An infamous Superfund site in Ringwood has been deemed safe by the EPA, but tribal leaders of the Ramapough-Lenape Turtle Clan that live there are pointing to recent testing that says to the contrary.
The research was conducted a team from NYU- Langone Health, and experts told NJ Spotlight News that there remain several dangerous indicators.
“In many people, there were high levels of lead, of arsenic, of cadmium,” said Judith Zelikoff, an environmental toxicologist at NYU-Langone Health. “We found lead in the soil at rates about 4.7 fold higher than the rest of Ringwood. We also found arsenic at high levels, about 10 fold higher than the standards.”
The site was once the Ringwood Iron Mines in the late 1700s and 1800s. In the 1960s and ’70s, Ford Motor Company used the abandoned mine shafts to dump toxic waste, causing extreme levels of contamination that led the EPA to first deem it a Superfund site in 1983.
Through a lengthy process, an extensive cleanup was undertaken, capping waterways and removing millions of pounds of contamination from the mines and soil. Earlier this year, the EPA deemed the site under the category of “human exposure under control,” meaning no unacceptable risks of toxic exposure.
But community and tribal leaders said the latest testing proves that more work is needed.
“As the EPA is close to pulling up stakes, after 42 years, concluding its work is complete, proclaiming the site is as ‘human exposure under control,’ the NYU-Langone Medical School has found there is still dangerous levels of contaminants in these soils, air, and in the bodies of the residents here,” said Elliot Ruga, policy director for the New Jersey Highlands Coalition.
“We had a community that used to be 1,100 people that now dwindled down to less than 200,” said Vincent Mann, Ramapough-Lenape Nation’s Acting Principal Tribal Chief. “There are a lot of people responsible for the failures, the EPA being one of them, this town being another. The state of New Jersey has failed our people. Ford Motor Corporation has failed our people.”
In a statement, the EPA said it has “yet to complete all cleanup actions at the site … groundwater cleanup is currently being designed and the vegetated area adjacent to surface waters still needs to be completed.”
The agency also said it has not yet been provided the data from NYU-Langone, but “once it is received, EPA will evaluate it and determine whether further actions are necessary.”
