![]() ![]() He called the deal “woefully inadequate and does not come close to justly compensating the community for the damage done to our environment.”ĭEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette has said the settlement is not designed to punish anyone, and emphasized that BASF remains obligated to completely finish cleaning up the site under the supervision of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. said the settlement was negotiated behind closed doors and without input from Toms River and other affected communities. “They never put a value to the damage caused to our land, our river, our bay, our ocean, our wildlife or our habitat,” Forsberg said.Ĭiba-Geigy, which was charged criminally, paid millions of dollars in fines and penalties on top of the $300 million it and its successors have paid so far to clean up the 1,250-acre (506-hectare) site - an ongoing effort with no end in sight. They're one of many groups pushing the state to insist on significantly better compensation given the historic harm that occurred at the site and in neighboring communities. “Really, nothing has changed, other than now we're going to court,” said Britta Forsberg, executive director of the environmental group Save Barnegat Bay. Residents and environmental groups quickly dismissed the revised deal as not much better than the original one, which they also decried as woefully inadequate. A study determined the rates of childhood cancers and leukemia in girls in Toms River “were significantly elevated when compared to state rates.” No similar rates were found for boys. ![]() The state health department found that 87 children in Toms River, which was then known as Dover Township, had been diagnosed with cancer from 1979 through 1995. It made the area one of America’s most prominent Superfund sites, joining the list of the most seriously polluted areas in need of federally supervised cleanup. This created a plume of polluted water that has spread beyond the site into residential neighborhoods. It is designed to protect groundwater in perpetuity, and compensate the public for the damage to that resource.Ĭiba-Geigy Chemical Corp., which had been the town’s largest employer, flushed chemicals into the Toms River and the Atlantic Ocean, and buried 47,000 drums of toxic waste in the ground. The DEP said the settlement is designed to preserve approximately 1,000 acres of the former industrial site onto which Ciba-Geigy dumped toxic chemicals from dye-making and other operations. ![]()
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