Source: http://www.northjersey.com, August 12, 2016
By: Svetlana Shkolnikova
Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and Honeywell International Inc. sought to ease residents’ concerns about the impending remediation of the Quanta Superfund site on Aug. 2 with a pair of information sessions on various health safeguards that will protect the public during a two-year, $78 million cleanup.
Site clearing, debris removal and demolition on the 5.5-acre site is due to in September while the full-scale solidification of 150,000 cubic yards of soil laden with coal tar, arsenic, waste oil and other contaminants will start in early 2017. Four deep recovery wells will also be installed during the remediation work to prevent liquid contaminants from traveling.
The entombment process, which involves mixing cement and slag into the soil to harden it into an impermeable mass, will kick up some dust and amplify the distinct odor of coal tar, said officials, but teams will be on hand to spray down the work areas with either water or foam to keep both at a minimum.
An air quality monitoring system will track the level of dust and 29 site-related chemicals in the air every five minutes during the work day and results will be posted on the project website, quantaremediation .com, the next day.
Should activity on the site produce concentrations of dust that exceed government action levels, the project’s health and safety officer would be able to shut down all work and in a worst-case scenario, alert local authorities, said Steve Coladonato, Honeywell’s remediation manager for the site.
The company assumed responsibility for the cleanup of the Quanta Superfund site, once home to the largest roofing tar company in the world and the Quanta Resources Inc. oil processing facility, due to its merger with Allied Chemical, which operated on the property from 1930 to 1974. Twenty-three other companies that disposed of their waste oil on the site are also liable for the pollution.
Honeywell’s global remediation director, John Morris, said the company has cleaned up at least two dozen similarly contaminated sites and does not anticipate any unusual difficulties with Quanta, despite some residents’ worries that the involvement of the property’s current owner, local developer Fred Daibes, could bring complications.
Daibes’ firm, Waterside Construction LLC, will prep the property for cleanup and demolish the building at 115 River Road but will not perform any remediation work, as it did on Veterans Field several years ago. In that cleanup, Waterside introduced more contaminants into the park and forced the borough into ongoing litigation.
“We are not going to let anything happen that does damage to our name,” said Morris to assure residents. “Any contractor that works at our site will meet Honeywell’s performance standards.”
Daibes purchased 11 acres of land along the Hudson River, including the Quanta site, in 2011 with plans to build hundreds of residential units, an office building and possibly a marina with ferry service.
The remediation plan, first announced that same year, remains unpopular with residents who would like to see the contaminants completely removed from Quanta but will prove the least disruptive and most environmentally sustainable out of all other options, according to Richard Ho, remedial project manager for the EPA.
Excavating the site would carry a significantly higher price tag and subject residents to more air issues and thousands of trucks carrying toxic material offsite, said Ho. Most of the truck traffic associated with the chosen cleanup will be limited to the first month, when approximately two trucks per day will carry various equipment onto the site.
Some lane closures are expected on River Road once remediation work begins on the coal tar underneath the road toward the end of the project, said Morris. Honeywell and the engineering firm implementing the cleanup, CH2M, are currently meeting with county officials to collaborate on a plan to both solidify the contaminants and fix a noticeable dip in the road.
The EPA is still in the process of developing a remedy for a high concentration of arsenic left by a sulfuric acid plant near the north end of the Quanta site, underneath a ramp leading to the City Place shopping center, said Morris, as well as treatment for the part of the Hudson River affected by the century-old contamination.
Morris said the EPA and Honeywell will be back before residents in about a year or year and a half to discuss the final plans, including a groundwater barrier installation along the river that will remove contaminants from groundwater as the groundwater flows through it.
The effectiveness of the total cleanup will be monitored for 30 years, with reevaluations by the EPA occurring very five years.