Lipari Landfill - Remediation

Remediation

In March 1994, Rohm and Haas reached a settlement with the United States Department of Justice under which the firm would address its liability for the materials it dumped there by spending an estimated $50 million to clean up the landfill site.

The cleanup project was estimated to have run in excess of $100 million by 1995, with the majority of costs paid by the companies that had material dumped at the site. Barrels for which manufacturers paid about 75 cents each as a fee to the landfill owner ended up costing around $2,000 per barrel to remove the contaminants from the soil.

About 90,000 tons of contaminated soil was removed from the off-site areas temporarily stored at the site of a former stock car race track in Pitman and later sent to a properly lined landfill. In 1995, Pitman's Alcyon Lake was drained and the sediment at the lake's bottom was removed for storage at the race track and later shipped offsite. Over a fifteen-year period, millions of gallons of water were pumped into the landfill to carry the toxic material through a system of pipes and into a pre-treatment facility that would treat the chemicals carried off in the leachate. Effluent from the plant was then sent to the local utility authority.

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