West Windsor Council will hold a closed session before its regular business meeting on Monday, October 15, to discuss the town’s participation in an arbitration program (known as an FTI consulting agreement) regarding land contamination at a site near the Millstone River.
Township Attorney Michael W. Herbert explained that a property near the Plainsboro border and along Millstone River was once used as a dump by the Castoro construction company. “The company did various road projects in Mercer and Middlesex Counties and at Princeton University, pretty much for every big actor in the area, whether a municipality or corporation,” he said.
While doing the road projects, the company would take out road spoils and dump them at the property. “With road spoils, when you break up asphalt and the material there are chemicals there, and the property was contaminated. Under the spill act, Castoro is now suing everyone that they did work for to help clean up the property,” Herbert said.
The spill act does not permit a town to claim that it didn’t know the possible causes and effects of situation involving land conditions. Herbert said if a township is not at fault but it contributed materials that helped cause the contamination, then it is obligated to help pay for the cleanup.
“The arbitration program we will discuss is to figure out who owes what. We still have to pay because it was still our materials,” he said.
Herbert says back in the late 1980s the first headway was made towards cleaning up such contaminated lands. The DEP has had a bird’s eye view of the situation, but did not take specific action such as bringing a lawsuit against West Windsor.
“The DEP went after Castoro to get the property cleaned up, but in turn Castoro is suing everybody else,” he said.
