ford's toxic waste case study

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New Jersey’s Lenape Nation Fights Ford’s Toxic Legacy

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The Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation has lived in the wooded hills around Ringwood for centuries, enduring the impacts of European settlement and the building up of America.

But the toxic waste that now surrounds the Passaic County community is from an invasion of an entirely different kind.

And it wasn’t long before residents started getting sick.

When the federal government created the National Priorities List, better known as Superfund, in 1980, abandoned iron mines in Ringwood were among the first sites to be listed; they made the list in 1983. Between 1965 and 1974, the Ford Motor Company dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of paint sludge, solvents and other waste into the mines scattered throughout the Turtle Clan’s homeland.

By then, the southern portion of the site had been sold off by Ford to the Ringwood Solid Waste Management Authority, which went on dumping more waste onto and into the already toxic land. Arsenic and lead, benzene and 1,4-dioxane leached into groundwater. Kids played among slabs of hardened paint sludge. Adults scavenged the dump sites for copper and other valuable metals.

Valerie Gunn: ‘After that it was like everybody started getting cancer.’

Cancer and other severe health problems began to soar. One street — Van Dunk Lane — is known to locals as “Cancer Row” because every household on it has been touched by the disease in some way.

The trouble on Van Dunk Lane began in the late 1990s when 10-year-old Collin Milligan was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare cancer that affects the bones and the soft tissue around them. According to Valerie Gunn, the boy’s aunt and a longtime Upper Ringwood resident, Milligan only lived for a year after his diagnosis.

“After that,” Gunn said. “It was like everybody started getting cancer.”

The latest threat

While there may no longer be a risk of more dumping, another threat looms over the Upper Ringwood community.

As global warming changes the climate worldwide, New Jersey is facing increasingly intense rainfall events, like last year’s Tropical Storm Ida, as well as periods of extreme heat and drought. Advocates, environmental experts and government officials are raising concerns that the pollution contained in the state’s Superfund sites like Ringwood could be released in ways they haven’t been before. With 114 sites on the Superfund list — the most in the U.S. — New Jersey stands to bear these new threats more than any other state.

Wayne Mann, a fellow Ramapough Lenape Nation member, remembered Collin Milligan’s death as a wake-up call for the community that something was not right with the land.

“Collin was one of the main wills that gave me a reason to fight and fight hard, because he was just a little kid,” Mann said. “He woke me up fully.”

Mann, who has been diagnosed with cancer and suffers a variety of other ailments, was the named plaintiff in the case Mann v. Ford, in which roughly 600 Upper Ringwood residents sued Ford and other defendants in state court seeking to collect damages for the impact of the dumping. The case was settled out of court in 2009, with the residents splitting about $10 million. A   HBO documentary about the case   was released in 2011; dozens of community members died during the time it was being filmed.

“I dug my heels in and didn’t care about the price I paid,” Mann continued. “Because Collin already paid the ultimate price.”

Dennis DeFreese: ‘The boys used to tell me when they shot a deer, it would have these big bubbles and like tumors inside of it.’

Gunn and Mann’s neighbor and fellow Lenape Nation member, Dennis DeFreese said the illnesses extended beyond Upper Ringwood’s human community.

“The boys used to tell me when they shot a deer, it would have these big bubbles and like tumors inside of it,” DeFreese said. “Something’s radically wrong.”

After Ford removed 7,000 cubic yards of paint sludge and contaminated soil, along with 60 drums of more waste, the site was removed from the Superfund list in 1994. But when more toxic materials were discovered — and after an exposé by The Record spurred heavy political pressure — it was relisted in 2006. Of the 1,781 sites that have been toxic enough to be included in the Superfund program, the “Ringwood Mines/Landfill,” as it is officially called by the Environmental Protection Agency, is the only one that has been relisted.

Ford did not answer specific questions submitted by NJ Spotlight News, but in a statement said it is working cooperatively with regulators on the site’s cleanup.

“Ford Motor Company takes its environmental responsibility seriously and has shown through its actions a commitment to addressing the issues in Upper Ringwood that are related to Ford,” a Ford spokesperson said.

On Thursday, New Jersey officials announced a lawsuit demanding damages from Ford, not just to recoup the costs of cleaning the land, water and air around the dumping site but also for the harm its pollution caused the community.

Environmental justice?

New Jersey has recently begun to focus on the environmental and social damage done by industrial pollution in what are known as environmental justice communities, frequently poor and largely communities of color.

“Whenever you look at any kind of marginalized or underserved community, be it the Ramapough Nation or other Native American or marginalized communities, they are going to get hit the hardest,” said Judith Zelikoff, a professor in New York University’s Department of Environmental Medicine. Zelikoff has studied the health impacts of the Ringwood Superfund site on borough residents who live near it and on top of it — most of whom are Turtle Clan members.

“They experience cumulative environmental exposures including poor food, water, and air quality, which could exacerbate pre-existing health disparities associated with low socioeconomic status,” then-doctoral candidate Gabriella Meltzer wrote in a paper she co-authored with Zelikoff and colleagues at NYU in 2020.

Between December 2015 and October 2016, Meltzer, Zelikoff and a team of four NYU graduate students conducted a   survey of 187 members of the Turtle Clan and non-Native Americans in Ringwood , half of whom were living on or near the Superfund site, in an effort to identify a pattern of chronic health issues.

