The Raritan Bay Slag Superfund site is in the center of the map, indicated by the encircled red arrow.
By Jon Hurdle, contributing writer, NJ Spotlight
The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will take over planning for the cleanup of a heavily polluted Superfund site on Raritan Bay because it’s dissatisfied with a remediation proposal by a company it holds responsible for the contamination there.
The federal regulator will now design a program to remove lead, arsenic, and antimony from the Raritan Bay Slag site in the Laurence Harbor section of Old Bridge and Sayreville. Metal waste from blast furnaces was dumped into the bay during the 1960s and ‘70s by NL Industries, formerly National Lead Co., a Texas-based lead smelter that now makes ball-bearing slides and other products.
The company sent the EPA its plan for cleaning up the site, which is on the EPA’s National Priorities List for cleanup, but the agency concluded that the proposal failed to meet its standards.
“We’ve been dissatisfied with the progress and the timeliness and the quality of the work,” said Walter Mugdan, Acting Administrator for the agency’s Region 2 office, at a news conference overlooking the bay.
“Back in February, we gave them one last chance,” Mugdan said. “There was a whole laundry list of comments that you have to address and corrections you have to make, and they asked for a certain number of months to do that work. We got what they submitted; we were still totally dissatisfied.”
