How Toxic Dumping Led To Tragedy In A Small Seaside TownThe big money though came not from refurbishing waste drums but from making them disappear. Back in the 1960s when the chemical industry was roaring in North Jersey the forests and farms in the central part of the state were the equivalent of Sutter's Mill in 1849 California. The rush was not to pull gold out of the ground but to dump chemical waste into it. Up in Newark the landfills were expensive and so crowded that the lines of trucks waiting to unload their drums would stretch for blocks. A generation earlier Ciba had found space and privacy in the deep woods of Ocean County to manufacture dyes and plastics on a massive scale. Now the chemical-waste haulers from Newark Elizabeth and Perth Amboy started to follow suit pointing their big rigs south on Route 9 in search of cheaper dumping grounds. (The Garden State Parkway would have been faster but trucks were banned north of Toms River.) They found plenty of willing partners among the farmers of Monmouth Burlington and Ocean counties. The real estate boom had not yet reached into the rural inland areas of the state and chickens could not compete with hazardous waste as a cash crop since farmers typically were paid anywhere from $20 to $50 per drum of waste dumped on their land.The big money came from from making waste drums disappear.One of the more enterprising landowners was a man named Edward Wilson who worked for Morton International in the 1950s and 1960s when the salt maker was broadening its business to encompass chemical manufacture. Wilson offered his family farm in Ocean County's Plumsted Township as a dumpsite for Morton's toxic wastes which included halogenated solvents chlorinated compounds volatile organics and heavy metals. His neighbor Dayton Hopkins was even more eager: He let Morton dump on three of his farms including his family's own 57-acre homestead. At the worst of those sites called Goose Farm drums were tossed into a pit that was 300 feet long and 100 wide.Most of the rural townships also operated small municipal landfills--back then people called them dumps--which were also popular destinations for industrial waste from out of town because they charged less and had much shorter lines than their counterparts to the north. The town governments were just as eager as individual farmers to open their gates to the 18-wheelers from Newark. If the dumps were not burying waste they were burning it; on Fridays the usual burn day the trails of black smoke would billow for miles. Taking in industrial waste from out of town served everyone's short-term interest. Farmers and rural townships got much-needed cash while haulers and chemical companies got cheap and secluded dumping grounds where no one asked too many questions about what was in the drums. If anyone was worried about the longer-term environmental consequences there is no evidence of it. A generation later when investigators finally assessed the damage they identified two dozen major hazardous waste sites in Ocean County alone including seven farms and three town dumps. Cleaning them all up would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.As easy as it was to dump legally in the hinterlands of central Jersey many haulers wanted even sweeter deals. They preferred to do their dumping for free deep in the pinelands without anyone's permission or knowledge. No one stood in their way. In those days the closest thing New Jersey had to an anti-dumping law was a misdemeanor public nuisance statute; it was invoked very rarely and only in the most blatant cases. The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office did not begin going after dumpers until 1980 when an investigator named Dane Wells started trying to track them down. It was harder than it looked. According to Wells the midnight dumpers (though they sometimes operated in broad daylight) would use horseshoe roads in the woods narrow dirt paths with only one entrance and exit. That way they could just bring the 18-wheelers in and not have to turn them around after they dumped the drums. Or if it was liquid they would just open the spigot and let it run out he explained years later. The more advanced operations the ones with links to the organized crime families influential in the North Jersey hauling industry would post lookouts with walkie-talkies.Frank Fernicola followed his father into the drum business working first in Newark and then Toms River where his clients included Toms River Chemical. He also did some waste trucking but had to give up his hauling permit after he was convicted in the late 1960s of illegally dumping chemical drums at the old Manchester Township landfill about ten miles west of Toms River. Frank even made a brief foray into the incineration business: He hauled sodium waste from a North Jersey chemical plant to Beachwood just south of Toms River and burned it in an open pit. That escapade ended with a bang: An explosion summoned a town fire truck and Frank lost that permit too.Nick Fernicola needed a cheap place to dump all that waste a place where no one would ask any uncomfortable questions.His older brother Nick on the other hand had stayed away from the waste business for years--a high school summer spent working for his dad was more than enough. He was crazy about motorcycles and worked as an auto mechanic before opening a used car salvage and sales business in Newark. In 1966 when he was 31 he followed his brother south to Toms River running a gas station for a few years and then