Such a study had never been done before. The researchers identified elevated levels of asthma, allergies, arthritis, heart disease, and high blood pressure in people who had reported multiple exposures to the Superfund site. The levels increased when the survey was limited to Native American residents, who were found to be 13.84 times more likely to face exposure than non-Native Ringwood residents.

The authors pointed out that their findings were consistent with those in studies of other communities of color, particularly Native Americans. Over 400,000 Native Americans in the U.S., they added, live within three miles of a contaminated area or Superfund site.

Living with contamination

In addition to Turtle Clan children and adults playing on and scavenging the dump site, many of them ended up living on top of it after Ford sold a portion of the land, which was then used to build affordable housing. “They’re already being hit on so many levels,” Zelikoff said. “Then you add a second stressor, which are climate change alterations like drought and excessively high heat, and you’re adding fuel to the fire.”

Larger and more persistent wildfires are proving to heighten health risks for communities everywhere, even if those wildfires are thousands of miles away. Last summer, skies throughout the Northeast became hazy from the more than 1 million acres of land that was burning on the West Coast and in Canada.

“A lot of that air pollution is particulate matter, which is associated with exacerbation of asthma and, in some cases, induction of new asthma,” said Zelikoff. “It’s also associated with lung cancer.”

While Turtle Clan members once had hoped to remain on their homeland in Upper Ringwood, the years of inadequate cleanup and elevated health problems have led to a slow draining of the community. Where there were once about 100 homes and 1,000 residents, there are now 50 homes inhabited by 300 people.

Contaminated groundwater

With little hope of seeing the land completely cleaned up — the EPA has sought to “remediate” still-contaminated land by covering it with solid or earthen caps, as well as remediating contaminated groundwater — the Turtle Clan’s chief, Vincent Mann, is now hoping that Ford and the EPA will pay for the relocation of the remaining residents in Upper Ringwood.

In May, Chief Mann and other representatives of the Turtle Clan met at the EPA office in Edison with Lisa Garcia, the regional administrator of EPA Region 2, and other EPA officials to talk through the relocation proposal. Officials from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and New Jersey Department of State, as well as U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone (D-6th) and Josh Gottheimer (D-5th), also attended.

Walter Mugdan: ‘Relocation is considered an extraordinary remedy.’

A presentation shared at the meeting lays out what the Ramapough delegation pitched: Chief Mann wants the residents of Upper Ringwood to be permanently relocated into 100 new homes, to be built on the nearby Tranquility Ridge county park. According to the presentation obtained by NJ Spotlight News, he expects this would cost at least $50 million. Additionally, a decision on the allocation of the Tranquility Ridge plot to the Turtle Clan would have to be made by both the Legislature and the DEP, because the land is preserved under the state’s Green Acres open space program.

Speaking with NJ Spotlight News days after meeting with the Ramapough delegation, Garcia said the EPA would at least reassess the remediation plans for the Ringwood Mines site, to reconsider if relocation is warranted.

Chance of relocation?

“We had made the promise that we would go back and certainly look at their requests and work with the state and some of the elected officials to see what options there are,” Garcia said.

The Superfund law explicitly allows temporary or permanent relocation of people living on or near Superfund sites as part of cleanup plans. But the provision is rarely used, according to Walter Mugdan, the EPA’s deputy regional administrator for Region 2.

“Relocation is considered an extraordinary remedy,” Mugdan said. “And one that is considered to be appropriate when there’s an immediate threat to residents that can’t be addressed through other less intrusive means.”

But Chief Mann, speaking with NJ Spotlight News again Thursday, said even a commitment from EPA to reconsider the relocation option is a positive sign.

“I think that they see the light,” Chief Mann said. “That our legal team provided an incredible PowerPoint presentation that just spoke the truth. And I think that when those people … who were sitting there with us and felt the emotion of the testimony that was being given, that they also understood that. That they probably went back to understanding why they became involved in environmental justices.”

In the first attempt at remediation in the ’80s and ’90s, and in the second now underway, the EPA has not determined relocation has been needed in Upper Ringwood to protect public health.

Of the more than 1,700 sites nationwide that have been placed on the Superfund list, relocation happened in 33 of them, according to the EPA. Temporary relocation was used in two-thirds of those cases, like when families from well-off Essex County towns were displaced during the cleanup of the Glen Ridge Radium and Montclair/West Orange Radium sites.

Permanent relocation has been used just 11 times for Superfund sites. One of those was in Hoboken, at the Grand Street Mercury site , where an industrial building was being converted into luxury apartments before liquid mercury was found to be seeping through the floors.

“Literally liquid mercury was found when they were doing reconstruction. It was found in the walls, it was dripping down to the ceilings, it was in the closets falling onto people,” Mugdan of EPA’s Region 2 said. “So the county health department actually made the decision there, literally overnight, that people had to move out of the building.”

Battle for federal recognition

Chief Mann’s relocation plan faces an additional hurdle due to the lack of federal recognition for the tribe. In 1980, the Ramapough Lenape Nation was officially recognized by New Jersey, but the federal government never followed suit, despite the tribe’s petitioning. After its decades-long struggle for recognition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided in 1993 not to acknowledge the tribe , right around the time that the Ringwood Superfund site was delisted

The U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, maintains a set of seven specific criteria that tribes must satisfy to be federally recognized, including that a tribe have proof of its continued existence and political authority over members from “historical times until the present,” and that it is descended from, essentially, a federally recognized tribe. The 1993 ruling by the Bureau of Indian Affairs determined that the Ramapough did not meet those criteria.

