New Jersey Network News; 1985--excerpts, The Pipe; The Pipe

<v Marc Levenson>The Ciba-Geigy Chemical Company in Toms River has two landfills on its property. <v Marc Levenson>The old one has contaminated the local groundwater and it's on the federal Superfund <v Marc Levenson>list. The new one was operated so poorly that the state imposed a record <v Marc Levenson>fine and opened a criminal investigation. <v Marc Levenson>But the landfills are minor compared to the pipeline. <v Marc Levenson>In the first of a two-part special report, Michael Aron tells us what the company has <v Marc Levenson>been dumping into the ocean for the last 19 years. <v Michael Aron>Ciba-Geigy, is a Swiss chemical company with a plant in Toms River. <v Michael Aron>Each day it discharges four and a half million gallons of toxic wastewater into the <v Michael Aron>Atlantic Ocean. Although it's treated, the wastewater still contains hundreds of <v Michael Aron>chemicals and metals. This is a partial list. <v Michael Aron>Every one of these is classified as hazardous. <v Peter Montague>It is known because of tests that were done by the <v Peter Montague>Department of Environmental Protection that these wastes are full of <v Peter Montague>mutagenic materials and carcinogenic materials.

<v Peter Montague>Cancer-causing and materials that will cause inherited genetic <v Peter Montague>changes in humans and in other forms of life. <v Michael Aron>The DEP's Division of Water Resources, which regulates wastewater discharges, <v Michael Aron>recently gave Ciba-Geigy a permit to continue its ocean discharge for another five <v Michael Aron>years. This division director says the 50 page permit is the most stringent <v Michael Aron>ever issued by the DP, which issues fifteen hundred such permits to industry <v Michael Aron>and sewage authorities. <v John Gaston>Sure, there's material going in the ocean that shouldn't be going there, <v John Gaston>but we think and we're working to verify the fact that the impacts associated <v John Gaston>with that are are tolerable in the short term until we implement a program <v John Gaston>within three years to remove the principal sources of contamination. <v Michael Aron>The heart of the permit is that within three years the effluent that comes out of <v Michael Aron>Ciba-Geigy's treatment plant and gets piped 10 miles underground to the ocean <v Michael Aron>must pass a bio assay test. <v Michael Aron>That means that half these test organisms must be able to survive for 96 hours

<v Michael Aron>in a 50/50 mixture of effluent and seawater. <v Michael Aron>Right now the effluent is so toxic that half the organisms die in a mixture of 5 <v Michael Aron>percent effluent and 95 percent seawater. <v Michael Aron>In other words, the effluent must be made 10 times less toxic within three years. <v Michael Aron>The company says it will spend 15 to 25 million dollars, adding carbon filtration <v Michael Aron>to its treatment system and altering its production processes to meet that goal. <v Michael Aron>But critics are not reassured. <v Stephanie Wauters>This permit we see as nothing more than a rubber stamp of Ciba's current practices. <v Michael Aron>A group called Ocean County Citizens for Clean Water has filed an appeal against the <v Michael Aron>permit. They think it's too lenient. <v Michael Aron>Their principal objections? Three years is too long to wait for a cleaner effluent. <v Michael Aron>And after three years, the permit still allows Ciba-Geigy to discharge 3 pounds per day <v Michael Aron>of lead, a half pound of mercury, 15 pounds of chromium, 4000 <v Michael Aron>pounds of suspended solids, 7000 pounds of organic carbons <v Michael Aron>every day. With the effluent then passed the bio assay test?

