By Andrew Herrera
The borough of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey has had to
grapple with a contamination problem which first emerged several decades ago. A
local weapons and munitions factory known as the Pompton Lakes Works, owned and
operated by the DuPont Corporation between 1902 and 1994, released unknown
quantities of heavy metals and toxic solvents into unlined lagoons that
migrated into the town’s lake and groundwater (O’Neill and Fallon 2018).
The contamination of surface and ground water in Pompton
Lakes has impacted residents’ health, especially those living in homes above
the toxic groundwater “Plume” of solvents and chemicals which have migrated
into their basements as vapors. Residents have been fighting for a complete
cleanup of the Lake and the aquifer, as well as a thorough mitigation of the
danger posed by vapor intrusion into their basements, often without adequate
government support. Therefore, Ramapo College’s own Turtle Island Consulting,
created as part of a senior environmental studies class’s capstone course, has
been in the process of preparing a comprehensive environmental assessment of
the impacts caused by the contamination. As part of that class, I have
contributed a unique perspective to impact assessment which is not normally
considered: organizational impacts.
Environmental impact statements have developed an almost
codified rubric of different impacts that are supposed to be researched before
a development can begin. Different environmental assessments may include
additional topics particular to their project, but this group of impacts generally
applies to most statements. These impacts, or indicators, typically include physical, ecological, and
socioeconomic effects such as air quality, biodiversity, and local economy. My
indicator, however, looked at organizational impacts, which is not a widely
recognized one.
Organizational environmental impacts
Organizational impacts, broadly speaking, include effects
on the political and social fabric of a community. It is not covered in guides
to environmental impact statements, such as Betty B. Marriott’s Environmental Impact Assessment: A Practical
Guide (1997) and Charles Eccleston’s Environmental
Impact Assessment: A Guide to Best Professional Practices. In this report,
I am going to discuss the methodology of an organizational impact assessment as
well as the findings I made regarding the situation in the borough of Pompton
Lakes.
Because the organizational indicator is not a formally
recognized category of impact, it can be difficult to define its research
parameters. It is a broad and inclusive category of issues. An early task for me
was to work with the firm’s advisors, Drs. Michael Edelstein and Ashwani
Vasishth, to delineate the actual questions I would need to ask as the
organizational impact assessor. We ultimately reached a fairly comprehensive
list of concerns. That list focused on the behavior of the responsible parties,
regulatory agencies, and citizens of Pompton Lakes. It included questions such
as: how have DuPont, the EPA, and the NJ DEP communicated with the community on
the health risks associated with contamination; how capable, exactly, are
citizens’ groups of negotiating for themselves in disputes over cleanups; and what
has local government done in response to the contamination? In order to answer
these questions and many others, I needed to consult news investigations,
technical documents, and residents of Pompton Lakes.
This work was buoyed by a few prominent sources. One was
an expose by The Record titled “Toxic
Secrets.” That piece, written by James O’Neill and Scott Fallon (2018), is a
thorough investigation of the history of contamination in the community, the
resultant health effects, and a variety of communiques, letters, and
memorandums sent between the DEP, EPA, and DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours.
“Toxic Secrets” was so valuable to my work because O’Neill and Fallon used the
federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the New Jersey Open Public
Records Act (OPRA) to obtain those documents which the agencies had kept stored
away from the public. Using FOIA and OPRA can be a lengthy, time-consuming
process. O’Neill himself commented that it sometimes took months of asking to
see important documents detailing how DuPont frequently delayed the DEP in its
inquiries into whether the toxic contaminated groundwater in the borough was migrating
as a vapor into peoples’ homes (James O’Neill, personal communication, April 2
2018).
“Toxic Secrets” uncovered previously unknown information
on DuPont’s consistent priority of stalling any cleanup of the contaminated
area, and it brought information to my attention that I had not even thought to
ask. Even if I had, I might not have had the time to obtain the information
myself. Between “Toxic Secrets” and its spiritual predecessor, “Toxic Legacy,”
which I used when discussing the Ford Motor Company’s contamination of
Ringwood, New Jersey, and Ramapo, New York, my work made me realize the
importance of an active news media. Without the work of dedicated career
journalists, I would not have been able to address nearly as many questions in
my assessment.
