to pay back funds
to township
School district agrees
to pay back funds
to township
BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP
Staff Writer
NORTH BRUNSWICK — The township will commission more extensive soil testing on three residential properties near the high school.
Township Business Administrator Robert Lombard urged the Township Council to authorize the use of $50,000 for environmental engineering firm Powell-Harpstead to conduct "a full-scope delineation of the contamination" on three Plains Gap Road properties during the Monday night workshop meeting.
"The analysis will enable the council to make a determination of what should be done to remediate these properties," Lombard said.
Powell-Harpstead conducted 12 soil samples on seven residential properties on Plains Gap Road last year, after finding contaminated soil on the North Brunswick Township High School property and in Veterans Park.
"The report findings from the samples taken on some of the residential properties warrant additional investigation," Lombard said.
The council will vote on authorizing the additional testing during the regular council meeting Monday night.
The meeting will also include a public hearing on a $11 million bond ordinance that, if passed, would authorize the cleanup of Veterans Park and the west end of the North Brunswick Township High School.
The ordinance is based on an interlocal agreement between the township and the Board of Education.
The agreement allows the township to bond for $11 million to clean up the school parcel so the district can continue with the $29 million school renovation project voters approved in January 2002.
In the agreement, which the board unanimously voted to accept on Tuesday night, the board promises to repay the township for the cleanup.
If the council approves the bond ordinance Monday, cleanup of the hazardous waste could finish by September with construction of the high school addition resuming in 2005, Lombard said.
Construction on the new high school auditorium stopped last year when the contractor found an unusual concentration of glass in the soil.
The board retained Powell-Harpstead to test the soil at the high school and nearby Veterans Park.
Soil testing confirmed that 1 acre of land near the high school contains hazardous waste including arsenic, lead, copper, zinc and trilchloroethylene (TCE), which is an industrial cleaning solvent.
Dan Harpstead, of Powell-Harpstead, said about 6 acres of the surrounding land, containing both hazardous and nonhazardous material, will also have to undergo remediation.
Any bonded funds left over from the cleanup could be used in the remediation of the rest of the site, Lombard said. The township and board attorneys will continue working to identify other entities that may bear responsibility for the contamination.
The township owned the property until conveying it to the board in the early 1970s for the construction of a high school.
"The real estate may have been used as an unlicensed dump," according to the interlocal agreement.