The Ramapough have protested the decision, arguing the federal government was influenced by the casino industry and its allies, especially then-Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) and former President Trump, who vocally opposed the Ramapough gaining the right to open a casino of their own. In 1993, Trump, a casino owner at the time, was called to testify before Congress at a hearing on Indian gambling.

“They don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians to Indians, and a lot of people are laughing at it,” Trump told the committee, referring to the Ramapough and other tribes in Connecticut, who descend from common ancestors.

Chief Vincent Mann: ‘If we had our federal recognition, we’d have the strength.’

The tribe appealed the 1993 rejection and was denied again in 1996.

Under the Superfund law, federally recognized tribes have a right to directly engage, government-to-government, on how cleanups are done. The Ramapough don’t have that right, rendering their influence on the Ringwood cleanup process — and any potential relocation — to just input at public hearings and through community advisory groups. A listening session like the one convened last month is an “informal, government-to-government consultation,” according to Garcia.

Environmental justice

Both Garcia and Mugdan stressed that Upper Ringwood is considered by the EPA to be an environmental justice community, determined to be overburdened by pollution and underrepresented in government, and added that the Biden administration is focused on prioritizing such vulnerable people.

“If we had our federal recognition, we’d have the strength,” Chief Mann said in the interview with NJ Spotlight News last year. “By us not, it’s taking away from the citizens who live in the area that we’re responsible for.”

Even if the EPA reevaluates the site and deems relocation of Upper Ringwood residents necessary, the agency will need to build a strong legal case to support changing the already-decided cleanup plans, and to compel Ford and the Borough of Ringwood to pay for the relocation.

Ford did not answer a question about paying for a potential relocation. Scott Heck, the Ringwood borough manager, said he is aware of Chief Mann’s idea, but added that his attention is on the cleanup plans underway.

“It’s not on my radar at all,” Heck said of the relocation proposal. “Right now I’m focusing on making the community better and making the community safe. And if in fact that relocation is a discussion down the road, I think that we’ll address it at that time. But right now, my focus is on the neighborhood and the remediation and making sure it’s done correctly, and making sure it’s done quickly and safely for those folks.”

Why some want to stay, some want to go

It’s not just government regulators and lawyers that Chief Mann needs to win over; some of the residents he’s hoping to move will also need to be convinced.

This is a close-knit community with deep ties to the land they live on going back generations. It’s the kind of history that can make someone balk at leaving, regardless of present circumstances.

“Well, I’m not going to lie to you. I love it here,” said Valerie Gunn, the lifelong Upper Ringwood resident. “I absolutely love it here. It’s just things have to be done right. Things have to be done better. As far as relocating, I don’t know how that’s going to go over.”

Gunn also said she feels a sort of comfort in dealing with the danger she knows, rather than uprooting her life to potentially face new problems she may not anticipate.

Angel Stefancik: ‘There’s not enough money, there’s not enough jewelry, there’s not enough whatever to make me get out of this place.’

“To me it’s like, even though we have our problems, it’s like a safer place for us to live,” Gunn said. “That’s my only reason.”

Wayne Mann, a distant relative of Chief Mann, no longer lives in Upper Ringwood. But some of his closest relatives still do, and he says he knows they intend to live out their lives there.

“There probably is people who may want to go,” Mann said. “But there’s people who are so tied, because of history, because of their families. And that would probably rather just pass on there like others did in the last couple hundred years.”

Count 22-year-old Angel Stefancik in that group. The young mother has spent her entire life in Upper Ringwood and is clear she does not want to go. Stefancik said a relocation would be like the Turtle Clan accepting defeat.

“There’s not enough money, there’s not enough jewelry, there’s not enough whatever to make me get out of this place. You’re giving them what they want. They want us to uproot and just go. That’s their whole sole purpose. Because once they get their hands on our land, guess what? It’s free game,” Stefancik said, referring to outside entities.

Dennis DeFreese: ‘Because it’s never going to get better. I hate to say that. But you know in your heart.’

“I feel like this whole ordeal with us moving is wrong. If you want your indigenized land, stay here. You take it back,” Stefancik added. “You take your land back.”

But Dennis DeFreese, who lived much of his life in Upper Ringwood and now lives nearby, said he understands the appeal of leaving, and said he thinks others would be open to going too.

“Because it’s never going to get better,” DeFreese said. “I hate to say that. But you know in your heart.”

For his part, Chief Mann knows that not every Turtle Clan member in Upper Ringwood is ready to support relocating the community. This is the early stages of a very long process, he said, one that’s going to require a lot of discussion to sort out.

“There is a tremendous amount of thought process that has to be undertaken. There’s a tremendous amount of community involvement that has to take place,” Chief Mann said. “We really don’t have any clear answers to that, other than we’re pursuing this as one of the options to save our community, and to save our way of life.”

Whatever agreement the EPA, Ford, the borough and Chief Mann come to, if they come to one at all, it will not happen quickly. Meanwhile, Chief Mann and his wife have created the Munsee Three Sisters Farm, which sprawls across 40 acres in Sussex County and within the Turtle Clan’s historic range. The idea is to grow food for those still living in Upper Ringwood, who are fearful of raising fruits and vegetables from the soil beneath their feet.

