Eric Obernauer reports for the New Jersey Herald:
VERNON — Despite the suggestion by its chief enforcement officer that a Silver Spruce Drive dump site operator’s activities are permitted under New Jersey’s recycling laws, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist., says the state Department of Environmental Protection is conveniently ignoring the fact that the site is not a licensed recycling facility.
The failure by DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe to address this discrepancy, coupled with her continuing refusal to authorize soil testing of Joseph Wallace’s dirt pile on Silver Spruce Drive while appearing to shift blame to the Vernon Police Department for not halting the continued flow of dump trucks to the site, prompted renewed anger over the weekend by the congressman in which he accused the DEP of shirking its responsibilities.
Gottheimer, in a statement to the New Jersey Herald, slammed McCabe and the DEP for failing to address the December comment by Michael Hastry, the DEP’s director of waste enforcement, to the effect that the dumping of asphalt, rebar, brick, block, metal piping and other construction debris on Wallace’s site — which is situated in the Highlands Preservation Zone — is permitted because these are Class B recyclable materials, a shorthand classification that includes several categories of construction and demolition waste.
Hastry’s statement, which was made in the presence of a reporter on Dec. 3, came during his visit to the site with McCabe and Gottheimer, both Democrats, who were joined by state Sen. Steve Oroho and Assembly members Parker Space and Hal Wirths, all 24th District Republicans.
In a follow-up letter to McCabe dated Jan. 3, Gottheimer noted that the acceptance of Class B material requires permits from the municipality, county and DEP — none of which Wallace has ever received.
McCabe, in a reply letter to Gottheimer on Thursday, not only failed to address this point but went on to find fault with an independent laboratory’s recent testing of surface water at the base of Wallace’s waste pile that showed lead concentrations to be 15 times higher than the limit allowed by the DEP. She also asserted that the DEP had requested help from the Vernon Police Department in monitoring tandem truckloads of fill material being brought to the site and that the Vernon police had declined to assist.
Gottheimer responded by putting the onus back on McCabe and the DEP for allegedly not doing their job.
“(Her) letter was unresponsive to several questions and full of false information,” Gottheimer said. “The (DEP) is failing to meet (its) responsibility to protect the health and safety of the community. Children and families are potentially being exposed to lead and carcinogens.”
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