TALKING WOOD .O BE TAKEN from the ROOM „.' J K;
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FOR REFERENCE Toxics Dumped in Mines by Jeffrey Rothfeder Research Assistance by Kenneth Lumpkin "When I first moved here to Ringwood in 1939 it was the most beautiful place on earth. Everything was perfect. It was like living in heaven. Everybody had a job. The mine was going." He is a short, wiry, sixty-one year old man. He was standing within shouting distance of Peter's Mine, a pit that he says he first pulled iron ore out of in 1941. By the 1960s, the last bits of magnetite had been hauled out of the mine. And when the miners left, the pit became a dump site for industrial wastes. Now it's covered over. Vegetation—weeds, dried grass—has grown thickly—but the terrain still bears a depression where the earth was opened. He remembers the plodding trucks—looking almost like troop movements —methodically working their way up the hill, with iron barrels in tow, to lean back against the mine shafts and toss tons of liquids and solids down the pit. "I've seen a lot of 55 gallon drums go into Peter's Mine. I don't know what was in some of them. But I know some of them had iron parts from cars." II The cars were Fords. It was the garbage from Ford's nearby Mahwah plant that was dumped in the shafts of Upper Ringwood. And a glance into the company's past provides an ironic backdrop for a story of corporate waste disposal. It is said of Henry Ford that he hated the wastes of industry. In his factories, he ordered the salvaging of everything from floor sweepings to platinum. Wood shavings were made into charcoal briquets, formaldehyde and creosote; coal derivatives into coke, benzol, and ammonium sulfate; and slag from the massive steel ovens was used for surfacing roads. In fact, a separate industry sprung up solely around the by-products of Ford's plants that netted $20 million by 1928. His reputation as a scavenger became the butt of jokes. The New York Times wrote in 1930: ' 'Ford throws nothing away, not even the smoke from his factories." And a company insider said, "I wouldn't be surprised if he used the fever from the patients in his hospitals as heat in the industrial drying process." Much has changed since then, and the change is written indelibly in the statistics. Ford Motor Company—once the intensive recycler—has recently been cited by the Federal government as one of the top industrial waste water dischargers in the United States. Ford is, also, one of the ten major polluters of the Cuyahoga River, the channel in Cleveland that caught fire, burning off its burden of chemicals. RINGWOOD PUBLIC LIBRARY 145 Sky'ands Road TALKING WOOD .O BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM „.' j K; ..,, uriM CAT. NO. 23 012 ,.'*.° : 32 Toxics Dumped in the Ringwood Mines For over a month Talking Wood has investigated the dumping of Ford's wastes into the Upper Ringwood mines, and what unfolds is a story of facts and possibilities. Record keeping has been sketchy at best-non-existent most of the time—but through a series of extensive interviews and document searches, a pattern of corporate irresponsibility and government laxity emerges. Specifically, here's what's been discovered: %From 1967 through 1971 the Ford Motor Company dumped a significant quantity of pollutant wastes into the open mine pits in the hills of Upper Ringwood. \These wastes have already begun degrading a main stream that passes the Ford landfill. The stream runs out at the Wanaque Reservoir. ^Despite this knowledge and other indications since the early 1970s that the dumped wastes are threatening to pollute the local water supply, area and state officials took no action and no comprehensive studies were initiated. %This year a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection task force has been formed to study old toxic chemical dumping sites thought to be a cause of present and future environmental damage. The Upper Ringwood Mines have been cited as deserving of attention. W The stories most often found when searching through Finally in 1956 the government sold the property to the history of the mines—in particular, Cannon and the Pittsburgh Pacific Company of Hibbing, Minnesota. Peter's located on the hill above the bulk of the area's Pittsburgh Pacific only drew ore from the mines for housing—read like a survey of America's war wounds eight years, and in 1964 they sold the land to the Ford and battles. Motor Company. The actual deed was made out to the Raw materials from the pits were used during the Ringwood Realty Corporation, a wholly owned Revolution for shot and shell, and more dramatically, subsidiary of Ford, whose officers and directors were all for the chain forged