Meg Ryan was pretty pleased to receive email form Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail.  But a letter from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection?  Uh oh.

If you’re the owner or other party responsible for the cleanup of any of the thousands of (non-residential) contaminated sites in New Jersey, you’d better keep a close eye on your mailbox over the next three to four weeks. The state Department of Environmental Protection will be sending you mail containing its proposed ranking for your site–on a scale of 1 to 5.

If you’re lucky, as Meg and Tom turned out to be after several hours of romantic drama, you’ll be ranking at the lower end of the scale. If the Department has decided that you deserve a higher score, you’ll have only 60 days to challenge it. 

That may prove difficult unless you’ve got a Hollywood writer doing your script. The bottom line is stay vigilant and keep your environmental attorney and consultant on speed dial.

To explain it all, we’re reproducing below an alert sent by Cole Schotz attorney David T. Steinberger to clients of the Hackensack, NJ-based law firm (with offices in New York, Wilmington and Baltimore). 

The Site Remediation Reform Act, passed in 2009, not only established
the LSRP program, but also requires the NJDEP to establish a “Priority
Ranking System” to classify/categorize all contaminated properties in
the state.  Specifically, the Act requires the NJDEP to create “a
ranking system that establishes categories in which to rank sites based
upon the level of risk to the public health, safety, or the environment,
the length of time the site has been undergoing remediation, the
economic impact of the contaminated site on the municipality and on
surrounding property, and any other factors deemed relevant by the
department.”  Site rankings are expected to become public in September
2012.

Contaminated sites will be ranked between 1 and 5, with category 5
reserved for sites presenting the highest risk to public health, safety
or the environment, or the sites undergoing remediation for the longest
time.  Category 1 will be for the sites with the least risk.  The NJDEP
has not yet included economic impact or other factors in their ranking
system, despite the Act’s mandate that those factors be included in the
ranking process.

The rankings have been established using computer modeling, based upon
electronic data submitted for contaminated sites as well as the NJDEP’s
existing GIS computer data.  The NJDEP’s model considers data inputs
such as the proximity of a site to sensitive receptors (e.g., schools,
residential properties, wetlands, etc.), the contaminants of concern at
the property, the toxicity of those contaminants, and the affected media
(soil, groundwater, surface water or vapor intrusion).  The model then
generates a score for a property, and that score in turn determines the
overall site ranking.

The letters to be sent out by the NJDEP over the next several weeks are
expected to allow responsible parties approximately 60 days to challenge
the NJDEP’s ranking.  Those challenges will likely be limited to claims
that the NJDEP used incorrect, outdated or incomplete data in
determining a site’s rank.  The NJDEP has stated that this challenge
period will not be extended for any site.  After considering challenges,
the NJDEP is expected to issue its final site rankings in September
2012.  Those rankings will be updated periodically by the NJDEP based
upon new data received from on-going cleanup cases.

This is a brand new NJDEP program, and it is not known how the NJDEP
will ultimately use the rankings or how the public will use them.  With
such uncertainty over the potential use of the rankings, a responsible
party should minimally make sure that its site ranking is “accurate”
under the NJDEP’s model.

With such a short window to present the NJDEP with any challenges to a
site’s rank, it is critical that responsible parties discuss this issue
with their attorneys and environmental consultants as soon as they
receive their letter from the NJDEP.

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