Creosote cleanup offices moving

EPA phone number, the primary contact for residents with questions, should remain (908) 203-0012

By: Eric Schwarz
   The federal officials involved in the Superfund cleanup of the Federal Creosote site will move their offices next week after occupying a storefront on South Main Street for about two years.
   The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers officials who work out of the Manville office will consolidate their offices with Sevenson Environmental Services Inc. Sevenson’s office is in the northeast corner of the Rustic Mall, near the Claremont development where soil contaminated with the carcinogen creosote is being cleaned up.
   The contamination at the housing development is believed to have resulted from practices at Federal Creosote, the railroad tie-treating plant that operated until the mid-1950s.
   Rich Puvogel, the EPA’s site project manager, said his agency and the Army Corps each will have one trailer at the 26 Rustic Mall site, and Sevenson will have at least two.
   The EPA phone number, the primary contact for residents with questions, should remain 908-203-0012, Mr. Puvogel said.
   The trailers are scheduled to arrive Tuesday, Jan. 9, and be occupied by Friday, Jan. 12.
   Around the time the move takes place, another contractor, CDM Federal Projects, will do drilling work behind a large fence where eight homes recently were demolished on East Camplain Road, to delineate the edges of the lagoon where creosote tar seeped into the ground more than 40 years ago.
   "The reason for these borings is to fill data gaps, to obtain information we couldn’t obtain previously due to structures and vegetation being in the way," Mr. Puvogel said.
   "CDM should be completing this boring (drilling) work probably next week or the week after," Mr. Puvogel said Wednesday.
   In a month after that point, analysis of the samples will be completed and Sevenson can begin digging in the fenced-in area on East Camplain Road to remove the creosote, he said.