My findings were also largely dependent on the
cooperation of local activists. Individuals such as Lisa Riggiola, founder of
Citizens for a Clean Pompton Lakes and the Pompton Lakes Community Advisory
Group, and Jefferson LaSala, board member of Pompton Lakes Residents for
Environmental Integrity, provided more information on local politics and
debates over how to clean up the polluted Pompton Lake and aquifer than any
official documents I had seen. As local leaders of the community response to
news about contamination, Riggiola and LaSala possessed reports, technical
documents, and firsthand accounts of the politics of remediation in Pompton
Lakes, and I could not have found those resources anywhere else. Even though
the EPA had a fairly extensive list of documents and community updates
pertaining to Pompton Lakes on its website, I truly needed to have personal
conversations with involved residents to learn what I needed to learn to write
about organizational impacts.
Community impact
Although I began this assessment unsure of exactly what
significance my indicator held for the overall state of the community of
Pompton Lakes, my findings have taught me how important the “organizational”
impacts of any project can be. For one, I have learned that the citizens of Pompton
Lakes are severely disadvantaged by a lack of communication and support from
the EPA and the DEP. DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours, which is now overseeing
the site, have consistently proven to be opposed to open and timely
correspondence with the community about their factory’s contamination of the
water in Pompton Lakes.
But the government agencies have not supported the
citizens either, meaning that, for a collective of concerned residents with no
background in environmental science, it is nearly impossible to analyze and
criticize the polluters’ plans for cleaning up the borough’s surface and ground
water. When they previously had the funding to hire independent engineers who
could do so, these citizen groups were appalled but perhaps not surprised to
learn that DuPont and Chemours’s plans have largely failed to effect a
satisfactory cleanup of Pompton Lake and the borough’s groundwater. Since the
dissolution of a Pompton Lakes citizens advisory group which the EPA had
organized in 2012, residents have had no consistent communication with the
public agencies that possess the resources and expertise needed to challenge
DuPont and Chemours’s stubbornness. While the EPA could possibly better enforce
a cleanup if the site was added to the Superfund list, the borough council has
actively opposed that measure because it fears the stigma of being a Superfund
site would depreciate property values and investment.
This disempowerment of the community extends to other
prominent social issues. City dwellers feel they do not have a voice as they
are being forced out of their homes due to rising rents and property values. Native
American communities continue to see their ancestral lands damaged by
extractive industries such as oil and gas, because they cannot rally a popular
movement large enough to protect their sacred spaces. And, in the borough of
Pompton Lakes, residents fatigued from protesting the contamination of their
homes for decades are struggling to advocate for themselves when they lack the
money and time to do so.
Organizational impacts should be included in every
environmental impact statement. They figure into the most critical aspects of development:
social harmony, civic engagement, and honest government. As such,
organizational impacts hold larger implications for a community than what is
dictated by a typical environmental assessment. They can determine whether the
residents even have the proper mechanisms in place to ensure active public
participation in determining the fate of their community.
References
Eccleston, C.H. Environmental
impact assessment: A guide to best professional practices. Boca Raton, FL:
CRC Press.
LaSala, J. (2018, April 8 & 2018, April 19). Personal
communication.
Marriott, B. B. (1997). Environmental
impact assessment: A practical guide. New York: McGraw-Hill.
O'Neill, J. M., & Fallon, S. (2018, March 02). Toxic Secrets:
Pollution, evasion and fear in North Jersey. Retrieved April 09, 2018, from http://www.northjersey.com/story/news/watchdog/2018/02/14/dupont-pompton-lakes-pollution/806921001/
Riggiola, L. (2018, March 21). Personal communication.
Andrew Herrera is a senior at Ramapo College of New Jersey majoring in
environmental studies.
