This issue is no barrel of laughs.
A toxic cleanup in a New Jersey community could be a ticking timebomb, and may force families to leave their homes. Schools and homeowners in one part of Monmouth County are being told to be ready to evacuate at a moment's notice, as crews with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are intensely working at a former industrial plant.
More specifically, they want to know what's in a collection of barrels at a site in Farmingdale near the border with Howell.
The plant has long been shut down, but the barrels stuck around. Now it's not clear how safe it is to move them.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox.> Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
In the weeks ahead, the sounds of heavy-duty construction vehicles will permeate the air at the former chemical plant, along with smells from more than 400 rusting, abandoned drums. For decades, chemicals were mixed for various customers at the site.
One nearby resident told NBC New York that she remembers decades ago when her children were coming home from school around lunchtime, and they saw the lids exploding, up in the air.
That kind of thing is still entirely possible at the site, because no one knows for sure what chemicals are still present.
Earlier in 2023, the new owner was burning some barrels in an old incinerator on the property, when the fumes and particulate pollution drifted into nearby neighborhoods, alarming first responders who rushed to put the fire out.
The EPA rushed in with an emergency removal team, which is now well into the first stage of testing and segregating the chemicals very deliberately and carefully, one barrel at a time.
When Eric Daly, the on-scene coordinator for the EPA, was asked about those exploding lids 40 years ago, he said "You’re basically proving the reason we’re taking our time with this."
Its not just the stacks of corroding barrels the EPA has to sort through before they can be removed and disposed. There are more than 1,000 small containers — again filled with unknown chemicals — that have to be tested one by one to find out what is in each, how dangerous it could be and what’s the best way to dispose of them.
With some 4,000 students going to school within the one-mile hot zone that reaches into Howell, residents are urged to have a go-pack for an evacuation that could be called at any time if the chemicals catch on fire.
"Everybody should have an evacuation plan or get-out-of-here plan just in case," said Howell-Farmingdale OEM Director Victor Cook.
That being said, the EPA does feel it has the situation under as much control as it can without knowing what’s on the site. The agency hopes everything can be hauled away by the end of summer or shortly thereafter. Then it will have to deal with whatever pollution it finds in the soil and possibly in the groundwater.
