Cleanup of Superfund site almost complete

BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer

What was once a hazard to the community will soon become a haven.

The $50 million cleanup of the former Chemical Insecticide Corp. (CIC) Superfund site in Edison is nearing its end.

“It’s been a long, hard fight,” said Robert Spiegel, president of the nonprofit Edison Wetlands Association.

Edison officials are trying to come up with funds to buy the 5-acre property and the adjacent vacant 6-acre tract that once housed Muller Industries.

Plans call for the site to be transformed into a public park once the cleanup is finished and the land is purchased.

“I believe the surrounding residential neighborhoods off Vineyard Road deserve to see these properties turned into open space instead of industrial warehouses that would create unwanted noise and truck traffic,” said Mayor George A. Spadoro.

The EWA has fought with area legislators since 1989 to get the site remediated.

The site, according to an EPA fact sheet, was laden with Agent Orange, other insecticides, herbicides and rodenticides (arsenic) from CIC’s heyday between 1954 and 1970.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has slated the completion of the CIC site’s cleanup by the end of the month.

“It will be as clean or cleaner than any park land in Edison,” Spiegel said. “The EPA once called this land a danger to the community. It posed a real threat to the welfare of people near it. Now, it can be a benefit, and it’s especially good that the people of South Edison will have a recreational facility and passive tract to enjoy.”

EPA workers dug 26 feet down into its soil and removed more than 350,000 tons of contaminated dirt, Spiegel said.

Tainted lagoons and barrels full of toxins were also removed, he said.

Spiegel walked the site countless times, kept watch over the cleanup progress and nudged the EPA along, he said.

“The EPA was way behind schedule for a while, but we just kept pushing,” he said. “Area legislators jumped on the bandwagon, and when we thought we would be suffering longer with the ramifications of the site, with the Superfund drying up, the cleanup got back on track.”

Spiegel proposed the township acquisition of the Muller and CIC sites to Spadoro and the Township Council months ago. He mapped out a plan for passive/active recreational facilities.

DeMartin Schwartz, Trenton, was hired to appraise the sites at the time.

The value has been tagged at about $2 million for both tracts.

Spadoro had contacted the EPA and requested that it deed the CIC property to Edison because of the potential danger posed to residents for years.

That plan fell flat. But the mayor still wants Edison to own and preserve the land as greenfields after years of being contaminated brownfields.

Spadoro is calling on state, county and federal sources for open space funding to purchase the site.

So far, the EWA has committed $500,000 toward the purchase. The funds came from the DEP’s Green Acres program.

“The state authorized us using it for this purpose,” said Spiegel. “The $500,000 amounts to about half the estimated cost of CIC alone. Muller is another situation, which is actually a good one because there are significant tax liens on it.”

But the effort to get the deed in township hands is an ongoing one, which Spiegel said requires strong local, state, county and federal partnerships.

“I am pleased that the Edison Wetlands Association is giving us a grant to purchase the CIC site,” Spadoro said. “And working with Middlesex County Freeholder Director David Crabiel, I am confident we will receive county open space funds as well.”

Area and state legislators have also been asking to help find sources of funding, the mayor said.

If CIC’s owners will not sell the land to Edison, the township will move toward condemnation of the site to acquire it at fair market value, the mayor said.

The tax lien on the Muller site that Spiegel mentioned is one worth $354,000, Spadoro said. Because of that, the Muller acquisition should go smoothly, he said.

But Spiegel said he won’t rest until the deed is handed over.

“We have to move quickly,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of time on our side when it comes to acquiring property like this.”

CIC declared bankruptcy in 1970 when Piscataway Associates bought the land. It was declared a Superfund site in the late 1980s, according to the EPA fact sheet.

Spiegel reflected on when he first toured the CIC site in 1989.

“All I can say about the difference now is, ‘Wow,’ ” he said “I’ve been fighting this fight for a very long time. I have a video of what it used to look like all those years ago. I look around now and just can’t believe it.

The CIC site is what got Spiegel started in his environmental career.

He was a baker at a neighboring bakery, and invested a lot of time and energy into investigating and pushing for the cleanup of the site. The EWA was born out of his grassroots efforts.

“I testified in many hearings about the toxicity of the site,” Spiegel said. “It’s nice to work toward it actually benefiting the community now; but it wasn’t easy to get it to this point. We were extremely relentless and lucky. Nearly $50 million was invested in this cleanup, and they finally got it all.”