“Even though we’re sitting here suffering and dying, we also are still doing the things that the federal government and state and the town’s local government can’t, or won’t, do,” Chief Mann said. “We took it upon ourselves to create this farm to help our people, because nobody else is.”

“Everything that’s taken place has played a part in stripping away the parts of our culture that we were able to retain by living where we live,” he said. “Now we’re at that time where, if we don’t stand up, we won’t be a part of those things that are for us, too.”

Editor’s Note: ‘Hazard NJ’  is an investigative podcast and multimedia project from NJ Spotlight News revealing the dangers climate change poses to the state’s Superfund sites and the health threats that poses to people. Subscribe to the podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Amazon Music  and more. Read stories and watch reports  here .

Further Reading

Ford sued for allegedly dumping ‘toxic sludge’ on Ramapough Lenape land

New Jersey accuses automobile company of contaminating water, soil, groundwater, vegetation, and air for decades

Ford Motor Company is being sued by New Jersey state officials for contaminating hundreds of acres of land, with a large population of Ramapough Lenape people, that the company used for the waste disposal for its largest assembly plant that was built in 1955.

The lawsuit accuses the automobile company of contaminating the water, soil, groundwater, vegetation, and the air in the area in Ringwood, New Jersey, as well as selling part of the land to the state without disclosing to them the damage that they had caused there.

The lawsuit is pursuing action on eight counts, including negligence and trespassing.

According to the lawsuit, in 1965, Ford purchased 400 acres of Ringwood Mines for the purpose of disposing of its waste from the automobile plant built a decade previously.

The Ringwood Mines area has nearly 50 residential units and about 200 residents.

Starting 1967, for seven years the company used the space to throw away “tons of toxic paint sludge and drummed waste and other non-liquid hazardous waste”.

Meanwhile, around 1970, the company sold off parts of the land to numerous entities including a non-profit and other government institutions, without disclosing the full extent of the damage they had caused on the land.

“Bottom line is that Ford demonstrated little to no regard for the environment,” said the acting attorney general, Matt Platkin, when announcing the lawsuit on Thursday.

“They turned a blind eye to the risks that their actions have imposed on the lives of 200 residents who live here, which includes Native Americans who are historically and disproportionately exposed to environmental harms,” he said, according to a video of the announcement shared on Facebook.

Vincent Mann, chief of the Ramapough Lenape Nation’s Turtle Clan, and New Jersey’s commissioner of environmental protection, Shawn M LaTourette, were also present at the announcement.

“Today is one of those days that we’ll remember when the state of New Jersey and [attorney general] understands the impact of our community, they understand the loss of not just our families but the loss of our lands,” Mann said.

LaTourette, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told the Guardian that at this time there isn’t an estimate for how much is being demanded in compensation.

“The full scope of damages and potential compensation will be better characterized in the discovery phase of the lawsuit,” he said.

The lawsuit is currently demanding compensation for damages done to natural resources, and punitive damages or penalties for its “wanton and willful disregard” of the local residents.

LaTourette added that he hopes this will be an answer to a decades-long struggle the local community has been put through, especially the Ramapough Lenape population.

“My hope is that we restore the wetlands, waters, lands and cultural resources that have been degraded for decades, including through restoration projects that benefit the people who rely upon these resources and have been deprived of their benefits, including the people of the Ramapough Lenape Nation,” he said.

The Guardian has reached out to Ford for comments.

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Citizens of 'Sludge City' File Lawsuit Against Ford Over Toxic Waste

Hundreds claim illnesses after auto company dumps waste.

Jan. 14, 2009— -- In the 1960s, when the Ford Motor Company created some of the world's most popular cars, it disposed of some of the toxic by-products in a wooded area of Ringwood, N.J., currently one of the most polluted areas in America.

Overrun with paint deposits, battery acid and chemicals, local residents call the area Sludge Hill.

The sludge, which is now rock hard, was once a colorful liquid goo. It was also a toxic brew of arsenic, benzene and lead, and it was runny, slippery and dangerous.

"I was one of those children who used to go up on Sludge Hill," recalled Wayne Mann, the neighborhood's spokesman. "[I would] take a car hood and ride down, your hand steering in the wet sludge. You paint your face. You lick it, whatever. I was one of the young kids."

"I used to love to jump on the hard stuff," Vivian Milligan, a community leader, said. "I really loved that, my God."

Now residents like Mann and Milligan believe that they and many others are sick because they grew up on a toxic waste dump. They and 650 others are now suing, and are seeking compensation from the Ford Motor Company for allegedly contaminating the soil and groundwater in Ringwood.

Robert Kennedy Jr. has joined with other lawyers to represent the group. Kennedy says he has "no doubt" the actions of Ford caused the illness of Ringwood residents.

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"This could not happen in Bedford, N.Y., couldn't happen in Greenwich, Conn.," Kennedy said, referring to a couple of wealthy suburban towns. "This type of thing only happens in communities that don't have the resources or political clout to defend themselves from the big polluters."

To describe how difficult these types of cases are to try in court, Kennedy points to the challenge lawyers faced for years while trying to prove in court that cigarettes caused cancer. The tobacco companies, he said, had other explanations for the plaintiffs' illnesses.

"It could have come from the benzene in the environment. It could have been genetics. It could have been anything," he said.

