Toxic Landscape: Ringwood Five Years Later Waste May Never Be Fully Cleaned Up

Summary

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Six years after Ford Motor Co. was forced to return to Ringwood to dig up thousands of tons of toxic paint sludge it had dumped on the mountain, that job is still not finished -- and may never be.

Ford has removed nearly five times the amount of pollution it hauled out in previous cleanups of its old dumpsite. But despite government assurances that the work will finally be done right, Ford may once again be allowed to leave contamination in an area that serves as the watershed for 2.5 million North Jersey residents.

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Extract

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Toxic Landscape: Ringwood Five Years Later Waste May Never Be Fully Cleaned Up

In one place in particular, the abandoned iron mines that honeycomb the area, it appears that the government may allow contamination to remain without ever determining the extent of the paint sludge that was dumped there. In other areas on the site, government experts are studying whether the toxic pollution can be left in place if capped or surrounded by a fence to keep people out.

Further complicating cleanup efforts, Ford said it has no records to indicate how much waste was dumped in Upper Ringwood -- so it's unclear what contamination remains hidden in this rugged terrain.

A generation after the 500-acre tract was first declared a Superfund site, residents and environmentalists remain skeptical that the community will ever be made whole.

"Ford needs to take the poison out of the mountain," said Robert Spiegel, executive director of Edis...

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