Source: http://www.mycentraljersey.com, February 1, 2017
By: Nick Muscavage
Five years after a metal smelting company agreed to investigate and clean up potential contamination in the yards of nearby homes, some borough residents began receiving letters from the company informing them that their properties contain contaminants above New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s clean-up and action levels.
Some Carteret residents have entered into a class-action lawsuit, which was filed on Jan. 30 and has a class area defined as several thousand properties, alleging that U.S. Metal Refining Company, Amax Realty and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold failed to recognize the “true nature and extent” of the contaminants or properly notify residents of the extent of the contaminants.
“This type of pollution can have a crushing blow on property value. People are invested in their homes and that loss of value should be reimbursed by the polluter,” said Steven German, attorney for the plaintiffs. “People are worried about their health, they’re worried about their children’s health. They hear about Flint, and they read about lead paint, and they hear all the terrible things that lead can do to children.”

The letter also showed tests exceeding the clean-up level of lead of 400 parts per million. One test showed a property’s lead levels to be more than 85 parts per million higher than the clean-up level established by the DEP.
The letter sent to residents by U.S. Metals Refining Company recommended that the residents allow its soil project to remove the contaminated yard soil in accordance to DEP requirements.
The company said they will “replace the yard soil removed with clean soil and will restore affected landscaping.” It also said the project will come at no cost to the taxpayers, but the company did not admit any wrongdoing in the letter.
On Tuesday, Mayor Daniel Reiman announced to area residents that U.S. Metals Refining Company will begin testing additional properties within the borough. The soil testing will determine whether the environmental impacts from the company’s former smelting operations extend further than originally believed by the company, according to his statement.
“U.S. Metals has acknowledged that their past operation in Carteret has impacted soil around their former plant. They will expand the scope of their investigation based upon test results from previous soil samples that were taken from properties within the original sample area,” Reiman said. “The results have caused them to question whether their original efforts were comprehensive enough.
“We have insisted all along that they conduct a complete and thorough environmental impact investigation and to clean-up any contamination caused by their former operations and they are now beginning to do that.”
In 2012, Carteret made an agreement with the owner of metals-refining factory to ensure the company investigates and cleans up potential contamination in the yards of nearby homes and other areas. The agreement came after Carteret filed a required notice of its intent to sue the owners of the former U.S. Metals Refining Company to ensure the company investigated toxic metal contamination.
The initial round of testing included about 60 properties east of Roosevelt Avenue near Carteret’s southeastern border with Woodbridge, according to the statement.
U.S. Metals Refining Company operated a copper and fine metals smelting facility along the Arthur Kill from 1906 until 1986 when it was closed, according to Reiman’s letter. The company was eventually acquired by Freeport-McMoRan Inc. As the successor company of U.S. Metals, Freeport-McMoRan is still liable for the costs associated with the investigation and remediation, according to Reiman.
At the time of the agreement, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold issued a statement reported by USA TODAY that the company is pleased to have reached the agreement “and will now be able to focus our attention on the Carteret soil testing and replacement program.”
Amax Realty, the third defendant in the class-action lawsuit, owned or operated a portion of the site associated to the smelting contaminants, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against U.S. Metals Refining Company and the other entities claim that they are suffering from fear of adverse health effects, including cancer, issues with childhood physical, mental and cognitive development and other serious illnesses, as a result of the contaminants from the refining companies.