moving briefly to Idaho. When he returned to Toms River Nick Fernicola bounced through a series of construction jobs: At various times he drove a front-end loader laid pipe and set explosives. All the while he kept an eye out for a more lucrative opportunity perhaps even one in the family business. He found it one January night in 1971 at the Rustic Acres thanks to two guys named Sharkey and Columbo.The Rustic Acres was a blue-collar landmark in Ocean County until it was finally torn down in the late 1970s. The bar was out on Route 37 midway between the two largest employers in the county: Toms River Chemical and the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Its wooden tables and stools would fill up at the four o'clock shift change and again at midnight. Frank Fernicola shot pool at the Rustic Acres five nights a week sometimes accompanied by his brother Nick. Frank had hauled drums for Union Carbide and had friends who worked at the company's huge chemical plant on the Raritan River about 60 miles north in the town of Bound Brook. At the time it was one of the country's largest plastics factories generating hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic waste. Frank knew that Union Carbide was looking for a hauler to get rid of thousands of deteriorating drums of waste accumulating on the Bound Brook property and soon his brother knew it too. To Nick it sounded like an attractive business opportunity. It sure as hell beat punching a clock as a construction laborer.To turn a profit though Nick Fernicola would need a cheap place to dump all that waste a place where no one would ask any uncomfortable questions about what was inside the rusty 55-gallon steel drums. Enter Sharkey and Columbo. The two men (Fernicola would later claim to investigators that he never knew their real names) worked at the Dover Township Municipal Landfill the town dump for Toms River. They were also regulars at the Rustic Acres and one night Nick Fernicola told them about all those Union Carbide drums that needed a final resting place. The two men agreed to introduce him to the town's superintendent of public works who ran the landfill. Before long they had a deal: For a bargain-basement price of $10 per truckload Fernicola could dump the drums in the town landfill on Church Road but he could dump only at lunchtime when Sharkey was running the shift and he had to pay Sharkey directly. Many years later in a court deposition Fernicola acknowledged that the payment was not an official fee. When a lawyer asked whether it was a bribe Fernicola responded Could be.Fernicola drove up to Bound Brook to give Union Carbide the good news: He had found a way to get rid of their drums. In fact he claimed--falsely as it turned out--that he had lined up three authorized land fill areas according to a document he signed and gave to Union Carbide on February 16 1971. My company will handle all removal and disposal of said drums at a rate of $3.50 per drum and will assume all risks and problems arising from such removal and disposal of said drums he wrote. Fernicola was eager to begin. He would be clearing a hefty profit since he could dump an entire load of about thirty drums for just $10. He rented three trucks and hired two drivers to help him with the hauling. When Fernicola carried his first load to Toms River on April 1 a low-level manager at Union Carbide followed him to confirm that he was dumping at the town landfill. It would be the last time for eight months that Union Carbide would take an interest in where thousands of its waste-filled drums were going.Excerpted from Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation Copyright 2013 Dan Fagin. Excerpted by permission of Bantam Books a division of Random House Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Oh look at those nasty solar panels leaking all over the place disgusting awful!Oh wait my bad old solar panels do not do that but are recyclable!AuroriaTo elaborate more on your point one of the most horrendous crimes of legalized dumping of toxic waste is happening all over the US and Canada. What i'm referring to is the addition of fluoride to our drinking water. I say fluoride in quotes because that term is thrown around very loosely and in actual fact the fluoride chemical which they add to our water is actually a liquid slurry of many chemicals. The main source of the fluoride is actually hydrofluorosilicic acid. Where does this stuff come from? Well it certainly isn't manufactured for the purpose of adding to our water supplies. It is in fact a chemical by-product of the frertilizer and aluminum industries and it is the result of laws that prohibit these companies from venting waste gases from their smoke stacks. So what did they do? Well they introduced liquid mist scrubbers to the smoke stacks this pulls the chemicals out of the air and what your left with is a slurry of many different chemicals and heavy metals. The main component is hydrofluorosilicic acid but there is also arsenic lead mercury and a whole bunch of other nasties. So instead of spending millions of dollars on properly disposing of these hazourdous waste chemicals they actually slap a label on the barrel that say's Fluoride call it a product and sell it to our city's for millions of dollars each year.You me your children we are the dump site! We drink that water bath in it wash our clothes in it eat or drink products that were made from that water. Not to mention the 90% or so of that water that ends up back in our environment when you