MARLBORO – The long path to being rid of all of the contaminants on the Imperial Oil federal Superfund site continued to make progress as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started the process of removing large tanks, barrels and structures from the property.
Imperial Oil is a closed plant off Tennent Road near Route 79 in the Morganville section of Marlboro. Imperial Oil was declared a federal Superfund site in the early 1980s. Remediation work on-site and off-site has been undertaken at various times during the 25 years since Imperial Oil was identified as a problem location.
Donald Graham, the on-scene coordinator from the removal action branch of the EPA, said crews have been working at Imperial Oil since January removing small tanks and clearing a laboratory of its chemicals.
Graham said that before a tank can be taken down, its contents must be carefully removed. The current actions on-site will also see the removal of all of the structures on the property, a process Graham estimated will be completed by July.
Project Manager Joe Gowers said the current action is part of an overall cleanup plan the EPA has for Imperial Oil. After the removal of tanks and waste drums from the site, the next steps are expected to be cleaning or removing contaminated soil and floating product on the surface of the water table, Gowers said.
Contaminants found onsite include arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and leads, all of which likely came from the processing of used oils on the property in the 1950s, Gowers said.
Mayor Jonathan Hornik said, “The removal of these tanks is progress toward cleaning up this contaminated site. This is good news for the environment and Marlboro residents. My administration will remain diligent in making sure this site, which has been contaminated since the 1980s, is fully remediated. We owe it (to) Marlboro residents to make sure that the cleanup of Imperial Oil is completed in a timely manner.”
Marlboro resident Tina Freedman has been working for years to push the EPA to clean up the Imperial Oil site. She said previous work associated with Imperial Oil has included the cleanup of off-site
Concerns regarding the on-site contamination remain an issue. The EPA is working on the latest design draft for the on-site cleanup, which should be delivered within the next few weeks, Freedman said.
“Once the design document is at 100 percent and adopted by the community and the EPA, we can then move forward
to secure the $25 million needed for funding,” she explained.
“We have turned the page
and now EPA Region II
will be responsible to
ensure that what was
promised to our community
with the formalized
Record of Decision
to remove all contamination
on-site, will be funded
and fulfilled. What lies quietly
MARLBORO
deep below this site’s surface is a danger to our environment and the people of our community and must be completely removed.”
The next step to try to ensure the complete cleanup at Imperial Oil is to create more awareness of the site to help get it at the top of the EPA Region II’s new ranking to be completed in September, Freedman said. She said reaching out to local federal government representatives will be an important step toward accomplishing that goal. Freedman said community involvement is also crucial.
“Our government officials must fight with us. It’s all the rage to think globally, but we must act locally. Together we can accomplish our goal of finally cleaning up this site,” Freedman said.
Congressman Rush Holt (D-N.J.), whose district includes Marlboro, spoke about the current work being done at the Superfund site.
“I think this is a good development for Imperial Oil. There are still some things that obviously stand between where we are now and having a truly clean site,” Holt said.
The congressman spoke about the bigger issue at hand, the dwindling Superfund, which he said the Bush administration has allowed to languish.
“The Superfund needs to be replenished,” Holt said, noting that there is some money appropriated each year for the fund.
Holt explained that the main idea behind the Superfund was for industrial money from polluters to keep the fund full, so that all of the nation’s Superfund sites could be treated. That full funding is not being done at the present time, he said.
He said the Superfund “is leading a penny-pinching existence and that makes it hard to clean up all those many Superfund sites in New Jersey. But this is good news for Marlboro and the Imperial Oil site. I look forward to the day when that area is completely restored.”

