Property value drop amidst concerns of soil Contamination

Paramus residents fear soil stigma

Monday, July 30, 2007 By MICHAEL GARTLAND STAFF WRITER

Tainted soil found at West Brook Middle School months ago has some Paramus homeowners concerned that their property values will drop.

So far, there's no hard evidence that prices in the neighborhood around West Brook have dipped in response to the pesticide contamination. But those who predict a downswing feel sure that the school district's tarnished reputation for covering up the contamination can mean only one thing for property owners.

"When people hear stories like that, let's face it, they're concerned," said Gary Siramarco, whose twin daughters attend West Brook. "It's going to affect property values."

The public first learned of tainted soil at West Brook in May, about four months after environmental consultant Melick-Tully and Associates alerted school officials to pesticides in the soil at levels 39 times state safety guidelines.

The ensuing controversy prompted Paramus Mayor James Tedesco to close the school and the Board of Education to put Superintendent Janice Dime on paid leave.

By the numbers • Average home assessment: $451,791* • Average home price of residences sold between January and June 2007: $622,200 • Range of home prices in the neighborhood around West Brook Middle School: $450,000 to $2 million *Figures from 2004 boroughwide assessment Source: Paramus Tax Assessor's Office

For residents who live in the area near West Brook -- west of Route 17, east of Paramus Road, between West Midland and West Ridgewood avenues -- it also has sparked fears that their most important investments may now be in jeopardy. The neighborhood is an eclectic mix of ranches, colonials, Cape Cods and bilevels, which can cost $450,000 to $2 million.

Richard Curran, an independent real estate appraiser, said concerns over property values there are by no means unjustified.

"Perceptions are what create value," he said. "Is that going to hurt it? Most likely."

As a real estate appraiser, Curran's job is to value property based on past sales, not on speculation. He said he does not have recent sales figures on homes in the neighborhood around West Brook, and thus could not make any definitive judgments on property values there.

"We can only compare to the past, not project to the future," he said. "There's no way to really tell until someone tries to [sell]."

Paramus Councilman Richard LaBarbiera said he was unaware of any impact on property values. "I don't know how anybody could draw such a conclusion after such a short period of time," he said.

He still doesn't think it will affect people's perceptions of the town.

"I trust that Paramus will remain a very desirable community in the years to come," he said.

No clear picture

James Anzevino, Paramus tax assessor, did not have a clear picture of whether the tainted soil has affected values. He expected to have a better sense in September because of the time it takes to process records after homes are sold.

"If someone closed on May 15, we're probably just getting [records] in now," he said.

Since late May, three homes in the neighborhood around West Brook have been sold, Paramus Building Department records show. Prices on those sales are not currently available.

Sales prices -- when compared with the last property assessment in 2004 -- take into account many variables, including whether improvements have been made, whether a new home was built, the size of the home and the most recent trends in the market, Anzevino said.

As a result, making any connection between sale prices and the soil contamination is premature, he said.

Residential real estate brokers in and near Paramus say they haven't witnessed a marked change in values around West Brook since the contamination story broke two months ago. They say dips in value are more likely a result of general market forces.

"The normal cycle of real estate will continue," said Lynn Zymet, a broker manager at Prudential Adamo Realty in Paramus. "There's a dip overall."

She noted that buyers looking to purchase a house in the area would have to research the contamination at West Brook on their own. Real estate brokers are prohibited by law from telling potential buyers details about a neighborhood's history and its demographics.

"There's lists that probably the town will have that will probably disclose the conditions," she said. "Would I price a house lower in that area? I would not."

'Unfair to the town'

But the fears remain. Michael Evangel is concerned that property values throughout Paramus will be adversely affected.

"A lot of people are worried about it," he said. "It's really unfair to the town. This is not just a Paramus problem. This is a national problem."

Since aldrin, dieldrin and chlordane -- the pesticides found at West Brook -- were commonly used before the federal government banned them in the late 1980s, Evangel believes schools throughout the nation are contaminated.

One factor contributing to Olivia Delmonico's concern is what she sees as a lack of resolution. Dime still receives a paycheck from the school district and the district's business administrator, Jerome Bohnert, continues to work.

"We need to bring back the town's reputation," she said. "Everybody's fearful property values will plummet."

Not all homeowners who live near West Brook are afraid they'll lose out, though. John Blume has lived a block from West Brook for 11 years and has expressed mixed feelings about the potential for health risk and what it might mean to his property value.

At first, he was alarmed when contamination was discovered, but more recently, he expressed confidence that it would not cause any health problems. He also said testing his own property for contamination would cause tension among his neighbors, especially if the tests came back positive.

"If that were to happen, everybody would go crazy around here," he said. He won't test, he said, until his neighbors do.

"My wife has been digging in the dirt here for the past 40 years," he said. "If there's any illness in the neighborhood, I don't know anything about it."

