With a $239,524 state grant in hand, Lawrence Township officials are set to take the next step in the continuing saga of the former Pit Stop service station on Lawrence Road, between Altamawr and Merline avenues.
Lawrence Township officials learned July 21 that the the township’s grant application to the New Jersey Economic Development Administration’s Hazardous Discharge Site Remediation Municipal Grant program had been approved.
The grant will allow township officials to continue with the environmental assessment of the property at 1175 Lawrence Road, including demolishing the vacant, boarded-up building so the soil underneath it may be studied for possible contamination.
“We do have Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, our environmental company, at the ready. We hope to have this work started in the next couple of months,” Municipal Manager Kevin Nerwinski said.
The extent of the contamination underneath the building is unknown, Nerwinski said. Once the consultant completes the investigation and provides a cost estimate to remedy the site, the township will use that information as the basis for grant funding from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to remediate the site, he said.
“The end game for the township is to get the property cleaned up through grant funding, acquire title to the property, and then create a passive park area for the community to enjoy and be proud of,” Nerwinski said.
The property at 1175 Lawrence Road is owned by a defunct limited liability company whose principal member has died. The family is handling the estate, but they do not have any legal obligation to address any of the issues involved in the site, he said.
They are not motivated to sell it because is about $2 million in liens against it by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for past remediation work, and by Lawrence Township for unpaid property taxes, Nerwinski said.
The family was approached by the township several years ago, and the two sides reached an agreement that led to the township applying for the grant that was approved earlier this month, Nerwinski said. There is still much work to be done, he said.
The former Pit Stop service station has a long history, dating back more than two decades when it was originally known as the Lawrence Road Service Center. It later became known as the Pit Stop.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection became involved in the late 1990s after its environmental spill line was notified three times between 1997 and 1998 of discharges that occurred at the site.
The owner was ordered to stop selling gasoline, but the Pit Stop continued operating as a service station until 2003.
After some neighborhood residents complained of odors in their drinking water – which came from private wells – in 2003, the Lawrence Township Health Department sampled the wells and discovered that five of the 13 wells were contaminated. The affected properties were hooked up to city water.
Later in 2003, the property owner was ordered to remove seven underground storage tanks. The property went into foreclosure and was purchased by 1175 Lawrence Road LLC in 2005. The new owner removed the underground storage tanks and 2,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil in 2006.
Subsequently, a multi-phase remediate investigation of the site was launched in 2010 by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to determine the nature and extent of the contamination.