Notorious Toms River Superfund site gets 5 more years of water testing

TOMS RIVER - When will Reich Farm be taken off the Superfund list?

The answer, it appears, is not anytime soon.

Instead, Dow Chemical is working with Suez Water to devise a groundwater testing procedure that will continue for at least the next five years. After that, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees Reich Farm, will decide if more testing is needed.

"There will be five years of monitoring before you say, 'We're done,'" said EPA's Jon Gorin, the remedial project manager for Reich Farm. Gorin spoke at the April 9 meeting of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster.

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Dow has asked that the groundwater monitoring cease because water in three wells in Suez Toms River's Parkway well field has met all drinking water standards since 2005. Each day, 1.7 million gallons of ground water are pumped up by the three wells, treated to remove contaminants, then discharged onto the ground.

The water is not used in the water company's drinking-water system.

Dow has been paying for water testing at the site for many years and has also paid millions of dollars for the cleanup of Reich Farm.

The video above shows the results of an analysis of another type of water testing, which focuses on beach water quality.

The Reich Farm site, located south of Church Road about a mile from the Garden State Parkway, is the source of an underground pollution plume that made its way into Suez Toms River's (formerly United Water Toms River's) Parkway well field around 1982.

But the contamination was not found until 1988. At that time, chemical contaminants, including tricholoroethylene — an industrial solvent believed to be a human carcinogen — were found in three wells, including Well 26.

Reich Farm is one of two Superfund sites in Toms River. The other is the sprawling Ciba-Geigy Corp. site off Route 37 and Oak Ridge Parkway, which is now owned by BASF.

Reich Farm was designated as a Superfund site in 1983.

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Toxic legacy

In spring 1971, struggling farm owners Bertha and Samuel Reich were approached by independent trucker Nicholas Fernicola, who offered to pay them $40 a month to rent a portion of their farm land to "store" 55-gallon drums from Union Carbide, according to the EPA.

Fernicola never paid the farm owners.

In December 1971, the Reichs noticed "foul odors" coming from the rear of their property and discovered thousands of leaking, and many empty, drums with Union Carbide labels on their land.

The drums contained chemical waste including chemicals such as toluene, methanol, butanol, xylene and trichloroethylene.

Carbide removed thousands of drums from the site in April 1972 and also carted away 1,000 cubic yards of heavily contaminated soil from Reich Farm. The company became a subsidiary of Dow Chemical in 2001.

But the damage had already been done.

Researchers exploring elevated levels of childhood cancers in Toms River estimated that the Reich Farm plume reached the Parkway well field — and the water company's drinking water system — by 1982.

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But the contamination was not found until 1988. At that time, chemical contaminants, including tricholoroethylene, a suspected human carcinogen, were found in three wells.

The EPA agreed with Carbide's plan to treat the polluted water by removing the chemicals with an air stripping system and then allowing the treated water to go back into the drinking water system.

In 1994, about 15,000 cubic yards of soil from the farm was excavated and heated to temperatures between 600 and 700 degrees to vaporize and remove pollutants. The process is known as thermal desorption.

Shortly after the cancer cluster investigation began in 1996, researchers found traces of styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical compound related to plastics production, in Parkway wells 26, 28 and 29.

All eight wells in the well field were temporarily taken offline. Wells 26, 28 and 26B, which capture the Reich Farm plume, were eventually removed from the drinking-water system. The water from those wells is treated with an air stripper and carbon filtration to remove all contaminants and then dumped onto the ground.

Cancer cluster study

In 2001, an epidemiological study, conducted as part of a massive investigation into the potential causes of elevated childhood cancers in Toms River, found an association between prenatal exposure to Parkway well water and air emissions from the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. plant in Toms River and the development of leukemia in girls.

It is rare for epidemiological studies to draw any kind of association between cancer cases and environmental factors.

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Researchers at the time stressed that the small number of cases reviewed in the study made it impossible to draw any concrete conclusions. But Gillick and other activists note that since treatment was applied to contaminated Parkway water, and two wells were taken offline, leukemia rates in Toms River — once elevated — have returned to normal levels.

Jim Mastrokalos, general manager of Suez Water in Toms River, said the company intends to eventually take the three wells that capture the Reich Farm plume out of service.

Those wells — Nos. 26, 28 and 26B — were removed from the company's drinking water system years ago. Mastrokalos said there is no timetable yet for shutting the wells down.

"My obligation is to make sure the company provides the safest water possible," Mastrokalos said. He said the company is still working closely with Dow to develop a water testing protocol for the next five years.

Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050, @jeanmikle, jmikle@gannettnj.com