A Windfall From Waste; Redevelopers Turning State into Dumping Ground

By ALEX NUSSBAUM, STAFF WRITER

An armada of trucks is rolling into Bergen County’s old dump along the New Jersey Turnpike, hauling soil and debris from contaminated sites across the region.

Sounds an awful lot like EnCap, the misbegotten landfill-to- links project in the Meadowlands. But the scene is actually Overpeck County Park in eastern Bergen County, an old landfill now open again to dumpers 32 years after accepting its last load of household trash.

From South Jersey to New York City, old dumps are being buried under new debris, all in the name of progress.

With the state’s blessing, millions of tons of polluted material dredged from harbors, construction debris and other waste have become a key tool and profit motive for those seeking to turn landfills into sparkling golf courses, malls and even housing developments.

Environmental officials in New Jersey say the millions that landfill redevelopers can make taking "lightly" contaminated materials off people’s hands are means to noble ends: Dumps get closed, waste has a place to go, taxpayers save on cleanups and a crowded state gets more space to grow.

EnCap’s cost overruns and environmental violations are an aberration, they say. And the officials involved with the Overpeck project say they have safeguards in place to ensure that the park they’re building atop the piles of debris won’t pose any dangers.

But as the projects grow more ambitious, some are raising questions: How much waste is enough? Who makes the call? And in a state with a sorry history of toxic dumping, who’s keeping tabs?

"Under the guise of closure for economic redevelopment, they’re basically reopening landfills," said state Sen. Stephen Sweeney, a South Jersey Democrat worried about a landfill project in his district. "I think what’s happened is, some very smart people have found a loophole in the system."

State officials say the debris and other "fill" are needed because the piles of garbage left in most landfills are too soft and unstable to support new buildings or even golf courses and parks.

But critics see problems, noting that most of the oversight, even in public projects such as Overpeck, is in private hands.

Additionally, they note, in its zeal to encourage the reuse of construction debris and other material, New Jersey doesn’t require haulers of the waste to go through the licensing and criminal background checks imposed on traditional garbage companies. Even a lobbyist for concrete recyclers warned state legislators last year about some "fly-by-night" operators.

At a meeting of environmental business consultants this summer, one engineer said the state Department of Environmental Protection was so concerned about potentially contaminated construction and demolition debris that it was considering an "inspection blitz."

"Right now, a lot of the C&D recyclers are not even asking for certifications about where materials come from, not doing any testing," said Tracy Straka, a vice president of Hackensack’s J. Fletcher Creamer & Sons. "It’s just business as usual out there, and the DEP is worried."

One recycler also is worried about where tainted rubble is ending up. "It shouldn’t be under somebody’s doorway," said Valeria Montecalvo, the president of Bayshore Recycling Corp. in Keasbey, a section of Woodbridge. "It shouldn’t be used as the border around somebody’s pool, because there are all sorts of issues with this material."

Earlier this year, DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson said the state had "major concerns" about how demolition debris and contaminated soil were being reused. "Monitoring where things go, that is a problem," Jackson told the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey.

Faced with questions about EnCap’s massive use of imported material, Jackson also has promised reforms in how the department assesses such projects. "We shouldn’t allow people to get rich creating dumps," she told The Record.

For those worried about the unrestrained use of fill, EnCap is Exhibit A. With state approval, the troubled project has taken in some 2.5 million cubic yards of material contaminated with PCBs, asbestos and other chemicals, earning more than $30 million from disposal fees. Despite that income and $300 million in state subsidies, the project remains in limbo, nearly bankrupt and accused of violating environmental rules.

Still, burying old landfills under commercial and industrial waste remains at the heart of strategies for closing some of the hundreds of abandoned dumps in the area.

It’s the logical extension of the iron law of progress: Sweep away the old, make money off the new. In a region that has reinvented itself repeatedly over the centuries from farms to factories to suburbs and beyond shedding the husk of previous incarnations has always been an economic imperative.

But this remake involves some of the chemically tinged debris of our industrial past: soil contaminated with gasoline, demolished manufacturing plants, harbor dredge material streaked with PCBs, dioxins and other chemical runoff.

There’s plenty to go around. A project to deepen New York Harbor is expected to generate 43 million cubic yards of rock, sand, clay and mud over the next few years, including 7 million cubic yards of polluted dredge material. In New Jersey, meanwhile, nearly 6 million tons of asphalt, concrete, masonry and petroleum-contaminated soil are reused annually, according to state figures.

Getting paid to accept those materials can mean big money for redevelopers.

In the 1990s, port officials paid as much as $30 a cubic yard to landfills that accepted polluted dredge material. That number has since come down to $5 to $6, but at the same time builders have found they can charge more to take other materials that are often even more contaminated.

Recipients typically charge about $10 per cubic yard to take chunks of masonry, brick and other demolition debris. C&D "fines" a powdery residue of crushed concrete, wallboard and other material can fetch $15 to $20 per cubic yard, as can dirt dug from toxic cleanup sites.

Industry observers disagree about the potential for profits. Some say the cost of preparing old dumps for new construction can be so exorbitant that fill revenues merely offset the expense. Others say contaminated fill has become much more valuable, especially for major developers such as EnCap.

