Group says New Jersey toxic waste dumping caused $1B in harm, calls settlement inadequate
TOMS RIVER, NJ — Years of dumping toxic waste in a Jersey Shore community where rates of childhood cancer were rising caused at least $1 billion in damage to natural resources, according to an environmental group that sought to undo a settlement between New Jersey and the corporate successor to the company that owned the pollutants did. .
Save Barnegat Bay and the community of Toms River are going to sue to overturn a deal between the state and the German chemical company BASF, under which the company will pay $500,000 and carry out nine environmental remediation projects at the site of the former Ciba-Geigy Chemical Corporation plant.
That site became one of America’s worst toxic waste dumps and led to widespread concern about the prevalence of childhood cancer cases in and around Toms River.
Save Barnegat Bay says the settlement is woefully inadequate and does not take into account the extent and full nature of the pollution.
The state Department of Environmental Protection defended the agreementstating that it should not primarily be about monetary compensation; Restoring damaged areas is a priority, the report says.
“The Ciba-Geigy discharges devastated the natural resources of the Toms River and Barnegat Bay,” said Michele Donato, an attorney for the environmental group. “The DEP has failed to evaluate decades of evidence, including reports of dead fish, discolored water and toxic wastewater, contained in its own archived files.”
These materials include documents from 1958 detailing fish kills and severe oxygen depletion caused by the company’s dumping of chemicals into the Toms River and directly onto the ground. It also includes a study by a Ciba-Geigy consultant showing that a plume of contaminated underground water is three-dimensional and thus cannot be adequately assessed in the way New Jersey uses to calculate damage to natural resources, the group said.
An accurate calculation of damage to the site and surrounding area would exceed $1 billion, Save Barnegat Bay said in court filings.
“This deal does not come close to compensating our community for what we have suffered,” former Toms River Mayor Maurice Hill said in a speech. January public hearing on the settlement.
The state declined to comment. In court cases she defended the way in which she had handled the damage assessment.
BASF, Ciba-Geigy’s corporate successor, declined comment on the lawsuit but said it is committed to implementing the settlement it reached with New Jersey in 2022.
That means maintaining nine projects over 20 years, including the restoration of wetlands and grasslands; creating walking paths, boardwalks and an elevated viewing platform; and building an environmental education center.
Beginning in the 1950s, Ciba-Geigy – the city’s largest employer – flushed chemicals into the Toms River and the Atlantic Ocean, and buried 47,000 barrels of toxic waste in the ground. This created a plume of contaminated water that has spread beyond the site into residential areas and is still being cleaned up.
The state health department found that 87 children in Toms River, then known as Dover Township, had been diagnosed with cancer between 1979 and 1995. compared to state rates.” No comparable figures were found for boys.
The investigation did not explicitly attribute the increase to Ciba-Geigy’s dumping, but the company and two others paid $13.2 million to 69 families whose children had been diagnosed with cancer. Ciba-Geigy has settled the criminal charges by paying millions of dollars in fines and penalties on top of the $300 million it and its successors have paid so far to clean up the site.
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