BY TOM CAIAZZA
Staff Writer
After months of hearings and several postponed meetings, the Edison Wetlands Association has withdrawn its objection to the development of a 570,000-square-foot warehouse on the Industrial Land Reclaiming (ILR) landfill.
The EWA objected to certain technical aspects of the proposal by JERC Partners VII, the developer of the former landfill site, mostly citing environmental issues.
According to EWA Executive Director Robert Spiegel, under the conditions laid out in the resolution for preliminary approval passed by the Planning Board on May 17, the applicant will be responsible for “significant modification” to technical issues concerning the contamination of the landfill site.
The landfill’s owners, Industrial Land Reclaiming, were found in violation by the state Department of Environmental Protection for the alleged dumping of contaminated waste on the site, long after the landfill was officially closed.
While that situation is still being worked through, Spiegel said the EWA was confident enough in the agreed-upon conditions to withdraw its objections and allow the application to continue.
“We actually required them to do a significant amount of modification over the last two months,” Spiegel said, “and they basically fully complied with the technical issues we had laid out, including the contamination issues.”
The conditions would require JERC to, among other things, turn on the site’s leachate collection system and modify the venting system to keep issues with hazardous gas from decomposing fill to a minimum. The developer must also modify its safety and health plan, all of which were issues EWA asked for in its objection to the development.
Spiegel shied away from saying he was in favor of the construction, because EWA is an environmental watchdog group, but he said having weighed the options, a warehouse with environmental concerns addressed is better than the alternative.
Spiegel said that the EWA weighed the options regarding the ILR landfill and thought that having a warehouse there with some modicum of environmental controls attached to it would be better for the town than having a landfill that has been under violation from the DEP for the alleged dumping of illegal, contaminated fill.
He said that as long as the environmental concerns are addressed, it is possible for the EWA to work with developers.
Spiegel said he prides himself on forcing the developer to adhere to a level of environmental standards that most other government agencies would not force them to reach.
He said that the issue of the contaminated fill, which is still being investigated by the DEP, will be followed by the EWA, but that he was pleased that JERC was willing to address the environmental group’s concerns.
“Over all, they addressed our technical concerns, and that was our main opposition,” Spiegel said. “There were too many technical issues that were unresolved, and the applicant worked very, very hard to address those for us.”
The Planning Board unanimously granted the preliminary approval for the site, but the issue is far from complete. JERC must still receive approval and permits from other government agencies regarding its site plan as well as the issue of the contaminated fill.
Spiegel believes the largest hurdles are still to come, and the EWA will continue to monitor the application to make sure the terms of the conditions are being adhered to.
“The applicant has a significant amount of permits and hurdles that they have to go through before they would be able to even put a shovel in the ground,” Spiegel said.