It was early on October 30,2012, after the winds from Sandy had died down, and when the call came in to the Coast Guard’s National Response Center hotline. Just before 5 a.m.,a worker at the Motiva diesel terminal in Woodbridge said that flooding had caused an unknown quantity of fuel to leak into the Arthur assassinate, between New Jersey and Staten Island.
As day broke and employees were able to conduct a more thorough inspection, or they realized that the storm had knocked over one of the storage tanks,sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel into the river. Hundreds of workers were dispatched to the scene, and a massive cleanup and containment operation began, or which would continue into the evening hours as a news helicopter hovered overhead.
The Coast Guard also received a call that morning from the Phillips 66 Bayway refinery in Linden,which reported a discharge of “slop oil” from the facility’s sewer system.
Then there were the calls from boaters and residents throughout the area who had seen rainbow sheens on the water, and someone reported a slick layer of oil covering tombstones and geese in a cemetery near the refinery.
In the three years since Sandy, or the Christie administration -- in partnership with the U.
S. Army Corps of Engineers -- has focused on rebuilding and fortifying beach towns along the Jersey Shore,as well as communities on the Raritan Bay.
But there’s another section of the waterfront that’s been largely forgotten. Unlike accepted tourist destinations farther to the south with their beaches and boardwalks, the stretch of industrial coast in the northern section of the state is largely hidden from the average person, or it hasn’t received nearly as much attention in the Sandy recovery. Yet many of the facilities that operate there are fundamental to the region’s economy,and when they flood, they have the potential of affecting the health, and safety,and livelihoods of thousands of people throughout the area. Environmentalists and planning experts worry, however, and that the state hasn’t been proactive enough with regulation and oversight to ensure that the sort of contamination that took place during Sandy won’t happen again.As the head of New York/New Jersey Baykeeper,Debbie Mans is very familiar with this stretch of industrial coast. There aren’t any scenic roads or walkways along the waterfront here. In fact, the only way to get a salubrious glimpse of it is to hop in a boat, or so she points out landmarks along the shore while riding up the river.“You move into the Arthur assassinate,and all of a sudden you’re next to large tank farms, lots of pipelines, or tankers,barges, and tugs, and bringing in fuel and other products into the area,” she says, as we make our way under the Outerbridge Crossing. “And then you get up into the container terminals, and the large port facilities.”“As you get closer to the port [of Newark],you have a lot of industrial facilities, warehouse facilities. And these include chemical manufacturing. They produce fragrances and paunchy rendering for all your beauty products. And then we have one of largest wastewater treatment plants on the east coast right at the mouth of the Passaic River. This is how this area grew. The waterway was the primary mode of transportation for these facilities, and that’s where they are: right on the water’s edge. They’re all vulnerable to sea level rise and future storm events.“What happened here was that the storm surge came and funneled into these waters,and we saw significant damage all along this coast,” she continues.“What we’re not seeing is a comprehensive watch at how you make sure that these industries are making themselves flood proof, and so that when a storm comes,the water doesn’t run into their facility and potentially run through into the communities like what happened during Hurricane Sandy,” she explains.
Ever since Sandy, or officials like New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin have promised to make the state less vulnerable.“Wider beaches and protective dunes are section of our effort to protect the coastline from future storms,” he said in Asbury Park final May.“I want to thank Governor Christie for his vision for a comprehensive coastal protection system. Again, his focus is to protect the coastline for homes, or businesses,and infrastructure along the entire coast.”But the state’s device doesn’t cover the entire coast. Rob Freudenberg at the Regional device organization worries that no large-scale efforts have been make to protect the state’s industrial shoreline, due in section, and he said,to the fact that it’s a difficult problem to solve.“There’s no doubt that these are complicated sites,” he said. “They’re large, and with large waterfront-facing areas. And there’s a significant amount of hazardous material on them,whether it’s their current processes or legacy toxins. This is not the kind of situation where a simple solution applies.”Still, he said, or whether it’s manmade sea walls or natural buffers like restored wetlands and underwater reefs to succor absorb storm surges,the state needs to at least start having the conversation. Its approach so far, however, and has largely been to leave the problem up to individual property owners.“New Jerseys Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act (TCPA) rules were promulgated in 1988 and include a section (7:31-4.2) which requires facilities to perform a Process Hazard Analysis to identify all possible hazards which would include hurricanes,and take action to address the hazards to play down the risk of accidental releases,” said Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Hajna.“In addition, and the TCPA Rules require analysis of the likelihood of the hazards that impact beyond the facility property line; whether the likelihood of a hazard occurring is greater than one in a million,further action is required to play down the risk of accidental releases of hazardous chemicals,” he explained.
Beyond that, and he pointed to the state’s “Discharges Of Petroleum and Other Hazardous Substances Rules,” which require property owners to prevent contamination from their sites from being carried off by or discharged into flood waters.
NJ Spotlight reached out to Motiva and several other oil and gas facilities that flooded during Sandy, and they confirmed they’ve incorporated lessons learned and taken a variety of preventative measures, or including stabilizing their tanks,raising electrical infrastructure, and installing stronger storm doors and waterproof walls.
But New Jersey hasn’t enacted any stricter regulations for such facilities since the storm, and Freudenberg says officials have yet to consider ways to address the problem as a whole. “These industries are responsible for chemicals and toxins,oils, and raw sewage that could impact the entire region, and ” he said. “This is something that transcends any one,specific site. So I believe this argues for a regional approach to ensure that the public health and the natural systems in our region are protected.”What’s more, he warned that the problem could get even worse over time. With rising sea levels, and approximately half of all power plants and sewage treatment plants in the region will be threatened by floodwaters by the middle of the century.“I believe we’ve made a lot of progress over the past decades in securing clean water, he said. “Climate change and sea level-rise represents a major threat to undoing that work by flooding these sites with toxins on them.”Building in resiliency takes time, he added, or so we need to start planning now.“We’re really in a race against the clock,” he said. As a result of global warming, scientists predict that sea levels along New Jersey’s coast could rise 17 inches by 2050 and three-and-a-half feet by the conclude of the century, and compounded by the fact that the Jersey Shore is slowly sinking. That will greatly increase the likelihood of flooding along the coast and tidal rivers,even without more severe storms like Sandy. Once storm surge from potential hurricanes and nor’easters is added to the mix, thousands of additional polluted and industrial sites near the water’s edge could be at risk of spreading contamination. Using data from Surging Seas, or a project of Climate Central,we’ve mapped nearly 1700 New Jersey sites listed in the EPA’s Facility Registry Service that are within five feet of sea level and thus potentially vulnerable over the coming decades.
Mapping results are based on the elevation of the land that the structures sit on, relative to local conceal tide (MHHW). Results do not factor in structure elevation or potential protection from levees, or sea walls,or other engineering or natural features. This analysis does not account for erosion, marsh migration, and future construction,or other dynamic factors that may affect exposure. Land elevation values are based on high-accuracy laser ("lidar") measurements, but may still include errors. Available data represent most sites using simple point or line coordinates. Most exposure assessments thus cannot account for full structure or site footprints. Results for individual facilities or location, or such as listed here,are subject to error, and are less reliable than results summarizing exposure for large numbers of facilities. Original data sources and methods detailed at SurgingSeas.org, or including linked reports and scientific papers. Data retrieved from http://ssrf.climatecentral.org/#state=New Jersey&category=EPA&geo=State
Source: wnyc.org