One of government's most basic responsibilities is protecting public health. That's not happening in Ringwood with a notorious old dump that is now a Superfund site. Rather than remove more than 100,000 tons of toxic waste dumped about 40 years ago by the Ford Motor Co., the borough wants to build a recycling center on top of it. That's bad enough. What's even worse is that the state Department of Environmental Protection is going along with the plan, according to a letter the agency sent recently to an attorney representing the borough. Nearby residents should be outraged that borough and state officials are seemingly so unconcerned about a real risk to public health. The dumping site, which is off Peters Mine Road and near where many members of the Ramapough Lenape Nation live, has had a particularly sordid history. Ford, which once had a plant in nearby Mahwah, began disposing paint sludge in the wooded terrain in the late 1960s, when such dumping was not uncommon. The federal Environmental Protection Agency oversaw a cleanup of the site in the early 1990s and, in 1994, proclaimed the area free of contaminants. That was not true. After a series by The Record in 2005 found that huge amounts of waste were still in the ground, properly cleaning up the area was again an issue. The borough's plan is to cover the contaminated area with a 2-foot layer of soil and synthetic material. A recycling center would then be constructed on top. It is not unusual for old dumps, or... [Click here to see the rest of this post] |
Los Angeles has again topped a list of the cities with the worst smog in the nation, violating federal health standards for ozone an average of 122 days a year.
The annual air pollution rankings, being released Wednesday by the American Lung Assn., were dominated by the Los Angeles Basin and California's Central Valley, which despite vast improvements over the last few decades still have the nation's highest levels of ozone and fine particle pollution.
"Air pollution is not just a nuisance or the haze we see on the horizon; it's literally putting our health in danger," said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior policy director of the American Lung Assn. in California. "We've come a long way, but the status quo is not acceptable."
The report evaluated metropolitan areas based on recorded levels of ozone, the main ingredient in smog, and conducted a separate analysis of fine particles — or soot — the microscopic pollutants that tend to build up in colder, winter months.
The Los Angeles region ranked fourth among metropolitan areas nationwide for short-term spikes in fine particle pollution, coming in behind Fresno, Visalia and Bakersfield. The L.A. Basin tied for third with Bakersfield for annual fine particle concentrations.
The nonprofit advocacy group's "State of the Air" report derives its rankings from publicly reported measurements of ozone and fine particle pollution from official monitoring sites. Analysts used data from 2010, 2011 and 2012 and...