Residents of Berrien City, the closest residential development to the compost site have complained about the operation for years. The facility is located just west of the Alexander Road railroad bridge, a few hundred yards from the Princeton Junction Train Station.
“I’m very much for composting, but there is a right and a wrong way to do it,” said Norman McNatt of Scott Avenue at a recent Council meeting.
Mary Ann Pedee-Siegel, of Berrien Avenue, says, “It stinks to high heaven. It was extremely, extremely odoriferous. All of the neighbors are complaining about it. I know that composting done properly does not smell like that.”
Hsueh says he has wanted to phase out the site since he took office in 2001, and now has a plan in motion. The township is now sending its own wood and leaves to be recycled at a compost site at Baker’s Basin in Lawrenceville.
Hsueh says he wants the compost site, formerly used as township dump, to be part of the redevelopment plan. If the site were to stay in operation, says Hsueh, “It’s going to have a negative image for West Windsor.”
Residents argue that it already does. Both McNatt and Pedee-Siegel say the site’s windrows, or piles of compost, are too high. According to the residents, New Jersey’s regulations state that windrows can be no higher than 12 feet, and the residents claim to have seen them as high as 15 feet. Both say that the site uses a quick composting method, which creates mold and a bad odor. McNatt also says the site brings an increase in truck traffic to the area.
Although the parcel is owned by West Windsor, the compost operation has been contracted out to Carnevale Disposal since 1995. Leases from 2000 through 2004 show that the company paid the township $400 per month for use of the site each year, and memos suggest that the same arrangement has been in place with no increase since Carnevale took over.
Prior to that, the township operated it at its own expense, and Gary Carnevale, principal for the disposal company, estimates that the township saves $100,”000 a year by letting an outside company run the operation.
Though the township is not charged for using the recycling site in Lawrence, Carnevale speculates that it costs the township more money by having its trucks travel further to dispose of the leaves and wood.
The township first gave the company a five-year lease, but offered only yearly leases since 2000. Carnevale believes the reason for this is the imminent redevelopment of the 350 acres around the train station, which includes his site. “I realize that they’re developing it, and they don’t want to give me a long lease anymore. I want to work with administration, and if we have to close, then we’ll find a different spot.”
Hsueh says negotiations are taking place, and that will determine the length of time the town continues to allow the site to remain open.
There appears to be no clear answer on when the lot could be used, nor what would need to be done to make the lot buildable. As the site of a former trash dump, it will have to undergo considerable testing before housing could be built there, and before it could be used for a business other than disposal.
Officials have estimated that the cost of cleanup of the site, mandated by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), will cost in excess of $1 million. Making the property part of the redevelopment plan would allow the township to make a deal with a redeveloper to bear the cost of environmental mitigation.
The property was used as a trash dump from the 1930s until the 1970s. The township gave the land to New Jersey Transit as part of the tract that was used for the Princeton Junction train station, but the transit authority gave it back to the town after it didn’t pass DEP tests for usable land.
The township began using it as a transfer station. Private contractors would bring the township’s garbage to the site where it would be compacted, and another private contractor would haul it to a landfill. In 1989 the transfer station operation stopped, and the township began running a compost site. It was maintained by the Township Public Works Department for five years before West Windsor began leasing it to Carnevale Disposal.
Carnevale, who ran for township council in the 1990s, says he loves operating the site in the town where he lives, and doesn’t want to see it shut down. Though the mayor says the site will be phased out in a year’s time, Carnevale says he’s been given no indication that operations will cease that soon. “I don’t forsee this happening until the redevelopment starts,” says Carnevale.
Carnevale says he doesn’t know whether he’ll move to another location in the township, or move further away. He says it will be a loss for the township if his site is closed. Not only does he estimate that over 1,”000 residents use the free mulch and compost his site makes available to residents, he believes that when the doors are shut, “whichever site the township uses for its composting now will start charging. The residents who want to close the compost site don’t realize that will actually result in costing the township a lot of money to get rid of its recycling.”
