Contaminated Site Draws Concerns
Township Council members aren’t satisfied with a proposal to cap contaminated fill — as opposed to excavating it — at the site of the proposed 12-acre WWM Properties shopping center on the corner of Princeton-Hightstown and Southfield roads. ##M:[more]##
During the Council meeting on October 15, state Department of Environmental Protection officials told the council and Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh that the course of action for remediation at the site — which includes capping the contaminated fill and removing one hot spot where a day care center is proposed — meets already-stringent state regulations, if it doesn’t surpass them.
But council members say they feel that what was originally good land has become tainted by the contamination, and now the developer responsible should fully clean it up.
“We value good earth, and that land was pure,” said Councilwoman Linda Geevers. “Now somebody else has come in and polluted it, and that is very bothersome to all of us on this dais.”
Construction at the shopping center, where a day care center, bank, pharmacy and several small retail establishments are proposed, was halted after the DEP found that Ford Motor Co. and its contractor, Edgewood Properties Inc., had shipped recycled concrete from the demolition of Ford’s former Edison Assembly Plant on Route 1 to various construction sites around the state, including West Windsor. Tests later found the cement to contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). A PCB is a mixture of individual chemicals no longer produced in the U.S. that can cause some health implications.
Edgewood used fill on the site to raise it to grade. The company first became aware in September, 2005, that the concrete may be contaminated, and by March, 2006, the state had issued an executive order stopping construction on the site as well as at others around the state that also received the material, said John Kosher, site manager at the DEP’s Bureau of Industrial Site Remediation, who spoke at the meeting.
Officials originally believed the site in West Windsor contained only a small pile of fill of approximately 30 cubic yards (or two dump truck loads). Ford submitted a remedial action plan, but the state asked Edgewood and Ford to provide a history of fill at the site, Kosher said. By June, 2006, the company found that more fill was actually used at the site — this time an estimated 1,”800 cubic yards — and were asked to provide a remediation plan for the entire site.
Finally, it was determined that toward the back of the property, about eight to ten feet of fill was used to bring the site up to grade, and that the fill was more extensively spread throughout the site. A total of between 50,”000 and 60,”000 cubic yards (or about 5,”000 to 5,”500 dump truck loads) had been used, he said.
Kosher said that it would be very difficult to separate and remove the fill, and a proposal came in from Edgewood that called for “engineering and institutional control methods” — or capping — instead of excavation.
According to Stephen Maybury, Bureau Chief of the Bureau of Case Management at the DEP, there are certain criteria regarding the levels of the PCBs and PAHs that can be found in the soil at a site, depending on whether it is going to be for residential or nonresidential use.
For a residential use, the acceptable level of PCBs in the soil is only .49 parts per million, and even that would be safe for a child who is exposed, and even ingests, the soil for over 30 years. For nonresidential, the criteria is 2.0 parts per million. With regard to PAHs, .66 parts per million is safe for residential uses, Maybury said.
Only one PCB sample taken during tests on the West Windsor site reached 2.5 parts per million, while the PAHs ranged up to 20 parts per million, with most falling between 5 and 10 parts per million, which is consistent with asphalt, Kosher said.
The plan to use permeable (such as soil) or impermeable (such as asphalt) caps would be more than sufficient for remediation, since most of the site will consist of building and pavement anyway, he said.
Kosher said one PCB hot spot with a reading of .81 parts per million — located where the day care center would go — would be removed and two feet of fill would be brought in, to ensure that children in the playground area would be safe if they were to dig in or ingest the soil. But council members and the mayor were not happy when they heard that soil would be spread to other parts of the site.
They also questioned who would be responsible if an issue arises years down the road, and the DEP officials told them that the site would be deed restricted and that Edgewood, Ford and whoever owns the building at the time would be responsible. The DEP requires the owner to maintain the cap, and an inspection of that cap would be performed every five years, Maybury said.
The DEP also told them bringing in 5,”500 dump trucks for removal would not only be a disruption to the township, but it could also take 6 to 9 months.
But council members said they would feel more comfortable if all of the contamination was completely removed from the site. Mayor Hsueh asked Edgewood representatives if they would at least consider moving the hot spot soil they were excavating off site as a precaution, and asked them to perform air quality tests inside the day care center.
John Verlaque, Edgewood attorney, said the company would consider it.
Still, council wasn’t satisfied. Council Vice President George Borek said that because the site was located near the East Windsor border, which is a direct route to the Turnpike, not too much disruption would be caused to the township if dump trucks were to be brought in for removal.
“The easiest time to take that soil out of there is now,” Council President Will Anklowitz said. “Having buildings there is going to make it much more difficult,” if somewhere down the line, it needed to be addressed.
While he said the company would consider Hsueh’s two conditions, Verlaque still emphasized that removing all the soil from the site would take months and months.
“Sure, it does come down to business, bottom line,” he said. “But this site is almost ready to go,” he said, adding that all the site work was done, and roads were partially in place when the discovery was made.
“We’re following the requirements of the Department of Environmental Protection, and that’s what we’re prepared to do at this time,” he said.
During the meeting, Hsueh also submitted a model ordinance from Franklin Township that would require all soil material brought into the township from outside sources be sampled and evaluated by a state certified laboratory.
