The industrial sites behind NJ’s 1,4-dioxane contamination — and who’s paying to clean them up

Published by NJ Clean Stream  |  1,4-Dioxane Series, Article 2 of 3

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The geography of contamination: where to look in New Jersey

New Jersey’s industrial heritage has created a contamination landscape that covers, in the words of one NJ DEP official, “essentially the state’s entire industrial footprint.” Several geographic clusters deserve particular attention.

The Route 1 pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing corridor. Central New Jersey’s Route 1 corridor — stretching from the Raritan Valley through Middlesex County into Mercer County — is home to one of the highest concentrations of pharmaceutical manufacturing in the United States. Pharmaceutical manufacturing historically used 1,4-dioxane extensively as a processing solvent. The corridor includes numerous large manufacturing sites, some with documented histories of solvent disposal practices that predate modern environmental regulation. The underlying Coastal Plain geology — high groundwater productivity — means solvent releases at surface facilities migrate readily into the groundwater system.

The former industrial cities of northeastern New Jersey. Essex, Hudson, Passaic, and Union counties contain densely developed former industrial areas with histories of chlorinated solvent use across manufacturing sectors — electronics assembly, metal finishing, dry cleaning, textile processing, and general manufacturing. The TCA that was standard across these industries contained 1,4-dioxane as a stabilizer. In many areas, original industrial uses have been replaced by residential and commercial development — but groundwater contamination from decades of solvent use remains, migrating through an urban subsurface that is poorly characterized.

Military and defense facilities. Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Picatinny Arsenal, and various former military sites have histories of chlorinated solvent use and disposal. Defense facility contamination is governed under a separate regulatory framework, but groundwater plumes from these facilities do not respect jurisdictional boundaries and can affect civilian water supplies.

The Superfund corridor of central and southern New Jersey. New Jersey has more Superfund sites on the National Priorities List than any other state. Many have documented chlorinated solvent contamination in groundwater. Sites along the major river valleys — the Raritan, the Passaic, the Delaware — have contamination plumes that can affect both aquifer-dependent private well users and surface water intakes for public water systems.

Dry cleaning clusters in suburban and urban centers. New Jersey’s dense suburban development supported a large number of dry cleaning facilities from the post-WWII era through the late twentieth century. Many operated with minimal environmental oversight, disposing of spent solvents through floor drains and direct ground disposal. The result is a distributed pattern of groundwater contamination at dry cleaning cluster locations throughout the state.

The Superfund framework: promise and limitations

The primary federal mechanism for compelling cleanup and assigning costs to responsible parties is CERCLA — the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund. CERCLA’s liability standard is broad and powerful: any party that owned or operated a contaminated facility, generated waste disposed of at the site, or arranged for its disposal is potentially liable — jointly and severally, meaning a single responsible party can be held liable for the full cost of cleanup regardless of its proportionate share.

In practice, the Superfund framework has significant limitations for 1,4-dioxane contamination.

1,4-dioxane was not recognized as a contaminant of concern at most sites until recently. Many Superfund sites with chlorinated solvent contamination were investigated and had remediation systems designed before 1,4-dioxane was recognized as a co-contaminant. Remediation systems based on pump-and-treat with activated carbon — which as Article 3 will explain does not effectively remove 1,4-dioxane — may be treating the primary chlorinated solvents while leaving 1,4-dioxane untreated. The 1,4-dioxane plume may be migrating beyond the remediation system’s capture zone into previously uncontaminated groundwater.

Cost recovery litigation is slow and uncertain. Even when responsible parties are identified, compelling them to pay for additional remediation requires new regulatory actions and negotiations that can take years. Companies that operated contaminated facilities decades ago may have been reorganized, dissolved, or acquired multiple times. Successor liability, corporate restructuring, and insurance coverage disputes add layers of complexity.

Many sources are orphaned. Some industrial facilities that contributed 1,4-dioxane to New Jersey’s groundwater are genuinely orphaned — the companies are gone, dissolved, or bankrupt. In these cases, cleanup costs fall on current property owners with no connection to the contamination, on the chronically underfunded Superfund trust fund, or on state cleanup programs competing with many demands.

New Jersey’s Industrial Site Recovery Act

New Jersey’s ISRA framework — which requires investigation and remediation as a condition of industrial property sales — is in some respects stronger than federal Superfund. However, ISRA has not comprehensively addressed 1,4-dioxane because until recently, it was not routinely included in site investigation protocols. Sites that received remediation approvals before 1,4-dioxane was recognized as a co-contaminant may have uncharacterized 1,4-dioxane contamination in their groundwater. The NJ DEP has been updating its technical guidance, but this guidance has not been uniformly applied to sites with existing approvals.

The dry cleaning industry: a distributed and underaddressed source

Dry cleaning deserves particular attention because of its geographic distribution — dry cleaning facilities are found throughout the state, in residential neighborhoods and suburban strip malls — and because cleanup has been systematically underfunded. New Jersey’s Site Remediation Program has identified hundreds of dry cleaner contamination sites. The primary contaminant of concern at most is tetrachloroethylene (PERC), but many older sites also have TCA and associated 1,4-dioxane contamination. Operators of these facilities often lack the financial resources for comprehensive remediation.

New Jersey’s Dry Cleaner Environmental Response Fund provides some financial assistance, but it is chronically oversubscribed and the remediation it funds often addresses the primary chlorinated solvent without specifically addressing 1,4-dioxane. NJ Clean Stream is pushing for the program to require 1,4-dioxane assessment and treatment as part of all dry cleaner site remediations.

The cost recovery imperative

The principle that polluters should pay for cleanup — rather than the public through taxes and water rates — is both a fundamental principle of environmental justice and a practical necessity given the scale of contamination. Treating groundwater contaminated with 1,4-dioxane requires advanced oxidation treatment systems that are significantly more expensive than activated carbon. For a community water utility that discovers 1,4-dioxane in its source water, treatment costs may run into the millions to tens of millions of dollars. That cost should be recovered from the industrial operations whose waste created the contamination — not borne by ratepayers.