Source: http://www.nj.com, November 9, 2017
By: Luke Nozicka
The borough has reached a more than $7 million settlement with the owner of an old metals-refining factory to complete its cleanup of contaminated areas at its former smelter site.
The settlement requires U.S. Metals Refining Company to pay $4.25 million to end further litigation and to fund environmental and public health initiatives in the borough, Mayor Daniel Reiman said. The company will also pay an additional $3.15 million during the next 10 years.
U.S. Metals is the former operator of a smelter plant at 300 Middlesex Ave. that shut down more than 30 years ago. It operated in the borough from 1903 to 1986.
The company, a subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan, first entered a consent order to clean the site with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in 1988.
But there was no plan to address potential contamination in hundreds of public and private areas, including the yards of residential homes, that may have migrated off-site, the mayor said. So the borough in 2012 reached an agreement with the company to investigate and clean possible off-site contamination.
In a statement, the mayor said for 20 years the state Department of Environmental Protection had “largely forgot about the borough and its long-gone smelter.”
The latest agreement, the mayor’s office said, ensures the borough’s environmental experts can monitor the cleanup work without the use of taxpayer money.
“We appreciate the willingness of the current owners of U.S. Metals to respond to the concerns of our community, which hosted the smelter operation for more than 80 years,” Reiman said.
Earlier this year, alarmed borough homeowners banded together to file a suit against the former refinery’s parent company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold.
The class action suit alleges that 80 years of extracting copper has polluted nearby properties, exposing residents to unsafe levels of lead and arsenic.
“This kind of contamination can be crushing to property values,” Steve German, an attorney for the residents, has said. “People have invested in their homes. This is where their lives are. This lawsuit is about people who are fearful for their health in the future.”
The lawsuit filed in Middlesex County Superior Court in January seeks damages for the Carteret residents whose property’s value may have decreased around the former smelter. The suit has since been moved to federal court.
The suit also seeks to force the company to cover the costs of specialized medical monitoring for the residents, which could total to about 100 people.
German said it was necessary for residents to continually monitor their health for any possible sicknesses beyond standard physicals because of toxic and hazardous materials from the refinery.
A judge ruled in 2009 that the company’s contamination safeguards were “inadequate, defective and often non-functional,” and that its “smelter spewed forth enormous amounts of contaminating materials.”
In a statement about the latest settlement, Joseph Brunner, who oversees discontinued operations for U.S. Metals, said the company was committed to “remediate soils impacted by historic smelter operations in the Borough of Carteret.”
“We appreciate the spirit of cooperation that made this agreement possible,” Brunner said.
After news of the settlement broke, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, an environmental organization, said U.S. Metals was “getting off easy.” He called the smelter “one of the biggest sources of lead pollution on the Eastern Seaboard” and said the state Department of Environmental Protection should have sued the company.
“While the company gets to settle for pennies on the dollar, the citizens will continue to live in this toxic mess they’ve created,” Tittel said in a statement. “You don’t have to be a Whiz to know this is a bad deal.”