It also makes you wonder just what you might encounter when you're walking through the woods-kinda scary.

 

[wis bang]

Lagoons were State of the art in 1959...they're all listed superfund sites today.

The US military complex was one of the worst polluters thru Vietnam. Now they're the largest customer base for remediation firms...Courts rulled that they wern't exempt from EPA regs...Changed 'em 100%

I once worked in the Chemical hauling business. I remember drivers talking about this place in West Virginia. When you arrived, the first worker you ran into warned you by saying 'Don't walk in the puddles...' EPA shut that place down.