Photo Credit: Hartz Mountain Industries
Photo Credit: Hartz Mountain Industries
Photo Credit: Hartz Mountain Industries
Artist drawing of warehouse complex proposed for former Hercules site in RoxburyPhoto Credit: Hartz Mountain Industries
By Fred J. Aun
ROXBURY, NJ – The Roxbury Planning Board should stay in its lane when it comes to detailed environmental problems at the former Hercules explosives site in Kenvil, asserts the company seeking approval to build a massive warehouse complex on the highly contaminated property.
Rebuffing the board’s request that it be supplied with more documents related to pollution and cleanup plans at the tract, a lawyer for developer Hartz Mountain Industries this week told the board that environmental issues are the purview of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), not the township.
“It’s obvious there’s disagreement as to the justification for the board to have this lengthy discussion and deliberation over matters that are not within its jurisdiction,” said lawyer Steven Mlenak. “Our position is that this is beyond the scope of what the board is able to review and deliberate over in terms of a GDP (general development plan) application.”
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The planning board’s lawyer, Tom Germinario, pressed Mlenak on the issue, noting that much of the remediation information in question is being sought “not by the board but by the public,” specifically the Raritan Headwaters Association (RWA).
“You have an obligation to help educate the public so they can participate in a meaningful way in these proceedings,” he said.
But Mlenak said Hartz Mountain is following the law. “The standard for what we have to provide the public is no different from the standard we have to provide the board members,” he said.
Mlenak added that the board and public cannot be “second-guessing what the DEP has in its regulations or what the LSRP (licensed site remediation professional), what their role is, in terms of the remediation of the contamination. That is squarely within the purview of the DEP and not this board.”
The company wants to build the Roxbury Commerce Center: Five warehouses, totaling 2.5 million square feet, on about 200 acres in the center of the 1,000-acre site. Hartz will need a variance from a portion of Roxbury’s land use code that restricts the floor area of buildings to no more than 60 percent warehouse use. It contends the restriction is “arbitrary and unreasonable … and not based on sound planning practice.”
Rabbit Holes of Remediation
At this week’s meeting, Mlenak said the developer, which is under contract with property owner Hercules LLC to buy the land, submitted an environmental impact statement. To a large extent, he noted, the soil contamination will be “capped” by the huge warehouses Hartz Mountain wants to place on the site.
“It’s our position we don’t want to go further down this rabbit hole of things that are irrelevant to the board’s determination,” Mlenak said, referring to “10,000 pages of documents over the last four years of a heavily contaminated site.”
The lawyer’s statements, and the fact that Hartz Mountain has hired a stenographer to attend and document its meetings with the planning board, suggest the company will not simply take no for an answer if its application is denied by the township.
“We have the right to present our application the way we want to present it and, obviously, at the end, if the board contends that we didn’t submit what was necessary to demonstrate our proofs then it will determine accordingly, and some other body will have to determine who’s right,” Mlenak said. “But that’s our position.”
Hopping on Mlenak’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” reference, Roxbury Planning Board Chairman Charles Bautz expressed dissatisfaction. “We can go down the rabbit hole and say, ‘OK, let’s go through the transcripts and all of that,’ but let me cut to the chase here,” he said. “You’re not providing any of the documents that you said you would provide.”
In more than a century of serving as home to a company that produced explosives, the site has seen unregulated waste disposal and catastrophic explosions that spread chemical contamination, a history cited by Bautz.
“This thing’s been a hundred years in the town,” he said. “It has all sorts of history. This is one of our biggest - the biggest - tracts of land. So don’t just dismiss the public and this board of the facts. No one’s trying to slow you up, stop you. We’re just looking for valuable public information you guys have that we would have to go down a rabbit hole, spending dollars that we don’t need to do, time that we don’t need to do, just to get you to be a cooperating applicant with the board and the public to address the questions that the board’s asking.”
Bautz conceded the DEP holds reign over site remediation plan approvals. “However, we feel that the MLUL (municipal land use law) gives us the opportunity to question, drill down, probe and get some answers and be a cooperating authority here to help the application to move forward,” he said.
Mlenak insisted Hartz Mountain, by providing experts to testify, including an LSRP, is cooperating even more than legally required. “It’s highly unusual to present an LSRP to a planning board in a land use application,” he said. “We did that because we want to be … as cooperative as possible.”
Nevertheless, Mlenak told Bautz that detailed information provided by the environmental experts is “of no relevance to your jurisdiction.”
The board scheduled its next meeting with Hartz Mountain for July 19. At that session, it is going to hear more testimony about the proposed warehouses’ impact on traffic.
Roxbury Councilman and Planning Board Member Bob DeFillippo said an executive summary of a traffic study conducted by Hartz Mountain estimated the project would result in 1,106 trucks per day on Howard Boulevard.
Prior TAPinto Roxbury coverage:
Roxbury Warehouse Plan Sparks Planning Board Questions About Explosives Waste
Warehouse Proponent Wants Roxbury Councilman Gone
Kenvil Residents Say 'No Way' to Proposed Apartment Complex on Hercules Road in Roxbury
Warehouses Proposed for Former Hercules Site in Roxbury
TNT, PCB Cleanup Planned for Hercules Tract in Roxbury
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