Silt runoff from a construction project off Wood Avenue in Edison into a nearby nature preserve worsened considerably over the last week, although the reason for this, as well as the scope of the problem, is disputed by the developer and a local environmental group.
COURTESY OF EDISON WETLANDS The part of the Stevens Preserve where silt water runoff from the Fenix site eventually ended up. During last week’s heavy rains, rain water carrying silt from a housing complex currently being constructed by development firm Fenix Investment and Development ran downhill from the site into the nearby Edith Stevens Preserve, a protected conservation area at the edge of the property. While a basin made for collecting and processing storm water existed on site, the rains overwhelmed the system and began flooding into the preserve, creating a layer of reddish clay between 2 to 4 inches thick within the wetland. This contributed to an already existing layer of silt that had been found to be running off the site which, in May, the state Department of Environmental Protection had ordered Fenix to remove by hand, so as not to disturb the existing vegetation.
These points, Fenix and the Edison Wetlands Association (EWA), a local environmental nonprofit, largely agree on. The dispute between the two groups, however, is why it happened. The EWA asserts that Fenix installed inadequate storm-water controls on its site that Executive Director Bob Spiegel said were intended to give the appearance of action without addressing the runoff issues his organization had expressed concerns over.
“They put together some hay bales and some silt fencing and some plastic fencing, [but this] was a cosmetic attempt to make it look like they were putting some controls in place, but there’s really nothing left of that system,” said Spiegel.
The hay bales and fencing Spiegel mentioned were put in place after the DEP expressed concerns over storm-water runoff around April of this year. About a month later, the state agency expressed its dissatisfaction with the firm’s control methods through a notice of violation May 7, which mandated the removal of the silt and improvements to the storm-watermanagement system.
Fenix President Patrick O’Neill, however, called attention to the unusually large amount of rain over that week, 2.36 inches over three days according to the Weather Channel’s Web site, and said that the systemwasn’t designed to handle what he said was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
“Our storm-water-management system worked like it was supposed to work. However, due to the amount of rain in such a short period of time, [it was overwhelmed],” said O’Neill in a phone interview.
He compared the basin, the primary means by which the site collects and processes storm water, to a bathtub — water drains at the bottom and there is a hole toward the top to control overflow. Ordinarily, murky water entering the basin would have time to sit and clear out, but with the intense rains, the ordinarily clear water leaving the basin was, instead, filled with silt because the system didn’t have time to process it.
“If you get a hurricane and get 20 inches of rain, the whole basin floods and people who never experienced flooding problems before get into these sort of once-in-alifetime events,” he added later.
Another disagreement between the developer and the EWA is over just how much of a problem the silt runoff represents. O’Neill said that the issue amounted to about five to six wheelbarrows worth of material, “such a small amount,” and further added that his company was about halfway done with the mitigation effort before the rains came last week.
The EWA, however, said that the area covered by silt has vastly increased, far more than what O’Neill had said, with Spiegel saying that areas not previously hit by the reddish clay, such as the dryer uplands area of the preserve, are now also enveloped, as a result of what the executive director called a “river of silt” coming from the basin.
Part of the reason for the expansion of the affected area, Spiegel said, is that workers hired by the firm were pumping overflow water into another, previous unaffected part of the preserve, off to the side. O’Neill, when asked about this, said that there had been people pumping excess water to control the flooding, but he said that most of it was being fed back into the basin. The rest of the water went into a large, bladder-like device attached to the pump, he explained, which processed the runoff and expelled clear water.
Spiegel, however, found this interpretation of events highly questionable and said that his own inspections of the area indicated that the water coming out of the pump was, in fact, not clear and was responsible for silting over a previously untouched part of the preserve. He said that the pumping was being done not to control the flooding but to make the problem not look as bad as Spiegel says it is.
The EWA member noted, though, that he hadn’t been out to the site in about a month and so was not sure whether the condition had worsened over the last week or the last month. Still, he was adamant that, regardless, the measures Fenix had imposed to mitigate storm-water runoff were not enough to protect the preserve, and therefore negatively impact the local wildlife, especially amphibians who breathe through their skins.
At the moment, O’Neill said that Fenix is in a wait-and-see mode, working with state and local regulatory agencies to see what can be done to improve the stormwater system.
“Given that we properly built what we were supposed to build and experienced what we experienced in this storm, [we are asking ourselves] are there things we need to do, or is this storm event something that happens so infrequently that you don’t need to design for it,” said O’Neill.
Spiegel, meanwhile, said that the EWA is examining its legal options and is pondering whether to launch a lawsuit that would mandate further improvements to Fenix’s storm-water-management system, as well as enact cleanup on the site. He lamented that such actions would be necessary, saying that if state regulatory agencies were more active, his organization would not need to rely on lawsuits.
“We gave them an opportunity to [improve their systems]; everyone noted they had violations … and nothing was done. So now, our organization is going to have to look at what type of legal actions we can bring,” said Spiegel.
Members of EWA are planning to have a multi-media presentation on their web site that Spiegel said will show video footage of the silt runoff from the site. Their web site is located at www.edisonwetlands.org.