2011 / Q4 News Briefs

New center is located at 71 Carteret Ave.
Information center near Garfield site is now open spacer

JERSEY CITY, N.J., Dec. 18, 2011 – PPG Industries has completed the move of its public information center to a location near the Garfield Avenue site so the office can be closer to the cleanup work.

The Garfield Avenue Renewal Company, PPG’s
wholly owned subsidiary responsible for assisting PPG with community outreach in Jersey City, is now located
at 71 Carteret Ave.

The office features documents in connection with all of PPG’s chromium cleanup sites in Hudson County.
Offstreet parking is available.

The office is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and by appointment. Company representatives are also available via:

Telephone: 201-938-0909
Email: info@garfieldavenuerenewal.com
Mail: P.O. Box 15756, Jersey City, N.J. 07305

The Garfield Avenue Renewal Company operated from an office at 334 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive from
July 2007 until the end of August 2011.


Deputy Mayor Kabili Tayari responds to a question.
25% Cleanup by Summer 2012, Finish by 2014 spacer

JERSEY CITY, N.J., Nov. 8, 2011 – Officials responsible for the cleanup of chromium contamination at sites along Garfield Avenue told audience members at a Nov. 1 public meeting that excavation will resume in January and the project is on track to meet the 2014 goal for completion.

In his presentation to approximately 30 at the Mary McLeod Bethune Life Center, Mike McCabe, the independent, court-appointed site administrator for PPG Industries’ chromium cleanups, said the company has dug up and hauled away nearly 73,000 tons of chrome-impacted material, or approximately 10 percent of the total.

PPG expects to be 25 percent complete by midyear next year and 100 percent complete by the end of 2014.

In preparation for renewed excavation, PPG is installing a system that will decontaminate water on site, eliminating the need to truck it to a treatment facility. Instead, clean water will be piped to a local sewer in accordance with permits, enabling the company to remove contaminated material at a greater rate.

In addition, the company is conducting limited digging in Carteret Avenue to determine the exact location of buried utilities because in many cases maps are incomplete. Later this month, PPG plans to drive steel sheets into the ground to manage the excavation and contain groundwater.

McCabe said PPG’s site managers quickly responded to reports of contaminated water in areas neighboring cleanup sites as a result of record rainfall in the region. Under the direction of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, precautionary cleanups were conducted and test results later confirmed the presence of contamination. Nearby residents were inspected and no evidence of chrome contamination was found.

Ben Delisle of the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency provided an update on the status of the proposed Berry Lane Park. He said an environmental investigation determined chrome contamination was limited to the area of the former Morris Canal. A cleanup plan is under development and Delisle said he hopes to begin cleanup work next summer.

Meanwhile, Brian McPeak, site administrator/project manager, reported that no chrome waste has been found at any residential property inspected under the Residential Inspection Program, which enables residents living near PPG chromium cleanup sites to request testing their homes if they suspect chromium waste is in or on their property. Of the 62 inspection requests eligible under the program’s guidelines, record searches indicated there was no history of chromium waste on any of the properties. Follow-up physical site inspections requested by property owners and soil samples didn’t turn up any chrome waste either.


Workers install water treatment system at Garfield Ave. Site.
Come hear about next steps in Garfield Avenue cleanup spacer

JERSEY CITY, N.J., Oct. 20, 2011 – More than 70,000 tons of chromium-contaminated soil have already been removed from the Garfield Avenue Site in an initial cleanup, and preparations are under way to resume excavation in January at an accelerated rate.

A public meeting led by the independent,
court-appointed site administrator with oversight responsibility for PPG Industries' chromium cleanups will outline next steps in the cleanup, which is 10 percent complete. The goal is to complete 25 percent by midyear next year and 100 percent by the end of 2014.

The meeting will be conducted Tuesday, Nov. 1,
from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., at the Mary McLeod Bethune
Life Center, 140 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in
Jersey City.

Representatives from the City of Jersey City, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and PPG will be on hand to answer questions and provide more detail.

No preregistration is required.