Group says NJ toxic waste dumping caused $1B in harm, calls settlement inadequate

Years of toxic waste dumping in a Jersey Shore community where childhood cancer rates rose caused at least $1 billion in damage to natural resources, according to an environmental group trying to overturn a settlement between New Jersey and the corporate successor to the firm that did the polluting.

Save Barnegat Bay and the township of Toms River are suing to overturn a deal between the state and German chemical company BASF under which the firm will pay $500,000 and carry out nine environmental remediation projects at the site of the former Ciba-Geigy Chemical Corporation plant.

That site became one of America's worst toxic waste dumps and led to widespread concern over the prevalence of childhood cancer cases in and around Toms River.

Save Barnegat Bay says the settlement is woefully inadequate and does not take into account the scope and full nature of the pollution.

The state Department of Environmental Protection defended the deal, saying it is not supposed to be primarily about monetary compensation; restoring damaged areas is a priority, it says.

“Ciba-Geigy’s discharges devastated the natural resources of the Toms River and Barnegat Bay,” said Michele Donato, an attorney for the environmental group. “The DEP failed to evaluate decades of evidence, including reports of dead fish, discolored waters, and toxic effluent, that exist in its own archived files.”

Those materials include documents dating back to 1958 detailing fish kills and severe oxygen depletion caused by the company's dumping of chemicals into the Toms River and directly onto the ground. It also includes a study by a consultant for Ciba-Geigy showing that a plume of contaminated underground water is three-dimensional and thus could not be adequately assessed by the manner used by New Jersey to calculate damage to natural resources, the group said.

An accurate calculation of damages to the site and the surrounding area would exceed $1 billion, Save Barnegat Bay said in court papers.

"This deal does not come close to compensating our community for what we’ve suffered,” former Toms River Mayor Maurice Hill said in a January public hearing on the settlement.

The state declined to comment. In court papers, it defended its handling of the damage assessment.

BASF, which is the corporate successor to Ciba-Geigy, declined comment on the litigation but said it is committed to carrying out the settlement it reached with New Jersey in 2022.

That calls for it to maintain nine projects for 20 years, including restoring wetlands and grassy areas; creating walking trails, boardwalks and an elevated viewing platform; and building an environmental education center.

Starting in the 1950s, Ciba-Geigy — which had been the town’s largest employer — flushed chemicals into the Toms River and the Atlantic Ocean, and buried 47,000 drums of toxic waste in the ground. This created a plume of polluted water that has spread beyond the site into residential neighborhoods and is still being cleaned up.

The state health department found that 87 children in Toms River, which was then known as Dover Township, had been diagnosed with cancer from 1979 through 1995. A study determined the rates of childhood cancers and leukemia in girls in Toms River “were significantly elevated when compared to state rates.” No similar rates were found for boys.

The study did not explicitly blame the increase on Ciba-Geigy’s dumping, but the company and two others paid $13.2 million to 69 families whose children were diagnosed with cancer. Ciba-Geigy settled criminal charges by paying millions of dollars in fines and penalties on top of the $300 million it and its successors have paid so far to clean up the site.