An EnCap affiliate, OENJ Cherokee, built the Jersey Gardens mall in Elizabeth and the elite Bayonne Golf Club, both atop old dumps. In both cases, the company earned more than $10 million from disposal fees before a square inch of retail space or a blade of grass on the fairway appeared, said an engineer who worked on the projects.

"Of course, they wanted to maximize the profits," said Bashar Assadi, who managed both projects while with Sadat Associates Inc., an environmental consulting firm. He left Sadat in 2003 and is now the project manager at Overpeck.

Last year, the state DEP cited OENJ for a series of violations at the Bayonne site related to its waste handling. The state says the company failed to repair damage done to wetlands next to the property and then used the damaged land to expand the golf course and build a helicopter pad for its well-heeled clientele. OENJ also failed to build parts of a public walkway, fishing pier and kayak launch on New York Bay, as it had promised, the state alleged. The department says it’s currently in "settlement negotiations" with the company.

To be sure, the debate is not limited to New Jersey. In New York City, plans to turn an old municipal landfill beneath the Bronx Whitestone Bridge into a golf course have sparked complaints.

An audit last month by the city comptroller panned the cityParks Department for its lax oversight of the Ferry Point project, where more than 2 million cubic yards of fill were dumped – more than four times the original estimate.

Leslie Lowe, a New York attorney who fought the project, said it had powerful backers, including the city’s real-estate industry, which wanted a cheap disposal site for its waste. "It’s a scam," Lowe said. "This was a construction and demolition dump masquerading as a golf course."

From parkland to dump

At Overpeck, no one has made money off fill, officials say. Rather, they insist, fill revenue has eased the burden on taxpayers and helped the county fulfill its long-standing pledge to local residents.

Bergen County seized the land from Ridgefield Park, Teaneck, Leonia and Palisades Park in 1951, promising to build a world-class park. Instead, Overpeck became one of North Jersey’s busiest landfills, notorious for its noise, odors and rumors of illegal toxic dumping.

The dump closed in 1975. In 2002, the towns reached a court settlement with the county requiring the creation of 400 acres of lawns, soccer fields, tennis courts and an amphitheater the county’s version of Central Park, local politicians gushed.

The county estimated the transformation would cost $30 million. But in late 2002, officials said they’d found a cost-free solution: Tully Construction, a Queens contractor, offered to do the work for free, if it could import 5 million cubic yards of contaminated material and construction debris enough to fill Giants Stadium twice.State officials balked at the proposal. It sounded more like a "landfill reopening" than a closure, one regulator wrote. At a meeting with county officials, the head of the DEP’s solid-waste division warned that economics could not be "the sole basis" for taking in so much fill, according to minutes of the session.

The state eventually approved a far smaller amount of fill, about 2 million cubic yards. But the DEP, lobbied by Bergen officials, would give ground on other fronts. After initially demanding that the project accept only clean fill, the department agreed to let the county accept contaminated material. It also approved the use of "historic fill" material from sites with an unclear background.

The county has avoided taking the most contaminated material available, keeping fill revenues to about $6 million, said Assadi, who now works for the county’s Overpeck consultant, PMK Group.

"It’s basically trying to defray costs," he said.

To keep out improper material, PMK employees visit potential sources before approving its use, Assadi said. His staff has secretly tailed some of its hauling contractors to prevent any bait- and-switch deliveries.

The spying uncovered two attempts to sneak in unauthorized material, by two brokers now banned from the site, he said.

PMK videotapes each truckload of waste and inspects each for odors or sheens that could indicate foul play. Company employees use high-tech probes to sniff for chemical emissions.

Yet with hundreds of trucks rolling in on some days, it’s impossible to build a perfect system, Assadi said.

"There is no way we will have a foolproof system; let’s not fool ourselves," he said. "We have very high standards, but you’re never going to be able to check everything."

Dumpers police themselves

Though state officials say they’ve got a robust system for keeping fill projects in line, they let landfill redevelopers largely police themselves. Companies looking to reuse tainted material must test to ensure that the fill meets state pollution limits. The testing and certifying usually are left to private consultants hired by a developer, though paperwork must be submitted to the state for approval.

Industry officials say old landfills are the perfect place to dump such material because cleanup plans usually include containment barriers, systems to collect toxic runoff and other systems that keep contaminants from leaking off-site. The DEP typically requires a final layer of at least 2 feet of clean fill, as well as 30 years of pollution monitoring.

"When somebody steps up and is willing to [close a landfill], even if they’re taking some additional dirt and recycled material on top of what’s already there, that’s a good thing," said Irene Kropp, an assistant DEP commissioner.

Still, the department recognizes the need for reforms, Kropp added. Newly proposed rules would require landfill redevelopers to notify communities of their cleanup plans, she said. And other limits on what developers can build and what types of fill they can import are also in the works.

Sweeney, the South Jersey senator, wants the state to rethink its entire landfill program. At a minimum, local hearings should be mandatory for fill permits, he argued, and companies should have to show the financial wherewithal to get something built atop the material they bring in.

"In the government’s desire to deal with all these landfills that we’ve mismanaged or abandoned over the years, some of these guys have figured out this loophole," he said. "And the abuse is going to continue because there’s an enormous amount of money to be made."

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E-mail: nussbaum@northjersey.com

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(c) 2007 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.