Governor Phil Murphy on decades of Pompton Lakes pollution: 'It just horrifies you'

Residents living above an underground lake of toxic chemicals in Pompton Lakes are calling on Gov. Phil Murphy to push the federal government to add their neighborhood and an adjacent former DuPont munitions site to the Superfund program, which is used to clean up the nation's worst pollution.

It's a move that former Gov. Chris Christie refused to make, despite calls from the prior regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator to seek Superfund status for the site. Though Superfund is a federal program, the state governments must request that a particular site be considered for the program.

In response, Murphy told The Record and NorthJersey.com on Saturday that, while he has no immediate plan to visit the Pompton Lakes site, he has asked two members of his cabinet to research the issue in depth.

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Murphy said he has asked Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal as well as Catherine McCabe, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, to look into the issue and report back to him quickly. He is also looking at what might be done further in coordination with the federal EPA.

"You read something like this and it just horrifies you," Murphy said. "So we’re taking this very seriously."

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The residents also ask that Murphy push Chemours, the DuPont spinoff company now responsible for the cleanup, to offer a buyout to residents whose homes sit above the plume contaminated with the cancer-causing solvents PCE and TCE that had migrated for decades off DuPont’s property.

And they are calling for a thorough health study to determine the connection between the solvents beneath the homes and the elevated levels of kidney cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the neighborhood.

A 2009 study by the state health department had first identified the elevated cancers levels, and said that while the DuPont pollution could not be definitively linked as the cause, it could not be ruled out, either.

The plume: How poisonous chemicals wound up beneath 400 homes

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“DuPont’s contamination has spread to our neighborhood and continues to linger,” the residents wrote. “It has destroyed the health, quality of life, and financial well-being of countless generations of innocent victims.”

“We … feel as if we have been betrayed for decades by DuPont, and we have been let down by regulators and elected officials time and time again,” the residents continued. “We are urging you to stand up for us and fight for our health and well-being.”

Superfund status would provide a more ironclad cleanup plan for Pompton Lakes that could not be as easily challenged by Chemours, according to U.S. Environmental Protection emails obtained by The Record and NorthJersey.com.

It would also give residents more opportunity to have their concerns heard. And it would allow them to hire independent contractors to examine mounds of scientific data.

The Record and NorthJersey.com recently published a four-part investigative series looking at the 40-year history of DuPont pollution in the neighborhood, and the company’s pattern of pushing back against state and federal regulators about cleaning up various pollution from the munitions facility, as well as its repeated efforts to downplay the extent of the pollution and the potential health dangers to the public.

For decades DuPont used the solvents to clean machinery at its munitions plant, which manufactured blasting caps and other ammunition that helped the United States win two world wars.

The solvents, though, were dumped with wastewater into four unlined lagoons. Testing in the late 1980s showed the solvents seeped down into the groundwater, which spread the cancer-causing chemicals beneath an adjacent residential neighborhood.

In 2001 state and federal regulators started pushing DuPont to test for the possibility that the solvents were migrating up through the soil and into basements. DuPont resisted for seven years. When such tests were conducted in 2008, results showed vapor intrusion was indeed occurring.

DuPont installed vapor mitigation devices on 330 homes, but the underlying source of contamination — the plume — has yet to be cleaned up, even though DuPont signed a document 30 years ago promising the state that it would do so.

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One pilot study to clean up the groundwater that DuPont tried in 2011 failed. Another controversial pilot study is under review by the state. In a process called hydraulic surcharging, Chemours would pump clean water into the plume area. The procedure would not remove the cancer-causing solvents, but would theoretically act as a barrier to prevent any more vapors from reaching the homes above.

Some residents oppose the idea, worried that the procedure would flood their basements with polluted water, even though the EPA says that wouldn’t happen.

The letter to Murphy is signed by the heads of two local advocacy groups — Lisa Riggiola, executive director of Citizens for a Clean Pompton Lakes, and Regina Sisco, executive director of Pompton Lakes Residents for Environmental Integrity, as well as board members of the Pompton Lakes Community Advisory Group.

The residents conclude by asking to meet with Murphy in Trenton, and inviting First Lady Tammy Murphy and Catherine McCabe, the new commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, to Pompton Lakes to see the affected neighborhood first-hand.

“We need New Jersey to re-engage with the community in Pompton Lakes, because for the last eight years we’ve had a DEP that appears to have been on the side of DuPont and in an adversarial role with the affected community,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, who also signed the letter. “A case like this changes your belief system in government being the good guy. This community has been suffering and needs change.”

Pompton Lakes is far from the only contaminated site linked to DuPont where residents and some leaders are calling for a comprehensive cleanup.

DuPont and its spinoff company Chemours are facing lawsuits, pollution violations, grand jury investigations and multi-million dollar legal settlements at other sites, including one in southern New Jersey.

Here are some recent examples: