• Introducing Dirty Little Secrets: Investigating New Jersey’s Toxic Legacy - Montclair State University
    http://www.montclair.eduhttp://www.wnyc.org/story/nj-contaminated-sites//arts/school-of-communication-and-media/center-for-cooperative-media/highlights/articles/introducting-dirty-little-secrets

    You don’t have to go any further than late-night monologues to know New Jersey’s reputation as a toxic dump. We came by that reputation honestly. As an early leader in industry and manufacturing – much of it in the chemical sector – New Jersey provided a good standard of living for workers and has become one of the richest states in the union.

    But not without a cost: Acres upon acres of toxic waste.

    There are more than 13,000 active or pending contaminated sites in New Jersey, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Of those, 114 are Superfund sites – considered the most severely polluted. But many of the rest are smaller contaminated sites that may also threaten the health of our environment and our people.

    We’re talking about dry cleaners, concrete companies, tire centers, auto body shops – and lots and lots of gas stations. Thousands of underground oil tanks in older New Jersey neighborhoods are becoming more corroded by the year, leaking toxic materials into the ground. And many of these toxic sites are subject to the kind of storm surge and flooding we witnessed during Hurricane Sandy.

    Most of the contaminated areas are in some stage of remediation, with a licensed remediation professional assigned to manage the cleanup. But more than 1,300 have no remediation professional assigned. Many of these are abandoned, with no owner to be found.

    So what are the lasting impacts of this toxic legacy in New Jersey? How are our communities still affected by the lingering waste in our backyards and waters?

    Dirty Little Secrets: New Jersey Is Just a Storm Away from a Major Toxic Mess - WNYC
    http://www.wnyc.org/story/dirty-little-secrets-nj-industrial-coast-accident-waiting-happen

    It was early on October 30, 2012, after the winds from Sandy had died down, when the call came in to the Coast Guard’s National Response Center hotline. Just before 5 a.m., a worker at the Motiva diesel terminal in Woodbridge said that flooding had caused an unknown quantity of fuel to leak into the Arthur Kill, between New Jersey and Staten Island.

    As day broke and employees were able to conduct a more thorough inspection, they realized that the storm had knocked over one of the storage tanks, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel into the river. Hundreds of workers were dispatched to the scene, and a massive cleanup and containment operation began, which would continue into the evening hours as a news helicopter hovered overhead.

    The Coast Guard also received a call that morning from the Phillips 66 Bayway refinery in Linden, which reported a discharge of “slop oil” from the facility’s sewer system.

    Then there were the calls from boaters and residents throughout the area who had seen rainbow sheens on the water, and someone reported a slick layer of oil covering tombstones and geese in a cemetery near the refinery.

    In the three years since Sandy, the Christie administration — in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — has focused on rebuilding and fortifying beach towns along the Jersey Shore, as well as communities on the Raritan Bay.

    But there’s another part of the waterfront that’s been largely forgotten. Unlike popular tourist destinations farther to the south with their beaches and boardwalks, the stretch of industrial coast in the northern part of the state is largely hidden from the average person, and it hasn’t received nearly as much attention in the Sandy recovery.