to block the Hudson River. The executives of the parent company. country, again, dug into Ringwood's iron reserves Conflicting reasones are given as to why Ford bought during the War of 1812 and the Civil War. the property. It could be that it was being considered as By the turn of the century, though, the mines began to a possible site for a new plant, or even a housing fade from prominence as new sources of higher grade development. ore were discovered and developed. But Ford never did develop the land around the Then in 1941, with the coming of World War II and mines. What they did do was dump liquid and solid the fear that there could be an interruption of iron flow wastes down the pits. through the Soo Canals in the Great Lakes, the Federal V government bought the mines and spent $4 million to get In December, 1967, Ford Motors hired O'Connor them into workable shape. Trucking and Hauling Company of Harrison, New They were never worked. But when the Cold War. Jersey to dump their Mahwah plant wastes. O'Connor began, a new possibility arose—the big open pits could had exclusive dumping rights in and around Peter's be converted into massive fallout shelters. This idea, Mine. too, never left the drawing boards. Neither Ford nor O'Connor kept records of the exact 34 Toxics Dumped in the Ringwood Mines Fords, from the Mahwah assembly line, fill the factory's parking lot. passes next to both Ford landfills. After joining VII Ringwood Brook, the widened stream wends its way Although it was apparent six years ago that water towards the Wanaque Reservoir. was flowing through the landfills and that chemical Spink investigated this stream above and below the seepage was already occurring, no official follow-up disposal site. He concludes concisely: took place. The documents and studies only served to ' 'It would appear that contamination of the main confound the fears—not to augment action. stream is presently occurring from the old Peter's Mine The Chairman of the Wanaque Reservoir and from the Ford landfill." Commission, the body that oversees the water supply for Evidence of surface dumping also appears in Spink's all of Ringwood and the surrounding area, said he tried survey. Describing an area approximately 1500 feet to bring the threat of pollution at the mines to the northeast of Peter's Mine, he writes: attention of the DEP. ' 'Ford Motor Company dumped paint over.. .two "We knew the possibility of water pollution coming acres. (The area now has) the appearance of ropy out of that area existed, and we felt that Ford's wastes lava." might not have been disposed of properly," said Dean With this confirmation of toxic dumping on the Knoll. "We spoke with the DEP...and said that we did surface of the ground itself, not only is the percolation not think that the dumps had been operated properly. of ground water through the mines a danger, but the They said they did not think it was a problem." runoff of rainfall carrying the chemical substances also But the DEP denies having any communication with poses a threat. reservoir officials on this subject. One other relevant study was conducted in 1973. "In fact," says Richard Ghayal-Wanne, DEP Official sources remember it chiefly for its results, but Environmental Specialist, '"the first I heard about it cannot locate it in the files. It is said to have been done was when a resident complained that his water appeared by the New Jersey Health Department on mine water dirty We referred this back to the Reservoir samples. The sources say that obvious traces of arsenic, Commission since they have jurisdiction over the area.'' chromium, and lead were present in the water—all Recently, reservoir officials have begun to test more elements found in paint sludge. frequently for pollutants in stream water running out of These chemicals can prove dangerous. For instance, the mines. Results are currently inconclusive, but in arsenic, in even small amounts, is known to cause appearance and turbidity—the suspension of weakness, malaise, headaches, and weight loss; it is . particles—the water shows up on the wrong end of the considered carcinogenic over long periods. scale. For instance, appearance norms of 20 have come Toxics Dumped in the Ringwood Mines 33 amounts or specific materials dropped down the mine shafts. Only an obscure purchase order from the Ford/O'Connor file catalogues the kinds of wastes that were dumped. The purchase order directs O'Connor to haul and dispose of, in 55 gallon metal drums, the following: paper, IBM cards, cardboards, wood skids, tools, wires, garbage, floor sweepings, paint sludges, scrap parts, and packing materials. That list is the sole accounting of Ford's actions as waste depositor in Ringwood.