Saying that the state may provide money to clean up the contamination that has been spreading under people’s homes near the former Keystone Metal Finishers Plant, town officials presented a plan of operations May 2 that would inject chemical solutions into the ground at various key points along the plume. During the same Keystone Contamination Committee meeting, officials also disclosed that more properties may be in the contamination plume than first thought, increasing under the latest estimates from 27 to 35 homes. In presenting a preliminary cleanup plan, Jay Johnstone, a spokesperson for the PMK Group, the contractor who will perform the cleanup, said additional tests had better defined the contamination plume, showing more houses affected than originally projected. “We did about 60 point samples on and off the property and found that 85 percent of the contamination is on the Keystone property, and that levels of contamination seem to drop off as soon as if moves off the site,” Johnstone said. While several residents were concerned about the increased number of houses affected, PMK officials claimed the plume had not expanded, but rather been better delineated, allowing the town to begin cleanup efforts. Several residents accepted both reports with great skepticism, claiming they could no longer trust information coming from the town. What should have been greeted as remarkable news, some residents shrugged off, saying the town had not yet addressed key issues of past responsibility such as lack of inspections on the property when open containers of dangerous chemicals sat unmonitored on the property. A plan of action The Keystone contamination has been an issue in town for almost a decade. Health officials discovered contamination at the plant, located near the corner of Raydol Avenue and Humboldt Street, in 1991. They found 45 drums containing such items as hydrochloric acid, cyanide, alcohol and other dangerous chemicals, as well as 12 to 15 large processing vats containing plating chemicals, each and every one of the solutions a potential killer. After the state Department Environmental Protection did additional testing, they concluded the scope of the work exceeded their mandate and suggested the EPA look at the site in terms of its Superfund mandate. Within weeks, the EPA swept into Secaucus to clean up the mess. In 1997, town officials discovered that contamination in the deeper layers of ground water had spread off the Keystone Factory site and under residents’ homes. This information was withheld from them until the 1999 primary, when then-Councilman Dennis Elwell revealed the information. Under the remediation plan released two weeks ago, PMK will begin injecting a solution into the contamination plume that will cause the contamination to break down into safer chemicals. Pilot tests done with the chemicals last summer appear to have cleaned up 90 to 95 percent of the test area’s contamination, Johnstone said. During a report to the council, PMK officials said the bacteria that was injected into the core had lasted longer than anticipated and was still working to break down the contamination, despite a supposed six-month life span. The clean-up plan, PMK officials said, would have three components. During the first phase, numerous closely-spaced injections would be placed in the heaviest contaminated sections on the property. The second phase would address contamination in the street. That contamination runs along a storm water line from the Keystone property to a second, less intense plume near the former DPW site on Golden Avenue. Tests taken near the DPW site showed that contamination there had spread into areas under the street, but not into people’s homes. This plume is about 20 feet wide and 30 feet long. Some of the areas of the plume have not been fully delineated, and PMK will do additional tests to determine if additional properties have indeed fallen within the contamination zone. The third phase would inject a chemical into areas around the properties within the original plume near the Keystone factory. PMK will follow-up these injections with tests of basements throughout the plume to assure residents that neither chemicals nor contaminants are working up through the clay layer via the contaminated ground water and affecting the basements. These tests will include air-sampling canisters installed in the basements of houses both inside and outside the plume. “These will have a reactive agent that will determine if residents there are being exposed to airborne contaminants as a result of the ground water,” Jerry Perricone of PMK said. These tests will be performed on residences directly adjacent to the site as well as others. The canisters – which will have a special pump to draw in the air – will remain on site for 24 hours, then taken to the lab for the results. “This test is to check if the ground water is affecting the air people are breathing,” said Councilman Christopher Marra. These tests will be done twice, once before the chemicals are injected into the underwater contamination, then later, to see if the chemicals are causing contamination to rise to the surface. Afterwards, the town will request a health assessment of the area by a health agency associated with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. PMK officials also recommended to the council that an independent company to look over the whole project. Not all good news While agreeing that cleanup was a good thing, some residents criticized the effort as coming much too late. Resident Peter Link claimed health assessments should have been done in the area in 1991 after the EPA cleaned up soil contamination near the plant, contamination that was a health risk to residents of the area. Although Mayor Dennis Elwell said the state found no cancer clusters in the Secaucus area, Link claimed that the report could be misleading since such clusters are based solely upon reported deaths. People currently suffering from life-threatening illnesses often do not report this information to the state. After the EPA studied the area in 1991, recommendations for health assessments on residents were either ignored or lost, leaving many residents to question whether ailments that later afflicted some of them had been caused by the chemicals. Some residents were diagnosed with cancer, and some children in the area are suffering learning disabilities. Other residents have complained about migraines over the years and have wondered if this was the first sign of brain cancer. Many of the answers to the questions about the chemicals released into the environment from the 50-year-old factory were never really made clear. Over the years, residents have complained of waking up to find a white powdery substance covering their cars and lawns. Sump pump tests done during the 1991 cleanup did show signs of contamination in basement water. Became a battle Public disclosure of the contamination has led several residents to claim that the value of their land has declined. One resident outside the plume spoke up during the May 2 meeting, claiming she feared for her health, yet could not sell her house because of negative publicity. “I’ve tried to sell the house for $100,000 less than its market value and still nobody wants to buy it,” she said. “Everyone seems afraid of the contamination.” While the PMK Group has blamed the newspapers for sensationalizing the debate around Keystone, several residents blamed politics, accusing Elwell of using the issue to unseat then-incumbent Mayor Anthony Just. Resident Barbara Napierski, whose persistent questioning eventually led to the uncovering of the contamination spread, has accused Elwell of using the issue to get elected, and then walking away. Elwell has responded by claiming that he and the council have done their best to address the matter. “I’m dismayed by the response we got at the May 2 meeting,” Elwell said later. “Here we have what is basically great news about our ability to clean up the contamination, and we’re still being criticized. Instead of talking 30 or 40 years to clean up, we’re talking three to five years. Even if it takes a little longer, say seven or eight years, this is still a very positive sign. I don’t understand why they can’t see this. If I lived there, I would feel that this is encouraging news, and better today than it was before.”
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