<v Michael Aron>No one knows. <v Peter Montague>I would say that the DEP has been permissive with Ciba-Geigy. <v Michael Aron>Peter Montague is the author of two books on water pollution. <v Michael Aron>He lives in Princeton and has filed his own appeal against the permit. <v Michael Aron>Why? Well, take lead, for example. <v Peter Montague>It's a very potent and dangerous material. <v Peter Montague>And under this permit, Ciba Geigy will be able to dump tons, literally tons <v Peter Montague>of lead into the public environment, into the ocean. <v Tom Chizmadia>We feel that the effluent has no negative impacts <v Tom Chizmadia>on the marine environment or to health. <v Michael Aron>Tom Chizmadia is the plant spokesman, the third the company has had in a year. <v Tom Chizmadia>After the water goes through its treatment, the resulting effluent is 99.5 <v Tom Chizmadia>percent water. A third of the balance of that are salts. <v Tom Chizmadia>The rest of that is composed of various organics and metals such as lead <v Tom Chizmadia>that are regulated in our permit. <v Stephanie Wauters>The company also likes to say that 99 - this waste is 99.5 <v Stephanie Wauters>percent water. Well, this product, which is put out by a

<v Stephanie Wauters>common insect killer, has more than 99 <v Stephanie Wauters>and a half percent water in it. <v Stephanie Wauters>And yet the less than a half of 1 percent is toxic enough to have all <v Stephanie Wauters>the warnings and and to tell the public not to get it on their skin. <v Michael Aron>The discharge takes place off Wortley Beach, about half a mile out. <v Michael Aron>At present, there's no evidence any harm has been done by 19 years worth of the <v Michael Aron>discharge. But not much testing has been done either. <v Michael Aron>And what has been done is unreliable. <v Michael Aron>Last May, DEP commissioner, Robert Huie, declared tautly Beach safe for swimming this <v Michael Aron>summer based on testing that an official here at Water Resources now says was <v Michael Aron>meaningles because of the concern he had. <v George McCann>The methods, the samples were collected and the type of analysis that was used. <v Michael Aron>Tomorrow night, we'll show you the underwater discharge. <v Michael Aron>We'll show it to the DEP and we'll see how even if it's made less toxic, it will <v Michael Aron>still violate state water standards. <v Michael Aron>I'm Michael Eireann.

<v Marc Levenson>A New York federal judge says a North Jersey water company's strategy to enforce the <v Marc Levenson>state's drought rationing went too far. <v Marc Levenson>So the Hackensack Water Company has been ordered to destroy a list of customers it <v Marc Levenson>compiled through Social Security numbers. <v Marc Levenson>The judge called the list an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. <v Marc Levenson>The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit, says the decision amounts to an <v Marc Levenson>important right to privacy ruling. <v Marc Levenson>The Department of Environmental Protection gives out what, fifteen hundred wastewater <v Marc Levenson>discharge permits in New Jersey.

<v Marc Levenson>But Ciba-Geigy is the only industrial firm allowed to discharge into the ocean. <v Marc Levenson>Last night, in part one of his special report, Michael Eireann told us how the DEP <v Marc Levenson>plans to reduce the toxicity of Ciba-Geigy's ocean discharge. <v Marc Levenson>Tonight, he tells us that even a less toxic discharge has <v Marc Levenson>its objectional features. <v Tom Chizmadia>In terms of the color of the effluent, the best analogy I can use is the painter's <v Tom Chizmadia>palette. We make dyes here. <v Tom Chizmadia>When you have a lot of colors coming together, you're not going to get a clear, a clear <v Tom Chizmadia>final process. <v Michael Aron>That's company spokesman Tom Shiz. Media explaining why the wastewater from Ciba-Geigy's <v Michael Aron>pipeline is so dark even after treatment. <v Michael Aron>You can see it here, exiting one of the pipelines, 50 discharge ports. <v Michael Aron>It's the brown liquid. The fact that it has a color violates a state regulation. <v Michael Aron>We played the tape for the DEP director whose division recently renewed Ciba Geigy's <v Michael Aron>permit to operate the pipeline. <v Michael Aron>Isn't there a water quality standard in this state that says that a discharge <v Michael Aron>can not discolor the receiving waters with his effluent?

