Backlogged DEP Seeks Assistance

Last week, those developers threw their weight behind a controversial piece of legislation designed to speed the process. The bill, S-1897, would allow the state to authorize private engineers and environmental consultants to sign off on site remediation, essentially bolstering the DEP’s resources without hiring new employees.

Developers are not hiding their support for a bill that an environmentalist called a “very dangerous program” with insufficient safeguards.

“Our intent is to do whatever it takes to get that bill to see the light of day,” said Michael McGuinness, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. “For a developer, time is money.”

The thick bill, sponsored by Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), was the topic of a hearing by the Senate Environmental Committee last week; a companion bill, A-2962, is sponsored by Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex).

The legislation picked up momentum last month when Gov. Jon S. Corzine, during an address to the Legislature, said he supports legislation “that will license and certify consultants to spur a new wave of cleanup and investment in New Jersey’s brownfields.”

DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson also has supported legislation to help make a dent in the 20,000-case backlog. That’s “far too many cases for the program to address in any reasonable timeframe,” Jackson told a legislative committee in the spring. “And under the [DEP’s] current structure, sites will remain unremediated for perhaps years to come.”

The bill would set up a board that would license professionals to handle review and approval of plans for certain contaminated sites. The so-called licensed site professionals would be paid through surcharges on the applicants, who are in most cases developers. It’s similar to a program in Massachusetts.

“Developers are willing to pay more if there is a direct correlation between paying more and getting an answer sooner,” McGuinness said. “That is digestible.”

But Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the fact that the licensed site professionals would be paid by the developers creates an inherent conflict.

“The professional may have the incentive to look the other way or to overestimate the cleanup,” Tittel said. “We are talking about a toxic site, so if there is deliberate or accidental malfeasance, the people that live there will suffer.”

Tittel is concerned there won’t be enough teeth attached to a part of the bill that calls for licensed site professionals to lose their licenses if they do not operate by a specific code of conduct. “When do engineers lose their licenses?” Tittel asked.

Further, the bill’s language is too vague on when the DEP would take over a review, Tittel said. “Our concern is once they privatize, they will use it as an excuse to cut down on staff, and they won’t be able to take over sites,” he said.

Developers and environmentalists agree on at least one matter: The DEP is understaffed and takes too long to approve remediation — sometimes more than a year.

In 1994, there were 270 case managers at the DEP overseeing 12,000 contaminated sites. Today, there are 150 case mangers for 20,000 contaminated sites, and in the last two years — under a government employee purge headed by Corzine — the total number of workers at the department has fallen to 2,801 from 3,189.

“They’re so backed up now, they just can’t get to it internally,” McGuinness said. “The only solution is to farm out a whole bunch of it.”

He hopes the bill will get to the governor’s desk by the end of the year, to help developers as well as municipalities that contain polluted sites. “Who benefits?” McGuinness asked. “Communities, for having these sites cleaned