‘We were abandoned:’ Old Bridge forced to borrow $7 million to settle Superfund lawsuit

OLD BRIDGE – The Township Council has reluctantly approved borrowing $7 million to finance the cost of a settlement in the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund site litigation.

“For the federal government, $7 million is a drop in the bucket, but for Old Bridge taxpayers it’s a lot of money,” Mayor Debbie Walker said. “I’m really disappointed in the state and federal government for not helping Old Bridge.”

Last year, it was announced that Old Bridge may have to pay $21.1 million to the federal Environmental Protection Agency as its share in the $151 million cleanup of the Superfund site.

Under the terms of a settlement, NL Industries, the source of the slag that was produced at its Perth Amboy plant, will pay $56.1 million to settle the litigation brought by the EPA; the State of New Jersey will pay $25.3 million; and $48.6 million will be funded by the federal government.

The money will cover the past and future costs of the cleanup of the site which extends for 1.5 miles on the Sayreville and Old Bridge shoreline along Raritan Bay.

The parties have been identified as potentially responsible for the site, the EPA statement says.

Because the township was in the chain of title, the municipality was deemed a potential responsible party, Township Attorney Mark Roselli said.

“We had no choice but to deal with this and pay $7 million for something that happened 40 years ago, which was under the permission of the federal government,” Councilwoman Dr. Anita Greenberg-Belli said. “If the federal government didn’t give permission for that lead to be placed there, we wouldn’t even be discussing this. So to me that we have to go out and bond for this, the onus is on the federal government.”

She also said if it had been cleaned up years ago, it would have cost much less.

The council had no choice because it wants to do right by the town and clean up that area, Greenberg-Belli said.

More: Old Bridge may owe $21.1 million

Council President Mary Sohor said “this can has been kicked down the highway” for a long time and as a result the cost of the cleanup has escalated.

“We can’t kick this can anymore. We have to finish this,” Sohor said. “We appealed to everyone to please try and help us.”

She said she really thinks “we were abandoned in this one.”

Roselli said of the $21.1 million for which Old Bridge is responsible, insurance carriers are paying almost $15 million and the township is responsible for the rest.

“Ultimately we borrowed $7 million, but I think it will be less than that,” he said.

He said the state’s Local Finance Board has approved the financing.

“While it’s a hard pill to swallow, it’s a lot better than where we could have been,” Roselli said.

Councilman Erik DePalma urged residents to reach out to Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim to voice their displeasure that the federal government is not coming to Old Bridge’s aid.

The Raritan Bay Slag Superfund consists of the Seawall Sector, a seawall about 2,300 feet long in Old Bridge; the Margaret’s Creek Sector, a 47-acre wetland immediately east of the Seawall Sector; and the Jetty Sector, the approximately 750-foot-western jetty, nearly a mile west of the seawall in Sayreville.

The contamination dates to nearly a century ago when NL purchased United Lead Co. in Perth Amboy in 1928 and operated the plant through 1975.

The facility extracted and processed lead from many materials, including scrap metals, scrap batteries and battery plates. The process generated furnace slag that contained lead and other materials.

NL hired Liberty Trucking of Fords to dispose of the waste. Liberty then took the materials to its property on Route 35 in Old Bridge where they were disposed in the Margaret’s Creek and Seawall sectors and the western jetty in the Superfund site.

The 2,300-foot seawall and the 760-foot jetty were constructed with slag from NL’s smelting operations in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The slag resulted in high levels of lead contamination along the seawall and in the sand of a recreational beach west of the seawall.

The EPA issued a cleanup plan in May 2013 to excavate and dredge material contaminated with lead at the site. It addressed the three sectors of the Superfund site in a specific sequence to prevent recontamination of cleaned up areas.

The EPA completed the Margaret’s Creek Sector cleanup in September 2018 which involved removing about 15,775 tons of soil and 1,802 tons of slag from that portion of the site and cost about $7 million.

After becoming concerned about the quality of the engineering work being conducted by NL Industries for the Seawall Sector, EPA took over that work, which was completed last fall.

Email: sloyer@gannettnj.com

Susan Loyer covers Middlesex County and more for MyCentralJersey.com. To get unlimited access to her work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Old Bridge forced to borrow $7 million to settle Superfund litigation