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Drawing on institutional theory, this study tests how the ethical behaviors of firms, in interaction with public officials and through the strength of accountability regulations, influence sustainability reporting practices in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) sector. The results indicate that firms operating in a highly ethical business environment are less likely than those in a less ethical environment to disclose a sustainability report. However, accountability yields the opposite result; firms established in environments characterized by high accountability are more likely than low accountability environments to issue a sustainability report, which implies a complementary effect between the strength of the accountability and the firms’ sustainability disclosures. This verifies that the weakness or strength of informal and formal institutional forces exert considerable influence on firms’ desire to carry out sustainability reporting. However, this influence is not true of the acquisition of external assurance statements and following Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, with which accountability has a negative and insignificant association, respectively.

Pivoting in a COVID-19 teaching environment: developing interactive teaching approaches and online assessments to improve students’ experiences

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the changes made to course delivery, course materials and assessment approaches required in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which forced many changes to occur in a very short time. Design/methodology/approach It is a case study of the changes made to content, teaching methods and assessment in a postgraduate introductory financial accounting course of approximately 350 students across two terms. Findings The key findings are that the sudden change from face-to-face to online teaching to address government regulations, social distancing expectations and students’ needs required immediate changes to how content was delivered, how to interact with students (many of who were studying outside of Australia), and how to adapt to online assessments. Many of the innovations the authors describe will continue to be used in the course going forward both in face-to-face and online formats. That is, the need to change resulted in innovations that can be implemented in a post-pandemic environment. Originality/value The key value of this paper is to provide instructors with insights into the innovations the authors made to address the changed circumstances, which can be incorporated into other accounting courses in the future.

Linking Cybersecurity and Accounting: An Event, Impact, Response Framework

Due to recent high-profile cybersecurity breaches and increased practitioner and regulatory attention, organizations are under pressure to consider the accounting implications of these attacks and develop appropriate responses. Specifically, cybersecurity events may affect organizations’ operations, financial and non-financial performance, and ultimately its stakeholders. To address how cybersecurity issues may affect accounting, this paper presents an Event, Impact, Response Framework to discuss current research and consider implications for both practitioners and researchers. The Framework highlights how practitioners may rely on research findings to better assess cybersecurity threats, understand their impact, and develop response strategies. Results encourage additional research examining how (1) organizations identify cybersecurity threats, incidents, and breaches, (2) cybersecurity affects different risks, and (3) management responses to cybersecurity risks and events. Further, the Framework suggest the need for cybersecurity research to extend beyond the AIS community to areas such as financial accounting, managerial accounting, and auditing.

Board characteristics and the choice between sustainability and integrated reporting: a European analysis

Purpose The role that the board can have in influencing the adoption of non-financial reporting (NFR) by companies is a topic that has raised interest in the recent literature. However, very few have so far been said on the logic that underpins the selection by corporate boards of a particular model (sustainability and/or integrated). This study aims to examine if and to what extent board characteristics may influence the choice of companies to voluntarily publish a sustainability report, an integrated report or both of them, and if moderating variables, relating to incentives towards corporate transparency, may have an influence. Both of these types of reporting tools are in fact aimed at improving company disclosure towards sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach Through a multi-nomial regression analysis, this study tests the assumptions in a sample of companies listed on the Eurostoxx600 that adopt integrated or sustainability reporting or both of them for the period 2015–2018 for a total of 2,103 firm-years observations. Findings The results reveal that sustainability reporting is associated with board independence only, whilst the adoption of integrated reporting is influenced by board size and board independence. The same two variables influence also those companies that jointly adopt both sustainability and an integrated report. This confirms that integrated reporting requires more competencies and monitoring to be adopted. Furthermore, the results provide evidence that information asymmetry and financial constraints influence the decision of companies to publish the integrated report, sustainability report or both, whilst growth opportunities do not. Hence, moderating variables can have a role in explaining this association, and especially those that are related to the firm’s incentives related to the provision of financial capital by investors. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it proposes an incremental analysis of the relationship between board characteristics and voluntary disclosure of integrated reporting, considering the effects of moderating variables on this association. Second, the above relationship is examined in a comparative way vis-à-vis the adoption of sustainability reporting. Third, it demonstrates that the analysis of these reporting tools can benefit from an understanding that relies on both agency and stakeholder theories, that have to be conceived somehow complementary. In terms of limitations, this study is exclusively focussed on larger European listed firms, and therefore, the findings may not be valid for small and medium firms and for companies operating outside Europe. Practical implications This study provides useful insights for managers and policymakers to better understand which are the characteristics of the board composition that can best encourage a company to pursue a reporting strategy based on sustainable development. This results to be particularly relevant and timely in the European context if the authors take into consideration the developments of the European Parliament and Commission towards the launch of a new legislative proposal on sustainable corporate governance in 2021. Originality/value The study contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it offers a unique perspective on the direct and indirect effects of board characteristics on the adoption of integrated and/or sustainability reports by examining it in a comparative perspective. Second, it further demonstrates that the analysis of NFR and especially integrated reporting might benefit from the adoption of multiple conceptual lenses, in this case, agency and stakeholder theories.

