Eco-group brings suit against chemical companies Alleges companies responsible for polluting river BY CHRIS GAETANO Staff Writer Pictured is the bank of the Raritan River, which the Edison Wetlands Association has said has been polluted by a nearby chemical plant. The environmental group is suing the current and former owners to force them to clean the area. EDISON- Alocal environmental group has brought suit against both the current and former owners of an Edison chemical plant nearMeadowRoad, alleging that they are responsible for significant environmental damage to the nearby Raritan River. The suit, which was announced Jan. 27, was filed by a local environmental group, the EdisonWetlandsAssociation (EWA), in cooperation with the Eastern Environmental LawCenter (EELC). It has been directed at the firms Akzo Nobel Chemicals Inc., which owned the chemical plant until 2006, and BasellUSAInc., the current proprietor. "We wanted accountability from the company that's there now; we wanted accountability from the company that was there until they just recentlymoved out…," said Bob Spiegel, executive director of the EWA, standing beside the river with representatives from the EELC and Chapin Engineering, which conducted the tests detecting the river's contamination. As he spoke, construction equipment across the river beeped loudly and churned. "The lawsuit was really something we did of last resort, to enforce the laws that are not being enforced. … We chose to file this lawsuit to remove this imminent threat to human health and the environment," Spiegel said. Ed Stec,manager of commercial services for Akzo Nobel, said that his company had not yet been served with the papers and that until the company has had time to review the documents, he could not comment. Arepresentative fromBasell did not return calls by press time. The environmental groups are suing the businesses for failure to complywith the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a federal environmental law first enacted in 1976, as well as the New JerseyWater Pollution Control Act and the New Jersey Industrial Site Recovery Act. Testing performed at the behest of the EWA by Chapin Engineering revealed the presence of several highly hazardous chemical contaminants in the river where people have been known to fish and boat. "It's awitch's brewof various chemicals," said Richard Chapin, president of Chapin Engineering. According to his tests, some of the chemicals found include benzene, classified as a carcinogen by the federal government; 4- chloroaniline, which the state Department of Health and Senior Services says can cause skin blistering and is also classified as a carcinogen; arsenic, another carcinogen, capable of causing nausea and vomiting; and lead, known to be greatly hazardous to the central nervous system.A variety of other purportedly unsafe chemicals were also reportedly discovered through testing. Benzene contamination was found to be more than 860 times the acceptable state level. The arsenic was found to be over 550 times the acceptable state level. In addition, he said, significant amounts of black tar and solid chunks of asbestos were also found on the site.He held up samples of both to illustrate. Chapin later advised people not to let any dogs lick their shoes after walking around the area. The suit is aimed at conclusively linking the businesses to the nearby pollution and thereby compelling themto 1) cease further contamination, 2) remove all waste along the flood plain, including anything embedded in the river bank itself, and 3) change their practices so as to control any potential future contamination. Chapin said that, given the history of the site, he is fairly confident that contamination found in and around the river can be linked to the nearby plant, saying that there is a long history of chemical production there.He went on to say that the chemicals found in his samplings are, for the most part, the same types that the plant has historically manufactured. The suit itself says that there is a long history of chemical pollution in the area, noting that the state Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental ProtectionAgency had notedmany areas of environmental concern in 1985 with the original owners, Stauffer Chemical Co. It states that these pollutants had continued to seep into the Raritan River, about 100 yards upstreamfromthe EdisonMunicipal Boat Basin. Initial remediation efforts were ineffective, he said, mostly due to the fact that not asmuchwas known about howpollution moves back then. AroundApril 2007, the EWAnotified the DEP of the contamination, which soon forced Akzo to repair the situation. In response, Chapin said, several wells were dug in an effort to pump the contaminated water away from the river, though he said that he had criticized the idea as ineffective because of the nature of the soil. Further testing after the wells were put into operation, he said, confirmed this. "It's been pumping since the late fall and [the contamination] hasn't gone away. That's part of the problem. … They tried something, we told them it wouldn't work, and they have not cut off the seepage into the river," said Chapin.