Cleanup

Buried drums of oil waste discovered in August 1986 at the Mobil Oil Corp.' s Paulsboro refinery have not been excavated, and the company and the state Department of Environmental Protection are stalled on beginning cleanup. "We want to clean up the site and the DEP wants us to," said Carole Edwards, spokeswoman for Mobil, "but we want an evenhanded agreement. " Mobil, which employs 900 people and has a daily process capacity of 100,000 barrels of crude oil at the refinery, contends that the administrative consent order for cleanup contains unacceptable legal provisions.

Gov. Kean yesterday signed into law a new standard of liability for environmental-cleanup contractors that could allow them to find insurance more easily. Kean signed amendments to the state's Spill Compensation and Control Act that would narrow the standard of liability for the contractors so that they could be sued only for direct cases of negligence. Under the old provisions of the law, contractors and engineers could be held strictly liable for any damages at an environmental-cleanup site, regardless of whether they were at fault.

Workers dressed in protective clothing continue demolition of the Lansdowne warehouse whose legacy is radium contamination at more than two dozen Delaware County properties. EPA officials say discarded sand from the warehouse, a radium-processing plant from 1915 to 1925, was used in building materials. Dismantlement began in early February, and the walls will be down in the next two to three days. Other work at the site will continue, however.

A cleanup of streets and public areas in business districts of Lower Merion Township will be held Saturday under the auspices of the township and the Main Line Chamber of Commerce. Volunteers from local businesses will conduct the cleanup. In addition, SEPTA will collect debris around two of its commuter-railway stations in the township, said F. Karl Schauffele, chamber president. "Some of our business districts look shabby," Schauffele said. "We need help to ensure that all Lower Merion business areas will be inviting and attractive areas to visit, work and shop.

Mayor Dana L. Redd on Tuesday initiated the Camden Clean Campaign, a citywide effort to improve neighborhoods. Wachovia and PNC Banks provided most of the campaign's funding with a combined donation of $30,000. The city has been working with residents to designate lots and parks for cleanup and to set dates. Redd said trash "came up over and over" as an issue during her mayoral campaign last fall and that she had "promised to do something about it. " "Our quality of life is being affected," Redd said.

SATURDAY, May 18, is the date of the official Fairmount Park cleanup, the "7th annual Philadelphia Cares About Fairmount Park Day. " But we're hoping that Thursday, May 16, also represents a cleanup of sorts - of the Fairmount Park Commission. That's the day that Common Pleas Court judges vote on concurrent five-year terms for 10 members of the commission. This year's selection has garnered unprecedented attention, and an unprecedented number of candidates: Eight incumbents who want to remain and 35 new candidates.

Preparations for cleaning up of portions of the Paoli railyard that are contaminated with toxic chemicals are expected to begin Feb. 24. How that effort will be funded may be decided in federal court, according to a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency. An EPA report made public Jan. 30 shows that levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the rail complex and repair facility and on six adjacent residential properties have risen since tests were first conducted on those sites in 1979.

It has been nine months since Burlington County residents joined members of the ecumenical Christian housing ministry Habitat for Humanity for a walk from Maine to Atlanta, stopping briefly in Mount Holly for a formal dedication of a simple rowhouse. On Saturday, the group hopes to begin cleanup of that house. Volunteers and clergy members came out to the First Presbyterian Church Tuesday night in the icy aftermath of Mount Holly's second winter storm to plan the cleanup. Built about a century ago, 36 White St. is an unassuming rowhouse.

When the cleanup of the radiation-contaminated twin home at 105-107 E. Stratford Ave. in Lansdowne Borough is completed sometime in April 1989, officials expect the property to be "a nice, flat, grassy lot. " That is the situation envisioned by Ray Huston, a project manager with Chem-Nuclear Systems of Columbia, S. C., the company that has been awarded a $6 million contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the piece-by-piece removal of...

East Germantown's Concerned Citizens are claiming at least a partial victory in their battle to force a church to stop contaminating their neighborhood by leasing a vacant lot to bus and truck operators. Hours after the citizens - wearing surgical masks and carrying signs - picketed the lot yesterday, the city Health Department cited the Corinthian Baptist Church for dumping human waste and trash on the 3.5-acre lot it owns at 21st Street and Godfrey Avenue. The church was warned to clean it within 10 days or face further action.

