PHILADELPHIA – A privately owned illegal waste dump that was cleaned up in less than a decade provides a stark contrast with a federal site a mere 10 miles away that remains severely polluted despite nearly 50 years of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies.
The government-owned John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum and the privately-held Wade dump, both located just outside Philadelphia, have similar pollution histories, including illegal dumping, contaminant-fueled fires and being listed in EPA’s Superfund program.
The Wade site, which sat on the Delaware River in the somewhat-industrialized Chester, Pa., was cleaned with incredible speed. Meanwhile, the refuge, which was created to protect wildlife and provide a natural getaway from city life, has seen only token treatment.
“The Wade (ABM) site posed a current risk to human health and the environment when it was addressed in the 1980s, primarily due to the 1978 fire and the presence of uncontrolled tankers and drums on the site,” EPA spokesman Roy Seneca told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
“Similar risks to human health or the environment were not identified at the” refuge, Seneca said.
Congress mandated that the refuge’s pollution be studied and cleaned in 1980. Instead, the contamination continued, causing a Pennsylvania agency to post signs warning visitors not to eat the fish and banned commercial turtle harvesting, TheDCNF reported Sunday. Residents feared cancer threats and lawmakers advocated for the refuge’s cleanup.
The two most striking differences between the sites are their owners and their polluters.
Both the owners and polluters of the Wade dump are private parties, with the offenders being private companies that are supposed to pay for treatment, EPA records show. Conversely, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) owns the refuge and a main contaminant source, while the U.S. Navy, a local county government and defense contractors are among the polluters.
In fact, the Navy is still in ongoing litigation regarding its share of the pollution, which was first discovered in 1969, documents show.
The government’s role in delaying the refuge’s decontamination is unclear. The Navy declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation, and an agency spokesman said FWS is cooperating with the EPA.
Regardless, dangers were well known at both sites before 1980 but received extremely different treatment.
The Wade dump caught fire in 1978, with more than 200 emergency personnel responding. There were at least 39 cancer diagnoses, including 20 deaths among the responders, a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation revealed in 2000.
Federal officials were on site and discovered pollution 10 months before the fire, according to the Inquirer, but the EPA didn’t begin cleaning until 1981. It was among the first sites added to the Superfund program in 1983. The Superfund designation is reserved for the nation’s most dangerous and polluted sites.
The site was cleaned quickly – especially by Superfund standards – and was removed from the program in 1989, the EPA’s website shows. It took nearly 13 years on average to clean and remove fewer than 400 sites from the Superfund program, while another 1,300 sites are still active, a previous DCNF investigation found.
Conversely, a 1983 fire at the FWS-owned Folcroft landfill on the Heinz refuge initiated some EPA clean up, but was quickly halted. The landfill continued to leak pollution into the Darby Creek running through the refuge, EPA studies showed.
A 1986 EPA report recommended federal and state officials investigate polluters and try forcing them to fund cleanup. Instead, more studies were done.
A former employee at another landfill – called Clearview – within the Superfund site fought fires at the landfill because “local firefighters refused to respond,” he testified in court in 1984, according to an EPA report.
“[A]fter they fought the fires, he experienced a burning sensation in his throat and vomited for days,” it continued. He “once was hospitalized for more than a week for chemical burns after a barrel exploded and he was sprayed.”
Cleanup at Clearview didn’t begin until 2011 and is ongoing. It’s one of the refuge’s seven pollution sources. An investigation into Folcroft – a second source – is underway and treatment likely won’t begin for years.
Today, visitors are free to explore the Heinz refuge and paddle on the polluted Darby Creek, but prominent signs and an advisory on its brochures still warn residents not to eat the fish and a ban on commercial turtle harvesting remains in place.
Pollution exposure to humans is “not under control” and there’s “insufficient data” as to whether ground water is contaminated, according to the EPA’s website.
By contrast, the Wade dump isn’t scenic, but its safe. The site is now an open-air parking lot next to the Philadelphia Union Soccer Stadium and under the Commodore Barry Bridge, which crosses the Delaware River into New Jersey.
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