DEP: Firm at Superfund site
lacks required cleanup plan
By larry ramer
Staff Writer
MARLBORO — Imperial Oil, a company that sits on land that has become a federal Superfund site, does not have a government-approved plan for preventing spills and dealing with spills that do occur.
Beth Reddy, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection section chief, said the cleanup plan submitted by Imperial Oil, Orchard Place, to the department last year was rejected in March 2002.
The company was given 30 days to submit a new plan, but its revised version failed to pass muster as well, resulting in a $5,000 fine being levied by the state on the company, Reddy said. Imperial Oil is currently appealing the fine, she said. Two phone messages left with the company’s lawyer by the News Transcript requesting comment on this matter were not returned.
As of last week, the company, which is off of Tennent Road near Route 79 in the Morganville section of Marlboro, had still not furnished the DEP with a complete spill prevention and cleanup plan, she noted.
Tina Freedman, chairwoman of Marlboro’s Burnt Fly Bog-Imperial Oil Citizens Advisory Committee, expressed her dismay at the news that Imperial Oil does not have an approved cleanup and spill prevention plan.
"What is shocking to me, based on the history of this Superfund site, and based on spills that happened in the past, is that Imperial Oil did not implement, in a proactive manner, an appropriate, approved DEP plan that would prevent further contamination and spills," Freedman said.
Currently, two primary technical issues in the cleanup and spill prevention plan still have to be resolved, Reddy said.
The first issue concerns alarms that have to be installed in the company’s above-ground storage tanks. The alarms sense when the contents are near the top of each container, so the tanks do not overflow, Reddy said. The lack of such an alarm system could impact on the company’s ability to clean up spills, the DEP official added.
The other issue involves Imperial Oil’s failure to provide a digital site plan to the DEP. A digital site plan of the Imperial Oil Superfund site would be compatible with the DEP’s geographical information system and allow the agency to more efficiently advise the company on ways of dealing with and preventing spills, Reddy added.
A digital site plan would also "show what the company is doing to prevent spills" and enable the DEP to "get a clear idea of where the company’s tanks are in relation to each other and cleaning equipment," Reddy explained.
The DEP official said Imperial Oil is claiming that it cannot afford to provide a digital site plan. Reddy said such a plan can be quite expensive, depending on the site. Imperial Oil still has not provided information on how much it would cost the firm to provide a digitized version of its site plan. A New Jersey deputy attorney general and a lawyer representing Imperial Oil are currently working to resolve the matter, Reddy added.