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Hazardous Waste Accidents: From the Past to the Present

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This chapter provides a detailed analysis of 15 hazardous waste mismanagement incidents and accidents that have taken place worldwide over the last six decades. The case studies are presented in a chronological order. The companies involved, contaminant properties, geographical significance of the affected areas, causes of contamination and aftermath of each incident are identified in a consistent format. It was observed that all 15 accidents have been attributed to human error and negligence, improper disposal practices, faults in safety equipment, runaway reactions, failure to follow proper safety procedures and unpredictable chemical nature of contaminants. The aftermath of each accident emphasizes the tragic consequences of hazardous waste contamination affecting the biotic species’ lives, properties, the environment and the vegetation. The remediation steps taken by local and/or international authorities, along with the accountable companies and liabilities involved for each accident, are also summarized within this chapter.

• Chemical disasters
• Hazardous waste
• Industrial accidents
• Toxic wastes
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Shareefdeen, Z., Bhojwani, J. (2022). Hazardous Waste Accidents: From the Past to the Present. In: Shareefdeen, Z. (eds) Hazardous Waste Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95262-4_2

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Decades after a plant closes, Ford's waste remains

By Ron Stodghill

• July 29, 2007

NEW YORK — In the summer of 2005, around the time that residents of Upper Ringwood, New Jersey, began to wonder whether the skin rashes, nosebleeds and bronchitis that plagued their community were more than bad luck, Ford Motor and the Environmental Protection Agency made a request: The automaker and the regulator wanted access to the yards around two families' homes to remove waste that had been dumped in the area.

Ford boasts in its ads that "It's Easy Being Green," but residents feared that the request suggested something not so easy at all.

From the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, Ford operated an assembly plant in northern New Jersey, in nearby Mahwah, that cranked out millions of passenger cars. Ford closed the plant in 1980, after dumping what the EPA describes as thousands of tons of paint sludge and other waste in Upper Ringwood, a community of about 350 working-class residents near the Ramapo Mountains.

A few years later, the Environmental Protection Agency identified Upper Ringwood for priority cleanup under its Superfund program.

Ford, deemed responsible for the pollution, spent the next five years assessing and removing sludge from a 500-acre, or 200-hectare, site that included 50 homes.

Satisfied with Ford's cleanup, the EPA dropped Upper Ringwood as a Superfund site in 1994, having determined, according to a public notice, that "no further cleanup by responsible parties is appropriate" and that "the current risk posed by the site is within an acceptable range."

Yet recently, based on Ford's and the EPA's own recent follow-up studies of the soil and groundwater in Upper Ringwood, those conclusions unraveled and became fodder in what environmental experts say is now among the messiest industrial cleanup efforts in Superfund's 27-year history.

Since the EPA relisted Upper Ringwood last year as a Superfund site, cleanup experts in the area have not only removed several thousand tons of waste that crews had previously overlooked, but workers have also identified substantial amounts of potentially hazardous paint sludge in the yards of at least two private homes, according to federal regulators and Ford.

Last year, residents sued Ford in a New Jersey state court for property damage and personal injuries, citing the improper disposal of waste from the Mahwah plant.

The lawsuit claims that Ford's hazardous paint sludge and other contaminated material, while dumped decades ago, still contaminate the soil, air and groundwater in their community; that Ford failed to tell more than 600 residents how dangerous the waste was; and that Ford has yet to properly clean it up.

To make their case, residents have enlisted several high-profile legal experts and consultants, including the environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr., the toxicologist James Dahlgren, who became known after the "Erin Brockovich" movie, and the law firm of the late civil rights lawyer Johnnie Cochran.

The lawyers contend in the suit that contaminated waste that Ford left behind has contributed to illnesses among residents like the diabetes that caused Paul Eugene VanDunk to have his leg amputated and the cancer that killed his daughter.

"This community was here long before Ford had anything to do with Upper Ringwood," said Andrew Carboy, a lead lawyer for the residents. "Ford's involvement here ended almost 40 years ago, but the community is still dealing with the health consequences of Ford's dumping."

Ford counters that its history of dumping in Upper Ringwood, which occurred for four years, was legal and authorized by town supervisors. It says it was just one of several companies that deposited waste in the area during the years that its Mahwah plant operated and that its dumping activities and recent cleanup efforts have not endangered the health of residents.

"Bronchitis could be caused by a number of things that have nothing to do with toxins," said Alan Kraus, a lawyer representing Ford, during a recent court appearance. According to records of the proceedings, Kraus said he needed a medical history from each of the plaintiffs before turning over any records concerning the automaker's waste disposal activities.

"To be honest, I'm not a doctor, but I don't know whether bronchitis can be caused by toxins," he said in court.

Citing the litigation, Ford executives declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that "the company is working diligently to address remaining issues related to its past disposal activities."

Ford also noted that "the borough of Ringwood used the site as a general dump before, during and after the four-year period that Ford-related waste materials were disposed at the site" and that recent surveys of the property "recorded the presence of non-Ford related miscellaneous wastes and debris on approximately half of all locations included in the survey."

Ford contractors and EPA officials also say that residents here have been wary about granting access to their homes to remove potentially dangerous, brick-size shards of sludge.

"We understand that the residents in Ringwood do not trust the agency or Ford too much," said Patricia Carr, an EPA spokeswoman. "But how can they voice concern about the health effects of the waste there for all these years and then not allow us access into their homes?"

Residents see things quite differently.

"Tell me what they can do to satisfy us for the lives that have been lost already?" asks Wayne Mann, a local activist and community leader. "How do you justify what they've done?"

