Thirty years after Ford Motor Company began dumping toxic waste in their backyard--and after one too many premature deaths--the Ramapough Mountain Indians filed a major class-action lawsuit: Mann v. Ford. This compelling documentary reveals the story of how this tiny tribe and their team of passionate lawyers took on the 'big dogs'--Ford and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Ford has admitted that a contractor it hired dumped wastes in Ringwood. But the company claims that the dumping went on for only four years, and that parts of Ringwood had been used as an illegal landfill for decades.
Ford has cleaned the area several times and removed tons of hazardous material. But residents keep finding more. The company has just completed a more comprehensive survey of the area in preparation for yet another cleanup.
attorney Judith Sullivan reported that while the Wanaque reservoir is 7.5 miles away, if you take culverts and streams into consideration this distance becomes considerably shorter, increasing the risk of contamination.
One such stream exists by Peter’s Pit in Ringwood State Park. The Edison Wetlands Association sampled the stream after seeps were discovered. Their samples show violations of the Clean Water Act with levels of 1,4-dioxane reaching 1.1 and .88 ppb.
However, Dr. Peter deFur of Virginia shared that he believed the contamination of the stream was not coming from seeps, but from pipes. Per the Clean Water Act, such pipes would require permits.
https://content.sierraclub.org/grassrootsnetwork/team-news/2017/08/mann-v-ford-14-dioxane
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