<v Michael Aron>And isn't that, in fact, what Ciba-Geigy is doing day and <v Michael Aron>night? <v John Gaston>That's been their past practice. <v John Gaston>And what you're seeing on the tape really is another reason why they <v John Gaston>have to go to higher levels of technology to treat their wastewater. <v John Gaston>But they're a dye plant. It's still going to be some color. <v John Gaston>Well, it may or may not be. <v Michael Aron>Chizmadia says the state isn't worried about color. <v Tom Chizmadia>Clarity in terms of clear. <v Tom Chizmadia>You know, being clear in nature is not a condition of the permit. <v Michael Aron>In other words, the company can be in compliance with its permit and still violate the <v Michael Aron>color standard. Although the ocean is dynamic and clearly does dilute <v Michael Aron>the effluent, the surfers know it's there. <v surfer>A lot of people again turned off to paddle out. <v surfer>You see brown in the whitewash and everything, you don't want to go surfing anymore. <v Frank Livelli>This effluent has been described by the DEP as the most mutagenic material <v Frank Livelli>ever tested in the EPA labs as of that day. <v Frank Livelli>A mutageic as described by the DEP is a product which can cause <v Frank Livelli>cancer, birth defects, thought disease and aging.

<v Michael Aron>Critics of the DEP worry more about what's in the effluent than its color. <v Michael Aron>They think the permit is too lenient and that the DEP has ignored its own scientists. <v Stephanie Wauters>The discharge is clearly mutagenic waste. <v Stephanie Wauters>Such a discharge should not be permitted. <v Stephanie Wauters>This is an internal DEP memo. <v Stephanie Wauters>These generalized comments based on DEP's own testing <v Stephanie Wauters>have seemed to go by the wayside. <v John Gaston>The report that's been so extensively quoted was a draft report that they put out <v John Gaston>and the draft report had to be the subject of review by peers <v John Gaston>when their peers reviewed that report. <v John Gaston>And when the director of the office reviewed the report, he felt that the <v John Gaston>language that was used in that conclusion was too strong for the evidence <v John Gaston>that was there. <v Peter Montague>The DEP is a highly politicized agency and the Office of Science <v Peter Montague>and Research is acting and reporting <v Peter Montague>on science and health matters.

<v Peter Montague>But by the time that science and health information floats upward into the <v Peter Montague>arena of policy, it gets watered down. <v John Gaston>There's no basis to say that the layers of bureaucracy watered down <v John Gaston>decisions at all. <v John Gaston>In the case of Ciba-Geigy we've taken a very hard stance with respect to their <v John Gaston>plan. <v Michael Aron>1000 people work at Ciba-Geigy. It's the largest private employer in all <v Michael Aron>of Ocean County. And the company says if the pipeline were shut down, it would have <v Michael Aron>to shut down. <v Tom Chizmadia>If you look at the fact that the intent is to stop us from discharging <v Tom Chizmadia>translated, that means to closing the plant. <v Tom Chizmadia>We need the wastewater treatment facility and the pipeline in order to operate. <v Michael Aron>DEP says there are two other reasons for not shutting the pipeline. <v John Gaston>One is that the law doesn't provide for it, and second, <v John Gaston>we don't have evidence that would drive us in that in that direction. <v John Gaston>If the evidence drove us in that direction, why we would we would consider that kind of <v John Gaston>a very stringent move.

<v Michael Aron>You make it sound like it's a real folly, what's going on down there. <v Peter Montague>Well, I don't know whether I'd characterize it as a folly. <v Peter Montague>It's it's business as usual, what's going on down there. <v Peter Montague>It has been profitable to conduct business in this way for many years. <v Peter Montague>And there's a lot of momentum for doing it the same way year after <v Peter Montague>year. <v Michael Aron>As in most modern arguments about exposure and risk, it's hard to know which side <v Michael Aron>is right. The residents say, then why not air on the side of caution and shut the <v Michael Aron>pipeline? The state says, how can we shut the pipeline and throw people out of work <v Michael Aron>when there's no evidence any harm has been done? <v Michael Aron>While the argument continues, four and a half million gallons of toxic effluent will be <v Michael Aron>discharged into the ocean every day, just as it has for the past 19 <v Michael Aron>years. From Ortley Beach in Ocean County, I'm Michael Aron. <v Marc Levenson>And still ahead tonight, Michael Barkin will be back with the complete weather outlook. <v Marc Levenson>And in business, Dick Forni reports on a move by General Motors to move

<v Marc Levenson>their new cars. Stay with us.