The rustic community, an hour's drive from New York City, is home to the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation, a tribe with roots in the area reaching back before the Revolutionary War.

The tribe maintains many traditions and has been slow to integrate; residents hunt deer and turkey and fish local streams for food. They also grow vegetables on small plots in their yards, and are not politically active - which played a part in Ford's and the EPA's inefficiency in cleaning the area, residents say.

Environmental advocates say that the significance of the fight between Ford and residents transcends Ford's activities, plaintiffs' lawyers' claims of "environmental racism," or so-called greenwashing efforts of companies with dubious environmental records to improve their images. They say it sheds light on the inherent limitations of the Superfund program, which has relied heavily on the scientific research and the purse strings of corporate polluters to clean up sites - limitations that have only been compounded by severe cuts recently in the EPA's budget.

The plaintiffs' lawyers also contend that Ford's waste has contaminated a local reservoir that provides drinking water for 2.5 million people in the surrounding area. Ford denies that.

"This site is the poster child of corporate bad behavior and the inability of the EPA to really make corporate polluters do proper cleanup of sites," said Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association, an environmental advocacy group in New Jersey.

Ford's waste, Spiegel said, "is polluting the drinking water for millions of people, yet it's still unclear whether the EPA will ever force Ford into really cleaning it up."

Roger DeGroat, 58, leaves the above-ground swimming pool outside his Upper Ringwood home empty because he's afraid he might be filling it with contaminated water. He points at a purple rash on his arms to illustrate other fears. "I don't know what these blotches are," he says. "It scares me because my doctor doesn't know what's wrong with me, either. I get dizzy for no apparent reason; my eyes itch.

"My children have nosebleeds so bad in their sleep that they wake up stuck to the bed, like they've been hit in the head or something," he adds.

DeGroat, like many other residents here, says he believes that hazardous waste contributed to his family's illnesses as well as elevated rates of leukemia, cancer, diabetes and asthma in other residents.

A line of trucks barrels past DeGroat's house and disappears behind gates securing the work site where a business hired by Ford is cleaning Upper Ringwood. In recent months, workers have been removing sludge and investigating the possible presence of such hazardous substances as lead, arsenic, chromium, ethylbenzene and PCBs in local soil, according to the EPA.

Residents say that the cleanup makes their close-knit community feel like an occupied military zone, with the constant rumble of tank-size tractors drowning out the banter from children playing tag and hopscotch.

Despite the noise and the threat of illnesses, DeGroat says that he, like most of the American Indians who live here, can't imagine relocating. Tribe members have maintained largely isolated lives (because, they say, of racial taunting and stereotyping from people outside their community) and are groomed to be suspicious of most outsiders.

After Ford built its Mahwah plant in 1955 and bought 800 nearby acres to build homes for its workers, it became among the largest employers in the area. In 1967, Ford hired a contractor to dispose of waste from the Mahwah plant. Court filings say that Ford's agreement with the contractor "called for disposal of cardboard and other packing materials from the plant, scrap car parts, paint sludge and scrap and dented drums containing obsoleted hardened production sealing and insulating stock of noninflammable nature." Ford says that state and local officials approved the dumping that occurred from 1967 to 1971.

Residents say that regardless of who approved the dumping, their lives were changed. "The way we were living is not how people live in the real world," said Mann, who is also a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Ford. "There was trash everywhere. There were drums and chemicals all around, and trucks coming and dumping anywhere and everywhere. The Dumpsters would get so high that they would mysteriously burn for weeks."

Starting in the late 1960s, Ford says it began divesting large portions of the dump site in Upper Ringwood. It donated 300 acres of land to the town government, which, it claims, allowed other companies to continue dumping on the site between 1972 and 1976 (at which point state regulators shut it down).

Joseph Maraziti, a lawyer representing the town government, said that after Ford left the area, the Upper Ringwood site was used for only household waste, not potentially toxic industrial waste. "As of this moment, there has been no identification of any hazardous material connected with that site other than Ford's," he said.

Ford closed its Mahwah plant in 1980. Two years later, New Jersey regulators discovered substantial levels of arsenic in local water samples and gave their findings to the EPA, which added Upper Ringwood to a national priorities list under its Superfund program. Ford's cleanup crews arrived in Ringwood in 1983, but the company acknowledges that the process from the start was prolonged by extensive research and bureaucratic red tape.

"With the site sprawling over more than 500 acres, the EPA had to make decisions regarding how best to investigate, characterize and then address the disposal of hazardous substances on the site," the company said in a statement.

Part of the problem, too, Ford and EPA officials say, was a steep learning curve in the remediation of Superfund sites, or as the 1980 law is called, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. Superfund was a response to public outcries in the 1970s over the discovery that about 22,000 tons of toxic waste had been dumped in the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York.

"There was no model out there and no mentors in cleaning up sites," said Carr, the EPA spokeswoman. "The law was detailed and prescriptive, but nobody had any experience in how to do this."

Among the most costly initial mistakes, Carr says, was the agency's failure to involve residents in the cleanup. "In the early days, we didn't have a lot of interaction with the residents in Ringwood and from that have learned to reach out earlier in the process," she said.

Ford says it does not accept full responsibility for the lack of dialogue with the community. In its statement, the company says that "in the 1980s and early 1990s, neither the borough of Ringwood nor the residents expressed significant interest in the process to Ford."