Press reports blamed

Some state and local officials have criticized the press for creating what they describe as an alarmist portrait of West Brook. Kevin Schick, the state Department of Environmental Protection's chief of environmental evaluation, said press accounts of contamination at West Brook magnified the potential health risk beyond reason.

"You made it seem like kids are going to die," he said. "These chemicals are found in all our bodies ... due to natural exposure."

Others – such as the Siramarcos – aren't certain that contamination at West Brook is so benign. Two of Gary Siramarco's daughters have complained of arthritis-like aching uncommon for girls their age, and other parents have expressed similar concerns about their children. Dozens of parents and teachers have retained lawyers who are working on class-action lawsuits.

Despite this, some parents feel as if speaking out has made them pariahs. They argue that people in the neighborhood are more concerned with property values than public health.

Joseph Schisani has a child at West Brook and has been outspoken about the tainted soil there. He feels many of his neighbors are worried about not only falling property values, but also the school district's damaged reputation.

"People move into this town for what reasons? Good education and low taxes," he said. "I'm worried about my property, but I'm also worried about my kids. I'm not happy with what's going on."

He's committed to speaking out, but says it has alienated him from many of his neighbors.

"They think I'm going to hurt them with property values," he said.

E-mail: gartland@northjersey.com

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Soil contamination

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Natural environment

Excavation of leaking underground storage tank causing soil contamination

Soil contamination is the presence of man-made chemicals or other alteration in the natural soil environment. This type of contamination typically arises from the rupture of underground storage tanks, application of pesticides, percolation of contaminated surface water to subsurface strata, leaching of wastes from landfills or direct discharge of industrial wastes to the soil. The most common chemicals involved are petroleum hydrocarbons, solvents, pesticides, lead and other heavy metals. This occurrence of this phenomenon is correlated with the degree of industrialization and intensity of chemical usage.

The concern over soil contamination stems primarily from health risks, both of direct contact and from secondary contamination of water supplies^[1]. Mapping of contaminated soil sites and the resulting cleanup are time consuming and expensive tasks, requiring extensive amounts of geology, hydrology, chemistry and computer modeling skills.

It is in North America and Western Europe that the extent of contaminated land is most well known, with many of countries in these areas having a legal framework to identify and deal with this environmental problem; this however may well be just the tip of the iceberg with developing countries very likely to be the next generation of new soil contamination cases.

The immense and sustained growth of the People's Republic of China since the 1970s has exacted a price from the land in increased soil pollution. The State Environmental Protection Administration believes it to be a threat to the environment, to food safety and to sustainable agriculture. According to a scientific sampling, 150 million mi (100,000 square kilometres) of China’s cultivated land have been polluted, with contaminated water being used to irrigate a further 32.5 million mi (21,670 square kilometres) and another 2 million mi (1,300 square kilometres) covered or destroyed by solid waste. In total, the area accounts for one-tenth of China’s cultivatable land, and is mostly in economically developed areas. An estimated 12 million tonnes of grain are contaminated by heavy metals every year, causing direct losses of 20 billion yuan (US$2.57 billion). ^[2].

The United States, while having some of the most widespread soil contamination, has actually been a leader in defining and implementing standards for cleanup^[3]. Other industrialized countries have a large number of contaminated sites, but lag the U.S. in executing remediation. Developing countries may be leading in the next generation of new soil contamination cases.

Each year in the U.S., thousands of sites complete soil contamination cleanup, some by using microbes that “eat up” toxic chemicals in soil^[4], many others by simple excavation and others by more expensive high-tech soil vapor extraction or air stripping. At the same time, efforts proceed worldwide in creating and identifying new sites of soil contamination, particularly in industrial countries other than the U.S., and in developing countries which lack the money and the technology to adequately protect soil resources.

Contents [hide] 1 Microanalysis of soil contamination 2 Health effects 3 Ecosystem effects 4 Regulatory framework 4.1 United States of America 4.2 China 4.3 United Kingdom 5 Cleanup options 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Microanalysis of soil contamination

To understand the fundamental nature of soil contamination, it is necessary to envision the variety of mechanisms for pollutants to become entrained in soil. Soil particulates may be composed of a gamut of organic and inorganic chemicals with variations in cation exchange capacity, buffering capacity, and redox poise.^[5] For example, at the extremes, one has a sand component, a coarse grained, inert, and totally inorganic substance; whereas peat soils are dominated by a fine organic material, made of decomposing organic material and highly active. Most soils are mixtures of soil subtypes and thus have quite complex characteristics. There is also a great diversity of soil porosity, ranging from gravels to sands to silt to clay (in increasing order of porosity), pore size, and pore tortuosity (both in decreasing order). Finally there is a wide spectrum of chemical bonding or adhesion characteristics: each contaminant has a different interaction or bonding mechanism with a given soil type.

