Plans to revamp Kin-Buc Landfill under way

SCOTT PILLING staff The former Kin-Buc Landfill, Meadow Road, Edison, will become a site of Raritan River revitalization and preservation.

Environmentalist doesn’t see need for third party in conservation

BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE

Staff Writer

A plan has been hatched to take the Kin-Buc Landfill from toxic dump to environmental triumph.

But what federal Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) and Edison officials see as a bright future for the land, one local environmentalist sees as a potential debacle in the wrong hands.

Last week, officials announced that the township had taken title of 100 acres of Kin-Buc, a former Superfund site, along the Raritan River, from the nonprofit Clean Land Fund, an organization that spearheads brownfields redevelopment.

“The good news is that the land — 100 acres in all — will be permanently preserved and incorporated, in a passive recreational way, into our master plan vision to revamp the Raritan riverfront area into a seaport village of Edison,” Mayor George A. Spadoro said. “Owning these parcels will give Edison important contiguous open space properties for us to continue our riverfront walkway beyond its current scope from the Edison boat basin to the Edison landfill.”

Clean Land Fund was given the development rights to the 100 acres by Kin-Buc’s owners, collectively known as Transtech Corp., Edison, as part of a settlement deal with the EPA in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Transtech, which EPA Region 2 Superfund manager John Prince referred to as “land rich and cash poor,” had to come up with a plan to recoup the EPA’s losses on the site’s cleanup. This was it.

“The private parties [companies] held responsible for the cleanup were pursued,” Prince said. “This was part of a complex settlement the EPA

refers to as a Supplemental Environmental Project. It was a way for the company, and others like it, to resolve its liabilities with these Superfund site cleanups.”

The goal, in this case, is for Clean Land Fund to step in with a plan to conserve the land and source funds to do so.

“It’s a complex process,” Prince said. “But the goal is to preserve, not redevelop.”

Frequently, he said, a non-profit such as Clean Land Fund will take a property, such as Kin-Buc, which is zoned for commercial use, and keep the development rights while the township involved takes land ownership title. It’s called a consent decree.

“By giving the development rights to a conservation organization, it makes it impossible for the owner of the land to develop it,” Prince said. “When the EPA and Department of Justice negotiated it, they wanted some assurance that some party would take the development rights. Usually, a conservation organization does this. But for the purposes of getting the consent decree in order, the EPA allowed the Clean Land Fund, which is known for brownfields redevelopment, to take over.”

The Clean Land Fund has no plans to own any part of the property after this is done. This is an intermediary solution, Prince said. Ultimately, the goal will be for a premier conservation organization, such as the New Jersey Land Trust, to take over and permanently protect and preserve the land.

They will be paid by the EPA as the contractor to “manage the land and facilitate its reuse,” Prince said. “They will identify possible uses for the land, work with Edison in collaborative effort to decide what, if any recreational uses will be on the land and/or they will formulate some sort of wetlands enhancement project.

“The public will be very involved in this and Clean Land Fund is not going to make millions or anything like that,” he added. “They are a non-profit. Their books are open to the public. They have no secret agenda here.”

Clean Land Fund President William Penn called the plan “a terrific opportunity for residents of Edison and neighbors to come together and have input into the future of this property.”

He said he expects this project to become a model for contaminated land restoration in the state.

But Edison Wetlands Association Executive Director Robert Spiegel doesn’t trust the plan or the Clean Land Fund’s motives. He thinks the organization has an agenda to tie the land in with a redevelopment project on pristine land.

“I am certainly happy that the township has the deed to the land, but I just don’t trust the Clean Land Fund,” Spiegel said. “Despite what the EPA officials say, that organization has no experience whatsoever with conservation. They are brownfields redevelopers. How do we know they are not going to come up with some plan, tied into this seaport village, that will pave the way for some development. Any is too much.”

Edison Wetlands’ attorney, John Wiley Jr., submitted comments in the form of a complaint against the Clean Land Fund deal, to the federal Department of Justice on April 28.

He said the agreement in its present form isn’t “fair or reasonable or in the public interest.”

“This project would be the organization’s first venture into converting a brownfield into a greenfield,” Wiley said.

But CLF’s agenda provides the means to the desirable end of acquiring 100 acres of unscathed land, Spadoro said.

“Yes, Clean Land Fund is known for brownfields redevelopment,” the mayor said. “But, in this case, they are conservationists. In the end, it all means 100 acres can never be developed. This was a $100 million clean-up and, however we have to get there, we will see to it that it stays clean and it’s ours.”

But Spiegel is worried about the untouched remaining area.

There are rare species of wildlife and any disturbance is dangerous, he said.

“Clean Land Fund wants to douse whole area with pesticides,” Spiegel said. “We can’t afford to have that area tainted again or wildlife habitat destroyed.”

That is not the plan, Prince said. The public will have a lot of input, he said.

“This middle-man thing is not necessary,” Spiegel said. “There is no need for Clean Land Fund to be involved in this capacity. The owners could have deeded the land right over to Edison.”

Kin-Buc was one of the largest hazardous waste landfills on the east coast. It operated as a dump site from the 1940s to 1976 both liquid and solid industrial waste. It was placed on the federal Superfund list in 1983.

“There are 3,000 people living within three miles of the site,” EPA literature on the site said.

Most of the clean-up at Kin-Buc is done, said EPA Region 2 spokesman James Haklar. “The landfill is capped, waste has been contained and ground water is being pumped and cleaned continuously.”