Residents don't dispute that they were hesitant to speak out early on, but say they were silent because of fears of retribution. "When the berries and the fruit and the frogs started disappearing, I looked the other way," Mann said."Who is going to cry out when you are only renting and can be thrown out? There were some who wanted to be vocal, but if you fought back against the state, local government and a major company like Ford, what was going to happen to you?"

Ford said in a statement that even its best efforts to alleviate those fears during the more recent cleanup often proved ineffective. It said it helped the EPA set up a toll-free number early in the reinvestigation process that residents could use to anonymously report information regarding the location of paint sludge on the site. "The toll-free number was never used," the company said.

But as Alan Steinberg, a regional EPA administrator, says: "Regardless of who was at fault for what, I find the situation to be heartbreaking. It's obvious that some mistakes were made, that the site was cleaned up too quickly. We are in the process of correcting that mistake by supervising a very intensive cleanup effort by Ford."

Some environmental experts and analysts say the biggest problem in cleaning Upper Ringwood, as well as the nation's more than 1,000 other Superfund sites, stems from the depleted resources of the Superfund itself. Superfund's budget was built on an excise tax on crude oil and chemicals used for manufacturing. The tax lapsed in 1995, and the trust fund has shrunk from $1.5 billion in 1994 to insolvency today - leaving the EPA struggling to find other sources of money to identify and assess the nation's future cleanup needs, according to several recent studies. The EPA says that Superfund's shrinking resources don't undermine its ability to monitor corporate polluters and that companies themselves can adequately manage and police cleanups on their own.

The price tag for all of this remains large: according to a 2005 Government Accountability Office report, it will cost $20 billion to remediate the 142 largest Superfund sites.

Superfund has proved to be effective in spurring corporate polluters to pay for their own cleanups, analysts say. Rather than face fines of as much as three times the actual cost of a cleanup if the EPA undertook the effort on its own, most major corporate polluters have opted to clean the sites themselves. But that, in turn, has left the EPA dependent on corporate polluters to oversee and clean up problem sites.

"Funding of cleanups is a really central issue now that the tax fund has been depleted," said Katherine Probst, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan economic research group in Washington. "And there are issues about money, and issues about the future of the program, and questions about what you can expect to get in a cleanup these days."

For its part, Ford says its efforts to clean the area through the years have been nothing less than rigorous and that the company's voluntary decision to study the area's ground and streams for pollutants after closing its plant reflects its overall commitment to making the area safe for residents.

The company says it is doing additional cleanup work at known landfill areas, including at two abandoned mine sites.

More specifically, the company said in a statement that contractors had removed several tons of paint sludge deposits from Upper Ringwood sites and that samples of soil, surface water, sediment and groundwater had shown that the sludge has not migrated into soils or water supplies.

But residents say other warning signs still concern them, despite assurances from Ford and the EPA. Earlier this year, for example, New Jersey health authorities warned residents not to hunt squirrels (a longtime staple of the local diet) after discovering a squirrel that was contaminated with lead.

Vivian Milligan, 55, said that the notification unnerved her and that she had not gotten satisfactory answers about why she had two miscarriages, an ulcer, and has high blood pressure. Or why her husband has had four of his toes amputated. Or why three of her cousins have each had a leg amputated.

"I really feel that there's a connection between the contamination and all the health problems around here," she says. "There's just too many sick people for one little area."

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Henry ford hospital: hazardous and infectious waste.

Henry Ford Hospital (HFH) in Detroit, Michigan, is the flagship hospital within the Henry Ford Health System (HFHS). HFH is a tertiary care hospital and level 1 trauma center with over 850 beds specializing in fields of cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, organ transplants, and cancer.

THE CHALLENGE

Infectious, hazardous and universal wastes are highly regulated and the most expensive components of the healthcare waste stream that require additional attention and resources to be compliant with federal, state and local regulations. HFH wanted to achieve compliance in a safe and cost-effective manner.

THE SOLUTION

Since 2000, HFHS and RRS have partnered to make continuous improvements to the waste and recycling programs. The on-site Environmental Programs team at HFH, led by RRS, supports the infectious, hazardous and universal waste programs at HFHS locations. The program emphasis is on waste minimization and efficient and safe management of materials from the point of generation to the point of disposal. RRS took a multi-stepped approach to developing, maintaining and tracking the program.

Initially a waste assessment was conducted to identify waste generation points and storage areas, review program management manifests and training records, as well as audit invoices. These activities enabled the identification of gaps, best practices and recommendations.

RRS continues to provide on-site expertise with waste characterizations, program and vendor oversight, training, data tracking, and reporting. Utilizing a mobile interface developed by RRS, internal waste compliance audits were established on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis as required by federal, state and local regulations, as well as HFHS policy.

THE RESULTS

Volumes of clinical and research lab waste have leveled off as a result of waste minimization and management of expired chemicals. Approximately 1,800 pounds of expired chemicals were properly disposed of in 2014 alone. Decanting of tissue in formalin continues to save HFH over $8,000 annually and formalin levels have reduced due to efforts to minimize formalin use.

RMW volumes continue to decrease through continuous education on proper waste segregation and waste minimization. On an annual basis, over 500 employees are trained in 12 department and practice areas, and hundreds of lab personal are trained via HFHS’s online University.

HFH and HFHS join a group of forward-looking healthcare organizations moving beyond regulatory compliance to follow best practices for environmentally responsible minimization and disposal of waste.

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