Ocean Disposal of Toxic Dredge Material In The New York Bight by Kerry Sullivan
ITS NOT JUST MUD! I’m sure you have seen the quarter page propaganda advertisements that have appeared in the local daily newspapers in New York City in the past few weeks, paid for by an organization called the Port Commerce whatever declaring that the Port Authority of NY/NJ plans only to dispose of clean mud out in Raritan Bay in what are called “Borrow Pits” 2500 feet from Staten Island’s beaches, and other areas of the New York Bight. They claim in large type “ITS JUST MUD!”. What an insult. What an insult to the intelligence of the people of Staten Island, New York State, and the whole Country.
Does the Port Authority of NY/NJ and the Army Corps of Engineers actually think that the citizens of this city are imbeciles? Do they think that we are idiots? Do they think that by running ads like that they sweep the problem of disposing of millions of cubic yds of toxic MUCK away?
The Corps and the Port Authority have insulted my intelligence, and yours. They have made my fighting mad, I had been told that Mr. Joe Seabode has left the Army Corps New York Districts Regulatory Branch which I had thought was the greatest thing to happen to the Port of New York in years, But know I find out there is just another psychopath out there telling the uninformed public to “just trust us” that the millions of cubic yards of contaminated dredge spoils that we plan to dump off your beach is JUST MUD! That ladies and gentlemen is a cold faced lie.
Unfortunately I have been faced with a personal illness for the past eight months, and I have not been able to write this column, or to get information out to the citizens of this area on what is going on in our marine district. But these lies being published in the local daily have made me angry. If it was just mud we are talking about, why pay the large sums of money to have the ads placed? Because it is propaganda that’s why. Its not even MUD, its MUCK ladies and gentlemen, its loaded with Agent Orange, dioxins, mercury, lead, arsenic, petrochemicals, cadmium, PCBs and some yet unnamed chemical agents that the Dept. Of Defense contracted the Diamond Shamrock Corporation, and other chemical giants to do research on during the Viet Nam War, When the Viet Nam War ended, they just dumped these chemicals into the waters of Newark Bay.
They just dumped these poisons into the water! That’s all they did. And then they just walked away.
ITS NOT JUST MUD, ITS TOXIC MUCK, And We don’t want it polluting our waterways. We don’t want it entering our food chain through the sale of the fish caught commercially in the New York Bight, and sold throughout the nation, and we don’t want it spraying over our beaches and homes during one of the raging Nor’easter storms that hits our shores every Fall and Winter. This plan to dump these chemicals on us is outrageous. It must be stopped.
This option for the disposal of this toxic muck out in the marine environment must be eliminated from what is being called the Dredge Material Management Plan for the Port of NY & NJ (DMMP). Somebody isn’t listening out there. Or somebody just doesn’t care. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) was due out two weeks ago. The FEIS will have in it what the Port Authority & The Army Corps hopes is the final solution to their dredging problem here in the Port of NY, I guess they didn’t realize that they were going to really piss me off with those Ads!
There are about a half dozen different options of decontamination technologies that they USACE has at their fingertips to utilize as safe and effective ways to dispose of this TOXIC MUCK, they must start to utilize these other options as soon as possible. The most sought after means of disposal, which of course is the cheapest, is to pick up the muck from Point “A” and disposing of it at Point “B”, Point “A” being the parts of Newark Bay and along areas of the Arthur Kill waterfront that large chemical corporations have had a free reign on dumping into for decades, just dumping toxic material in to the surrounding waters. Point “B” being the Lower New York harbor off of South Beach and Midland Beach, and in other areas under the guise of Restoration Projects.
The Grassy Bay project over in Jamaica Bay is included as a possible recipient of some of this material under what is being called the “Jamaica Bay Restoration Project”, Another possible solution for some of the material is fill for the new “Hudson River Park” on the West side of Manhattan, being touted as “beneficial uses of dredge material”. There are no beneficial uses for this material in a marine environment, it gets into the food chain ladies and gentlemen. Remember your basic biology in High School, The food apex? The worms and small animals and insects get their nutrients from the soil and plants, then they get eaten by larger animals, all the way up the food chain to humans?
You cannot cover the bottom of any bay or ocean with toxic material, and not expect it to make it into the food chain. Sea worms, sand worms, clams, oysters, mussels, plankton, etc., will filter these poisons out of the MUCK, and in turn be eaten by larger marine species, that will eventually be served to humans as the main course in some nice seafood restaurant somewhere, someplace. Is this all making sense? Governor Pataki, Governor Whitman are you listening? Governors, we want decontamination of this toxic MUCK, we don’t want any marine disposal of these highly contaminated dredge spoils near our beaches, near our homes, near our families.
In Section 8, Page 24 of the Corps DMMP it states “Treated sediment could potentially be a valuable resources, and it would be preferential to find beneficial uses rather then disposal in the ocean”, That statement is taken verbatim from the DMMP, so now why are they saying its just mud? Because its cheaper that’s why. Its cheaper for the Port Authority to dispose of this material in our backyard then it is to decontaminate it. It will make more profit for the Port Authority in this century then you could ever believe. It will keep the low paying sweatshop jobs in Latin America generating large profits for importers, it will keep the slave labor camps of the Peoples Republic of China operating at full scale, it will keep low quality goods on our store shelves well into the 21st century if only they can dispose of it the cheapest way. It will not ever show a profit to a brain damaged child.
Another option is to have the federal courts uphold the clean air act, the clean water act, and numerous other acts designed to protect us from these corporate polluters, and make them utilize existing technologies to decontaminate this material, also opening a new field of research into decontamination technology. I would sweat out this coming election if I was a politician in office seeking reelection this November, because based on records of some local pol’s, We don’t need them ‘round here. You can find out some of our local representatives voting records on the environment by getting on the Internet and going to www.nrpa.com, and on Political Contacts page there is a LINK to voting records for politicians, You should check this one out. You should remember how they voted, and if they voted in your best interest in November when reelection time rolls around.
This planned dumping of contaminated dredge spoils in the New York Bight, The Florida Key’s, Rhode Island’s, Narrasagett Bay, and Washington State’s, Puget Sound has got to stop, Decontamination technologies must be utilized for these toxic, and deadly dredge spoils!
If you want a copy of the Corps Final Environmental Impact Statement for the New York project which is due out any day now call Bob Kurtz at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at (212) 264-2230 and ask for a copy, you will see yourself what they have planned for this MUCK, the FEIS is free.
For more information call (718) 987-6037.