ERIC SUCAR staff French’s Landfill, the township’s only Superfund site, is difficult to spot because it is now heavily wooded and overgrown. Township officials eventually hope to find a private redeveloper for the 42-acre property. BRICK TOWNSHIP- The township’s only Superfund site is hard to find these days.
Drivers zipping along Sally Ike Road would have to slow down to notice the heavily wooded, fenced-in site that bisects two housing developments.
The only indication it’s not just woods is a small white sign next to the fence gate with the words “Hazardous Area.”
The site has had a number of different names over the past 65 years – McCormack’s Dump, French’s Landfill, Brick Township Landfill. But it’s still a moneydraining concern for township officials, who would like nothing more than to redevelop the site.
Brick Township has paid approximately $500,000 a year for an annual analysis of the contents of the roughly 67 monitoring wells that stud the site. That number will soon drop to $300,000,Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis said.
ERIC SUCAR staff French’s Landfill, which has been a Superfund site since the early 1980s, is close to homes in the Herbertsville section of town off Sally Ike Road. Township officials are hoping to find a redeveloper for the site in the future. “I talked to the township engineer,” he said. “The amount of money it’s going to take for us to do on this site is going to decrease by about $200,000.”
But the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs to issue a final record of decision (ROD) before the township can proceed with any redevelopment plans, Acropolis said.
“You need to have the record of decision before you can even look at anything else,” he said. “We were told that it looks like a ROD would be coming by the end of 2008. I hope we get that this year. Any time you are dealing with a state or federal agency, you are rolling the dice a little bit.”
The 42-acre site is located in the Herbertsville section of town, between the Garden State Parkway west and Sally Ike Road to the east.
The landfill was operated by John Mc- Cormick from the late 1940s to January 1968. Robert French operated the dump from March 1969 to December 1973. The township bought the landfill shortly after, with the intention of eventually closing it down. It was closed in April 1979.
A mix of residential and commercial garbage, construction debris, vegetative wastes and sewage and septic wastes was dumped at the landfill for more than 30 years.An undetermined amount of labeled and unlabeled 55-gallon drums were also disposed of at the site, according to a 2005 Human Health Risk Assessment performed by Princeton-based ENVIRON International Corp. for the township.
The unrestricted dumping for three decades led to groundwater and soil pollution. In 1983, the landfill was added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list.
Groundwater sampling in the late 1980s showed elevated levels of cadmium and low levels of volatile organic compounds in some groundwater monitoring wells and in soil and test pits. Sediments and leachate were found to be contaminated with various heavy metals and pesticides were found in septage pits, according to an EPA fact sheet on the landfill.
Studies identified a kidney-shaped contamination plume that appears to be migrating in a southeasterly direction. The township restricted the use of irrigation wells in the most highly contaminated areas in 1999 and established a Groundwater Usage Restriction Area (GURA) that summer. The GURA boundaries eliminated the “potential” exposure of contaminated groundwater to the public, according to the EPA.
But Brick has born the brunt of the cleanup and testing costs, not the federal government. That could change, if the township could find a redeveloper for the site, Acropolis said.
But first the township needs the record of decision, he said.
“It would cost a heck of a lot less for all the residents in town, so we don’t have to spend money on the site,” Acropolis said. “People have not been aggressively pursuing a record of decision until 2004 to 2005, when this council took over.We’ve stepped up the pressure a little bit.”
Any future redevelopment of the site depends on the record of decision, he said.
“The EPA has to give that to us before taking the next step,” Acropolis said. “The thing that bothers me is we have to pay for the monitoring every single year. That’s what makes me a little nuts.”
The township administration under former Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli was “happy” to continue to pay the monitoring costs, Acropolis said.
“I’m not happy to pay for the monitoring,” he said. “If the firm that is doing the monitoring doesn’t move us closer to a record of decision, we’ll get another firm that will.”
The township bought the then-privately owned landfill back in 1973.
“People say how come you bought the site?” said Acropolis, who was a teenager at the time. “In 1973, it was owned and being polluted by the owner. The laws weren’t on the books at the time for us to stop it. It was like having a landfill in your town able to take everything from everybody. The only way we were able to shut down the site was by taking ownership of it.”