flush your toilet water your lawns.. etc. So what have they accomplished. They managed to side step illegal dumping laws because dumping that exact same barrel  in a landfill would be illegal and carry stiff criminal prosecution. And at the same time they have managed to dump it into our environment anyway slowly poison us all as the fluorosis of our bones teeth organs causes many many medical conditions that we simply write off as unfortunate cases of cancer arthritis allergies old age etc.. and they have managed to do so without spending a dime and they have actually called it a product and rake in millions from it each year!Don't believe me.. think it sounds too ridiculous to be true? Call your local water treatment plant ask them the chemical name for the fluoride that get's added to your water. Now look up that same chemical name hydrofluorosilicic acid on google and tell me what it say's. Here let me help you.. POISON.. DO NO INGEST.. HIGHLY CORRESSIVE.. ETC.. Now ask yourselves if 97% of Europe's population does not fluoridate their water and they are not losing their teeth. And in fact their incidence of cavities is lower or on par with the western world why they hell are we being forced to drink fluoridated water? The answer is dollars and cents! Do you know of any other preventative medication or mineral that is intended for human consumption that comes from a smoke stack? Do you know of any other drug that is not regulated in terms of content or medicinal purity that is allowed for human consumption? Fluoride is the only thing intentionally added to your water that is meant to treat you.. not the water. It has absolutely nothing to do with disinfecting or making it safer to drink via the treatment process.And when was the last time you heard of any one prescribe a chemical or drug as a one size fit's all dose for everyone regardless of your age race frequency of consumption etc.. it's all completely unregulated and you have absolutely no way of determining how much you are ingesting!By the way would you ingest sunscreen? That's stupid right? Well guess what the action of fluoride in preventing tooth decay is completely topical (meaning not for ingestion apply to surface only). So why the hell are you forced to drink it?Want to learn more about this. Head over to you tube and search for The great culling our water. Watch the movie documentary and then tell me what you think. Still skeptical.. well i guess you've been soo brainwashed by what they tell you is good for you that there is nothing more anyone can do to open your eyes.I would love to see Popsci write an article on the truth behind water fluoridation.. but that would be naive and would never be allowed to happen!AuroriaCarbon filtering is better then doing nothing at all. However it removes virtually no Fluoride from your drinking water. One water pitcher type filter that i've found to remove all dissolved solid's (both good and bad ones) is called the Zero Water pitcher you can find it at Target or Walmart. I hate to sound like i'm promoting a particular product but the truth is in order to remove all contaminants from the water you really need to remove EVERYTHING from the water. It would be very difficult and cost prohibitive to selective filter individual contaminants. Using the TDS meter (Total Dissolved Solids on a part per million scale) i tested my tap water Brita filtered water (filter was one month old) and Zero water filtered water. Here were my results:Tap Water: 168 ppm TDS
Brita (one month old): 178 ppm TDS
Brita (New filter):87 ppm TDS
Zero Water (New filter): 0 ppm TDSI was quite shocked to see that my 1 month old brita filter was actually depositing stuff into my water rather then cleaning it. And the brand new one did a good job but no where near what you need to remove fluoride. Keep in mind that Fluoride is typically added in doses of as little as 0.5 ppm to as high as 1.5 ppm.The only other practical method to clean your water to the point of removing the fluoride is via reverse osmosis filtration. This can cost several hundreds of dollars for initial install plus additional money spent on replacement filters. It is the most practical to use as a whole house filter however it also wastes allot of water in the process. In reverse osmosis for every 1 gallon of clean drinking water you produce you dump about 4 gallons or more of concentrate water down the drain.I only recently became aware of fluoride and methods to remove it from the water in the past 3 months. I am a new father and my wife was unable to breast feed exclusively. After realizing that my new baby daughters diet was 100% liquid based and i was mixing her formula with tap water (filtered through Brita at first). I started to look into what i was putting into her tiny little developing body and boy was i shocked by the information i came across! I am glad i looked into this for my daughters sake however there is almost a part of me that wishes i never started digging into this. Ignorance is bliss and i sure would sleep better at night not knowing. But of course closing your eyes to something doesn't make it go away. So here i am on my pursuit to share info with others!Cheers!Yes I like solar panels and how they are clean with the environment!My late father was born in Toms River; he died young from a brain tumor despite his being a healthy non-smoking teetotaler.  Perhaps this book will reveal the potential origins of his plight.Condemnation without investigation is the highest form of ignorance
~Albert Einstein