WOODBINE – Plans to restore four municipally owned brownfields properties and put them to better use – as well as back on the tax rolls – are advancing thanks to a $1 million federal grant.
The four properties – the 2.5-acre former hat factory site, the 2.2-acre former high school grounds, the 115-acre former landfill and the 658-acre airport – total nearly 780 acres. Brownfields are sites that have suffered contamination.
Mayor William Pikolycky said officials have told the borough that none of the four sites presents a health hazard given their current state, but the cleanup funds will allow for new and improved uses.
“I look forward to kicking off this long-awaited project,” Pikolycky said. “Without this funding we would not be in the position to clean up our brownfields sites, without placing the burden on our local taxpayers.”
The roughly $1 million that the borough was awarded for the project last year by the Environmental Protection Agency will be split among all four sites, said the borough’s consultant on the project, Tom Maher of Taylor, Wiseman & Taylor.
The four properties have each previously gone through at least the initial stages of investigation of their contamination, including the preparation of preliminary assessments, site investigation and remedial investigation, paid for by the state.
The new project was scheduled to begin in January but has been held up by funding issues under the Trump administration.
The Hat Factory
The site is located immediately adjacent to one of the borough’s water towers, its potable water supply wells and the water treatment plant that supplies the community.
The factory made hats and rubber cement, primarily during the 20th century, until a fire led to the buildings’ being demolished in the late 1970s.
The site was cleared and then acquired by the borough, and it has remained a grass-covered lot.
“Due to the complete destruction of the facility and lack of historic records, the subsurface features and other details of chemical usage/storage were unknown,” Maher says in a report on the project.
Between 2000 and 2016, seven underground storage tanks that had leaked were discovered at the site. Since there were no records remaining after the fire, the contents of the seven tanks were unknown.
The seven tanks were removed, and soil containing polychlorinated biphenyls, chemicals banned in 1979, was disposed of. However, groundwater that was impacted by the leaking tanks still requires remediation to meet DEP standards for soil and groundwater.
Woodbine is planning to use part of the new grant to conduct the required investigation and remediation.
Pikolycky said in a statement that he is anxious to get the hat factory property back on the tax rolls.
Maher said the borough is unsure what the final use of the parcel will be. It is commercially zoned. The site has many challenges, he said, including the presence of an engineering control cap – a physical barrier placed over a contaminated area – and fence that limit its commercial use.
The Landfill
The Foundation and Structures landfill on Fidler Road, also known as the F&S landfill, formerly accepted waste from throughout the county. It ceased operations in 1985 but has never been properly capped.
Maher said the landfill waste was covered with soil; however, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Pinelands Commission require that an engineering control cap be installed. The cap would include a required landfill gas collection system and would be monitored for 30 years.
“Over the last 20 years, the borough has received previous funding for this site through the Hazardous Discharge Site Remediation Fund to delineate and monitor groundwater impacts associated with the landfill,” Maher said.
He added that additional work included preparation of a preliminary assessment, and site and remedial investigations required by the DEP’s site remediation program. As of 2023, Maher said, additional monitoring wells, monitoring and sampling, and other analysis were required to complete the groundwater investigation.
In 2019, the borough entered into an agreement with Nexamp Solar Inc. to develop a 10-megawatt community solar project on the site. The project would use the entire site and include capping the landfill as well as developing the solar array.
In 2022, the borough received approval from the Pinelands Commission to cap the landfill using a less expensive permeable cap instead of an impermeable liner cap. That made the development of the landfill as a solar farm achievable.
The project will continue with the aid of the grant and will include the 30-year post-capping monitoring requirement.
Maher said the benefits of capping the landfill for a solar development include 1) meeting the environmental compliance requirements of the DEP and the Pinelands Commission; 2) decreasing the amount of stormwater infiltration into the underlying waste and thus decreasing the amount of waste leachate entering groundwater; 3) increasing protection to neighboring properties through a landfill gas collection system (although there is currently no risk to those properties from combustible landfill gas); 4) allowing borough residents to receive a discounted electricity rate through the community solar program; 5) earning the borough monthly revenue in the form of rent payments from a parcel that has not generated tax revenue for more than 40 years.
The Airport
Henry DeCinque and his motorcycle polo club originally developed Woodbine Municipal Airport in 1939 on 25 acres that cost $250. The Department of the Navy leased 700 airport acres from the borough in July 1943, for use as a staging and practice area for airplanes from the Cape May and Atlantic City (Bader Field) naval air stations.
The Navy’s improvements to the site included two aboveground ammunition bunkers, two simulated aircraft carrier decks, barracks, hangers and underground fuel storage tanks.
In 1947, following the war, the Navy terminated the lease, and Woodbine again utilized the airport for recreational flying, as well as for search and rescue missions and small commuter flights.
New grant funds will be used to investigate the soil around one former underground storage tank and to conduct a DEP-required investigation of polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called PFAS, which, according to Maher’s report, are synthetic compounds known as “forever” chemicals.
In this case the PFAS are those typically associated with airport firefighting foams and their potential impact on groundwater.
The airport today remains a general aviation airport.
The Old High School
The school on Franklin Street was built before 1912 and demolished sometime in the early 1970s. The property is now an undeveloped lot used for recreation.
The site has low levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and metals in the soil as a result of a former underground storage tank and demolition of the school building. PAHs are a class of chemicals that occur naturally in coal, crude oil and gasoline and that are produced when coal, oil, gas, wood, garbage and tobacco are burned.
Although the concentrations of metals and PAHs found at the school site are not a risk to human health, the concentrations found at depth below the ground surface still exceed standards, requiring investigation and a report by a remediation professional, Maher said.
With the grant funding, Woodbine will do community outreach and reuse planning in preparation for redevelopment of the site. The borough will conduct planning activities including a land use assessment, market study and infrastructure evaluation. Under this process, the community will be part of the redevelopment decisions on this parcel, including its end use.
The awarding of the federal grant, under the EPA’s Brownfields Program, took place in Woodbine last Sept. 17. Those present included EPA Region 2 Administrator Lisa Garcia, DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette and a representative for U.S. Sen. Cory Booker.
Maher says in his report that Woodbine is a historically distressed community and is the 16th most socioeconomically distressed of New Jersey’s 564 municipalities, based on the state Department of Community Affairs’ 2023 Municipal Revitalization (Distressed) Index.
The borough was also identified by the DEP as an Overburdened Community, because at least 35% of its households qualify as low-income households, and at least 40% of the residents identify as minority.
“Over the last four decades, the Borough of Woodbine has taken an aggressive approach to reverse these negative trends through redevelopment, revitalization and reinvestment in the community,” Maher’s report says.
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