A jackknifed tractor-trailer spilled its cargo of cooking fat on the Schuylkill Expressway near 30th Street Station late Tuesday, prompting a major cleanup that lasted until after Wednesday's morning rush hour. PennDot reported that the last section of roadway affected by the accident - Exit 344 at the I-676 Vine Street Expressway - reopened about 10:30 a.m. Officials said the rig jackknifed about 11 hours earlier on the stretch of I-76 that runs under the train station. The trailer hit a pillar and was ripped apart, spilling its cargo of boxes of shortening.

Myriad oddities, including fake hair extensions and fake blood in a tube, washed ashore along New Jersey's 127-mile coastline pre-Sandy last year, making up part of more than 350,000 pieces of debris collected in 2012 by volunteers organized by the environmental group Clean Ocean Action. Among the "wild, the wacky, and the weird" were a Yoda doll head, ant traps, tanning goggles, a wicker sofa, vampire teeth, a toilet seat, false eyelashes, hiking boots, a girdle, a shopping cart, and a fully decorated Christmas tree.

An annual street cleaning volunteer event Saturday turned up a gun that may have been used in the fatal shooting Thursday across from Overbrook High School that left one student dead and another injured. The weapon was found around 12:50 p.m. near North 59th Street and West Columbia Avenue, less than a block away at the other corner of the school's baseball field. Police were running ballistics tests on the weapon to see if it was involved in the shooting, police said. Test results were not expected over the weekend.

IT'S TRASH TIME. Philly Spring Cleanup, the annual anti-litter event that last year mobilized 12,000 volunteers, returns Saturday with more than 500 locations around the city. In its sixth year, the cleanup encourages city residents to take to the streets with brooms and gloves, and cleanse a city with a serious litter issue. Residents collect more than 1 million pounds of trash each year. How it works is the city relies on community organizations to help recruit volunteers and initiate projects.

Zack Bird paints walls. He does pretty well creating murals and faux finishes for Palm steak joints across the country, and in some of the nicer homes across the region. Bird has a second, stealth job unpainting walls. Specifically, he paints over graffiti on walls and bridges in public spaces, along the river drives, and in the Wissahickon, "the thing I love most about Philadelphia. " Call it faux unfinishing. It's his one-man beautification project. Instead of Lady Bird, we have Zack Bird.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - Hundreds of college students have descended upon the Jersey Shore during spring break this year to help with cleanup and rebuilding in the wake of superstorm Sandy. And the state's public architecture school is bringing its expertise to bear in offering to help local officials and groups with research and design as the area rebuilds. The project at the New Jersey Institute of Technology - dubbed Resilient Design - will look at lessons gleaned from other flooded areas, from Venice to New Orleans, and is setting up studios throughout the affected areas of the state, said Thomas Dallessio, the project manager.

WILL THE next pope be European, African or North American? Will he be in his 50s or 70s? Will he carry an iPhone or an Android? One-hundred-fifteen cardinals gather Tuesday in the Sistine Chapel to begin the arduous process of answering these questions as they choose a new leader for more than 1 billion Roman Catholics. Pope Benedict XVI's decision to become the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign was historic. But the papal conclave's decision on his successor could be an even more pivotal moment in church history.

TRENTON - A Republican power broker who helped get Gov. Christie elected. That power broker's ties to a company that landed a major contract after Sandy. And the prices the company is charging taxpayers to clean up the Jersey Shore. Democrats will try to untangle these threads Friday afternoon when the chief executive of Florida-based AshBritt Inc., which Christie tapped for the initial post-Sandy recovery, testifies at a joint legislative hearing. The hearing marks the start of Democratic efforts to call into question what has become Christie's strongest suit in this reelection year: his handling of Sandy.

For almost 50 years, trucks drove in and out of Monmouth Petroleum in North Jersey, filling up with heating oil for home delivery. But leaks and abandoned storage tanks left the site contaminated, another spoiled property in a state filled with shuttered industrial sites. Now, a developer is building an apartment complex on the Manalapan Township site - a plan that New Jersey environmental officials say might have taken years longer, or never happened, if not for the state's new privatized cleanup program.