Like many of you, I've read the news stories that have been appearing regularly regarding the EnCap project. Lately there has been a barrage of negative articles that shift attention away from the environmental cleanup. I feel that it is time for us to refocus on the environmentally poisonous situation that is finally being addressed in Rutherford, Lyndhurst, and North Arlington.
Having lived most of my life in and around the Meadowlands, I vividly remember the stench, the smoke, the soot and all the byproducts of the illegal dumping that went on throughout the District. And yes, it was illegal - from the very first truckload to the last. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888, which expressly forbids polluting America's rivers and harbors, was violated countless times but no one was willing to invoke the power of the courts and put a stop to that blatant disregard of the law. In fact it took nearly a century to finally begin to put things right.
In the early 1970s The U.S. Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and charged the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the regulation of solid and hazardous wastes. Federal regulation and actions by the NJ Meadowlands Commission eventually put an end to all dumping within the Meadowlands but the dirty legacy of decades of illegal dumping continues to pollute our air and our beloved Hackensack River to this very day.
The reason for that is because nothing was ever done to completely close or cap the dumps except to cover the rotting piles of garbage with a thin layer of soil. This do-almost-nothing approach masked the sight and smell of the garbage but that was all it did. It may have looked okay on the surface as grasses and other plants sprouted across the disturbed landscapes, but just below the surface all hell was brewing.
You see, decomposing garbage produces a substance known as leachate. Leachate is produced when rainwater falls on open dumps and infiltrates down through the waste. As the water moves through layer after layer of trash, it becomes polluted with heavy metals, hydrocarbons, household waste, industrial chemicals and anything else that may be lurking within the untold millions of tons of decaying garbage. What oozes out from the base of the landfill into the river is no longer water but leachate. By conservative estimates, approximately 50 million gallons of leachate flows into the Hackensack River each year. Without a doubt, literally billions of gallons of this toxic soup have polluted the river over the years.
The old HMDC had suggested that developers be assessed a surcharge on wetlands fill permits that in turn could be spent on capping the dumps. Of course that would be like selling your younger child to send your older child to college. One option I considered as your Riverkeeper was to sue the municipalities and the landfill operators under RCRA and force them to cap the dumps. Had we done that and won, the courts would have ordered the towns (i.e. their taxpayers) to bear the cost and probably bankrupt them in the process. It was during this time of controversy and soul-searching that EnCap arrived in the Meadowlands with a plan to cap the dumps and turn the wastelands into something better.
For the first time ever, someone was willing to assume a liability that neither the state, nor the municipalities nor the dump operators were willing to take on. It was also the first time in my memory that a company came to the Meadowlands not to bluster and declare what they were going to do and the public-be-damned; but instead to listen to what people like me had to say.
One benefit of growing up in Hudson County was that it provided me with strong, equal parts of cynicism and skepticism. I carry those traits with me wherever I go and I carried them with me into every public information session and into every meeting I've had with EnCap executives. Like many other people, I had serious issues with their plan to convert garbage dumps into golf courses and wondered how it could possibly benefit the River. So I took my cynicism, skepticism and concerns and I listened, learned and gave the company an honest chance to prove to me that what they were saying about helping the Hackensack River was true.
As you read this column, EnCap is installing cutoff walls, leachate recovery systems and other proven engineering solutions. Methane recovery systems are also being constructed that will capture this additional landfill byproduct (and known greenhouse gas) to be used for generating electricity. For the first time ever, landfills are being properly closed, capped and rendered harmless to the river and the surrounding environment. The former Rutherford Landfill has already been inspected by the NJDEP, which issued a Letter of No Further Action, meaning that it no longer poses a leachate threat to the Hackensack River. My friends, one of our river's biggest sources of pollution is finally being stopped. It's true.
Is the process pretty? No, but neither is major surgery. Does EnCap plan to make a profit? Of course it does; name a company that doesn't. Are there other issues involved with such a large redevelopment project? Sure there are but there is only one issue that is critical to Hackensack Riverkeeper: the Hackensack River. From where I sit, EnCap is doing what government should have been doing all along instead of allowing polluters to slip off the hook - helping to clean up the river and give it back to its rightful owners: You.
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From the 1970s through the 1990s as the EPA slowly asserted its authority through RCRA, the polluters colluded with the State of New Jersey and had their dumps declared "orphan landfills", a name that suggests that those responsible for them have disappeared. This despite the fact that the Lyndhurst Landfill and the Rutherford Landfill were in fact, owned by the Township of Lyndhurst and the Borough of Rutherford respectively! By the late 90s, the question on my mind was, "How do we fix this mess?"