This is a huge amount of reading material, but I will be posting a series of articles about the environmental problems at the Peter's Mine in Ringwood NJ. To give a brief overview, the Peter's mine http://www.ironminers.com/ironmines/peters-mine-1.htm was an impressive operation opened around 1740. The operation continued on and off and was finally closed in the 1960's.

Not long after the mine was closed, the land was acquired by Ford Motor Company. Going back to July 1955, Ford opened their newest factory, located in Mahway, NJ. This 70 million dollar factory rolled out a car a minute and was revolutionary for it's time. Sometime in the 1960's Ford had a problem. For every car that was painted, a certain amount of chemical residue from over spray (remember paint guns weren't efficient in those days), undercoat, thinner, water, and other chemicals was left over from every days work. Termed as "Paint Sludge", Ford at some point was producing about 6000 gallons a day which needed proper disposal.

As laws were lax at the time and the cost to properly treat the Paint Sludge was expensive, Ford had resorted to using different dumping grounds to discard this material. The site of the Peters Mine was one of the largest dumping grounds every used by Ford. Millions and millions of gallons of untreated chemicals were dumping on the site making one of the most environmentally unstable areas in NJ. Years later after donating the property to the state, and being tasked with cleaning the land many times, there is still a large amount of contamination still present at the site. The residents of the area, Ramapo Indians, are feeling the effects as there has been many deaths, health problems, skin problems, and more from living in this area.

Check out http://www.toxiclegacy.com. This website, produced The Record, http://www.northjersey.com, has very indepth pictures, photos, and detailed information about what really happened at the site. Very stunning, sad, and most of all true..

Good Job Greg! That was some read! It's incredible how some companies are and the people that wheel them! I'm sad and happy at the same time but glad that there are some things still left behind to see in remembrance of what was once there. Every time we visit a new Mine or old one that we have seen before we know that we are now a part of it's history good or bad. I love to be a part of mining history! Thanks man

Miner Bond

Ford has a web site devoted to this site too. Some of the .PDF files in the "Reports and Documents section are very interesting. There are old newspaper articles pictures and descriptions of the mines among other info.

http://www.ringwoodsiteupdate.com/Home.asp