On balance, some contaminants may literally drain through soils such as sand and gravel and move to other soils or deeper aquifers, while polar or organic chemicals discharged into a clay soil will have a very high adsorption. Thus most soil contamination is the result of pollutants adhering to the soil particle surface, or lodging in interstices of a soil matrix. Clearly the equilibrium reached is a dynamic one, where new pollutants may lodge on new soil particles and the action of groundwater movement may over time transport some of the soil contaminants to other locations or depths.

Soil contamination results when hazardous substances are either spilled or buried directly in the soil or migrate to the soil from a spill that has occurred elsewhere. For example, soil can become contaminated when small particles containing hazardous substances are released from a smokestack and are deposited on the surrounding soil as they fall out of the air. Another source of soil contamination could be water that washes contamination from an area containing hazardous substances and deposits the contamination in the soil as it flows over or through it.

Health effects

The major concern is that there are many sensitive land uses where people are in direct contact with soils such as residences, parks, schools and playgrounds. Other contact mechanisms include contamination of drinking water or inhalation of soil contaminants which have vaporized. There is a very large set of health consequences from exposure to soil contamination depending on pollutant type, pathway of attack and vulnerability of the exposed population. Chromium and many of the pesticide and herbicide formulations are carcinogenic to all populations. Lead is especially hazardous to young children, in which group there is a high risk of developmental damage to the brain and nervous system, while to all populations kidney damage is a risk.

Chronic exposure to benzene at sufficient concentrations is known to be associated with higher incidence of leukemia. Mercury and cyclodienes are known to induce higher incidences of kidney damage, some irreversible. PCBs and cyclodienes are linked to liver toxicity. Organophosphates and carbamates can induce a chain of responses leading to neuromuscular blockage. Many chlorinated solvents induce liver changes, kidney changes and depression of the central nervous system. There is an entire spectrum of further health effects such as headache, nausea, fatigue, eye irritation and skin rash for the above cited and other chemicals. At sufficient dosages a large number of soil contaminants cause death.

Ecosystem effects

Not unexpectedly, soil contaminants can have significant deleterious consequences for ecosystems^[6]. There are radical soil chemistry changes which can arise from the presence of many hazardous chemicals even at low concentration of the contaminant species. These changes can manifest in the alteration of metabolism of endemic microorganisms and arthropods resident in a given soil environment. The result can be virtual eradication of some of the primary food chain, which in turn have major consequences for predator or consumer species. Even if the chemical effect on lower life forms is small, the lower pyramid levels of the food chain may ingest alien chemicals, which normally become more concentrated for each consuming rung of the food chain. Many of these effects are now well known, such as the concentration of persistent DDT materials for avian consumers, leading to weakening of egg shells, increased chick mortality and potentially species extinction.

Effects occur to agricultural lands which have certain types of soil contamination. Contaminants typically alter plant metabolism, most commonly to reduce crop yields. This has a secondary effect upon soil conservation, since the languishing crops cannot shield the earth's soil mantle from erosion phenomena. Some of these chemical contaminants have long half-lives and in other cases derivative chemicals are formed from decay of primary soil contaminants.

Regulatory framework

United States of America

Until about 1970 there was little widespread awareness of the worldwide scope of soil contamination or its health risks. In fact, areas of concern such as Love Canal were often viewed as unusual or isolated incidents. In the U.S., passage of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969 required careful analysis of the consequences of any federally funded project. Passage of The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) by the U.S. Congress in 1976 established guidelines not only for handling of hazardous materials but transport and hauling^[7], such as required in cleanup of soil contaminants^[8]. In 1980 the U.S. Comprehensive Emergency Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) was passed^[9] to establish, for the first time, strict rules on legal liability for soil contamination. Not only did CERCLA stimulate identification and cleanup of thousands of sites, but it raised awareness of property buyers and sellers to make soil contamination a focal issue of land use and management practices; moreover, preparation of a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment has become standard practice for many parts of the western world and Japan.

While estimates of remaining soil cleanup in the U.S. may exceed 200,000 sites, in other industrialized countries there is a lag of identification and cleanup functions. Lesser developed countries are not without a share of the creation of soil contamination. Even though their use of chemicals is far less than industrialized countries, often their controls and regulatory framework is quite weak. For example, some persistent pesticides banned in the U.S. for decades are in widespread uncontrolled use in developing countries. It is worth noting that the cost of cleaning up a soil contaminated site can range from as little as about $10,000 for a small spill, which can be simply excavated, to millions of dollars for a widespread event, especially for a chemical that is very mobile such as MTBE or perchloroethylene.

Paramus, Mayor Tedesco Has Not Responded To Letter Requesting That Site Be Cleaned

As of October 16, 2007 Mayor Tedesco has not responded to the letter that was submitted. The letter was also submitted to the other council members and they have also yet to respond to this pressing matter.

Please help get the word out…We need to have this contamination cleaned up so that we do not have another situation like the West Brook School.

Mayor Tedesco himself stated that he would not allow another situation like the West Brook contamination happen again…yet this issue is not being resolved

Contamination Story