TINTON FALLS – The Monmouth County Regional Health Commission has terminated an agreement with the Monmouth County Health Department after its commissioners said they were bombarded with complaints related to odors at the Monmouth County Reclamation Center.
The commission is comprised of representatives from 20 municipalities in the county, including Red Bank, Tinton Falls, Rumson, Fair Haven, Shrewsbury Borough and Middletown, and works to ensure the health of those communities.
The Monmouth County Reclamation Center is in Tinton Falls.
“Our other member towns are not getting the services we are supposed to provide to them because almost all of our health inspectors are doing odor complaints … investigating complaints is going to expedite the remediation of the odor,” Dr. Leonard Giles, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, said during a Feb. 11 special meeting at the commission’s offices in Tinton Falls.
Within the past month, residents of Tinton Falls and of several municipalities that border the reclamation center have submitted hundreds of complaints after a persistent odor that emanates from the landfill was exacerbated by a construction project at the facility, officials said.
During the special meeting on Feb. 11, the commissioners said they do not have the time or the resources to perform their regular duties while continuing to investigate odor complaints.
The regional health commission’s contract with the county health department, which will remain in effect through April, allows residents to submit odor complaints to the regional health commission.
According to a resolution outlining the matter, a large number of complaints and a lack of resources to document and pursue odor complaints led to the termination of the shared services agreement. Complaints will eventually be rerouted to another entity that will document and investigate the complaints, officials said.
Prior to a unanimous “yes” vote from nine of the 19 regional health commissioners who were present at the Feb. 11 meeting, members of the public had an opportunity to comment.
“I was on the Tinton Falls Zoning Board of Adjustment when (the reclamation center) was being considered in the 1970s,” Ocean Township resident Pam Rachlin said. “Nothing was proposed the way it is today. We all know it smells if you live in the area. You keep sending inspectors out, but it doesn’t make a difference. The big question is what are you going to do to fix it?”
“We do not have anything to do with changing policy or remediation of the odors. We just investigate the odors,” Giles said.
County officials have said the odor is caused by landfill gas, leachate – water that comes into contact with garbage – and a four-month construction project at the reclamation center that concluded on Jan. 15.
Giles said that within 90 days, the odor coming from the landfill “should be back to the level it was at before this whole mess started.”
He pointed out that county representatives failed to notify Tinton Falls officials about the construction project that exacerbated the stench.
“The odor complaints have gotten out of control,” Giles said. “We cannot even respond to those odor complaints and do our other jobs. We would like to work with the county in a cooperative measure instead of an adversarial one.”
Giles said nearly all of the health inspectors at the regional health commission are recording and pursuing health complaints. He said 54 odor related complaints were submitted on Feb. 3.
Following a one-hour meeting during which the topic was discussed privately by the commissioners, a motion was made to terminate the shared services agreement with the county health department and to reroute odor-related complaints elsewhere.
Contacted for comment about how the county would proceed, Monmouth County Freeholder Director Thomas A. Arnone said, “The county is actively working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Monmouth County Regional Health Commission and we look forward to negotiating a new agreement.”
Arnone said complaints regarding odors that come from the landfill may be directed to the regional health commission at 732-493-9520, to the county at 732-922-2666 or to the DEP at 1-877-WARN DEP.