Gulf + Western Agrees to Delaware River Cleanup

The largest discharge of industrial water pollution on the east coast of the U.S.-effluent from a Gulf + Western Industries titanium dioxide plant in Gloucester City, New Jersey-is beginning to be cleared up as a result of an agreement reached in August between Gulf + Western and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

The effluent, consisting of a sulfuric acid along with iron, aluminum, chromium, zinc, and other suspended and dissolved solids, has been released into the Delaware River at the rate of up to I I million gallons per day ever since the plant began operating more than 40 years ago. "It's been going on for so long that in the area of the plume (which stretches for about a mile downriver) you don't have anything alive at all," said Arnold Schiffman, director of DEP's Division of Water Resources. "The pollutants interfere with the use of the river in terms of fish and other organisms, and they make the river murky and turbid," Schiffman said.

Under the terms of Gulf + Western's agreement with the DEP, the company will have 57 months to bring its effluent in line with state and regional water quality standards by neutralizing most of the acid contained in the effluent and by treating it to remove other pollutants.

A byproduct of the acid-neutralization process,- gypsum, may be marketed by Gulf + Western to cement and wallboard manufacturers, as stipulated in the "consent order" signed between the company and the DEP. The Gloucester City plant will produce nearly six times as much gypsum as it does titanium dioxide (a pigment used in paints and other products), and it may even adopt gypsum as its primary product with titanium dioxide as the byproduct.

According to New Jersey officials, no other plants in the U.S. which produce gypsum as a byproduct of acid neutralization processes have taken the extra step of converting the gypsum into a marketable form.

"Gulf + Western has a branch involved in the cement industry, so we have access to the necessary technical expertise," said company spokesperson -Gordon Smith. "We just need to solve the problem of working with cement companies to commercialize the gypsum, but we're very hopeful that this can be done."

The company will spend an estimated $34 million to clean up the Gloucester City effluent, and it has also agreed to pay $500,000 for improvements to the Gloucester City water system, including a new municipal well.

New Jersey also last month became one of the first states in the U.S. to establish an autonomous agency to oversee the locating of hazardous waste disposal sites. Under legislation signed by New Jersey governor Brendan Byrne, the state Hazardous Waste Facilities Siting Commission-consisting of three state or local officials ' three industry representatives, and three environmental or public interest group representatives-will have responsibility for selecting appropriate sites for disposal of hazardous wastes, licensing their users, and drawing up a state-wide hazardous waste disposal plan reflecting the need for such sites.

Sierra Club spokesperson Diane Graves, who was involved in drafting the state law setting up the commission, expressed satisfaction with the outcome. "Overall, the provisions we wanted in it, for involving local people in the whole process, including the siting process, are there," she said. "The chemical industry and hazardous waste industry grumbled, but they recognized that if they wanted (waste disposal) sites they'd have to go along" with citizens' and environmentalists' proposals for setting up the siting procedure.