U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries Agency Investigating DuPont Pollution in Pompton Lakes

By Lily Makhlouf

Now federal Wildlife officials are weighing in on the environmental disaster that has been plaguing the Borough of Pompton Lakes for nearly forty years as a result of the 92-year operation of the former DuPont explosives manufacturing facility.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering seeking a settlement from Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, according to a recent news update in The Record by James O’Neill.

The federal agency has been collecting data from local wildlife to see whether the pollution from the former DuPont Pompton Lakes Works facility has any negative impacts on the species. “We’ve mostly been taking biological samples of fish, birds and invertebrates, looking mostly at organisms living in or adjacent to the water,” said Melissa Foster, a biologist of the Fish and Wildlife Service. If the data proves that the local wildlife has been affected, the agency will demand a settlement.

“Damages could range from a monetary payment to the purchase or donation of land that has similar value to the land that was damaged. Chemours might also be asked to pay for habitat improvement projects,” writes O’Neill.

A ban on all fishing already exists in the area, and residents fear that the lead, mercury, and solvents may have already bio-accumulated in the tissues of local fish. Potential damages from the toxins, not only harm the wildlife that is exposed, but could also be harmful to humans that consume those resources.

Beginning in the early 1900s, DuPont’s facility was responsible for manufacturing blasting caps and various explosives, used in both World War I and World War II, according to the Pompton Lakes Works Remediation Project. Manufacturing these products involved the use of lead, mercury, and solvents--the remnants of which many residents feel are responsible for the outbreak of cancer and other diseases in the adjacent residential neighborhood.

DuPont failed to safely contain and dispose of its hazardous materials; the lead, mercury, and solvents were dumped into unlined lagoons that leached into other waterways and infiltrated into the groundwater. A plume of solvent-tainted water looms underground. The solvents within the toxic plume evaporate through the ground and into people’s homes as hazardous vapors.

Despite remediation efforts, including removing lead and mercury from streams and lawns around homes and dredging Pompton Lake, the toxic plume still remains a threat to over 400 homes downhill from the former plant site.

For decades, local residents have suffered from a number of health complications, especially cancer. Some residents have had multiple cases of diseases and still live in fear, knowing that the cancer-causing agent still lurks beneath them. Chemours has suggested pumping water over the plume as a means to prevent the vapors from rising, however, “residents worry the plan would raise the water table and send contaminated water into their homes,” James O’Neill writes in The Record’s report on NorthJersey.com.