Another $785,000 Added to Airport Cleanup Tab

CREST HAVEN – Why has Cape May County’s proposed budget increased to $161.2 million this year? One reason is the number of mandates the state has placed on the county.
At the Feb. 26 freeholder caucus, one such mandate for $785,000 was discussed by an incredulous Director Gerald Thornton and Nancy Mauro, director of the Engineering Department.
The resolution in question was approved later at the regular meeting. It awarded a $785,000 contract to Tetra Tech Inc. for engineering and licensed site remediation services at the county airport. 
“Is it a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) requirement?” asked Thornton of County Engineer Robert Church. Church asked Mauro, who has overseen similar clean-up projects at the airport’s many contaminated sites, to reply.
Mauro explained that in 2012, the DEP changed its regulations. The department had originally been tasked to oversee remediation of all contaminated sites statewide, she said.
That proved too much for the regulators, she said. “They were so overburdened that nothing was getting reviewed.”
That’s when the DEP shifted the onus of checking contaminated and remediated sites to outside private firms, paid by local entities, like the county. There are over 700 Licensed Site Remediation Professionals (LSRP) statewide, according to the DEP website.
With that shift in responsibility, those LSRP are tasked to oversee the cleanup and certify it was done to DEP standards.
The entire burden is placed on those LSRP, Mauro noted.
“Because the DEP was overburdened and could not do the work, it is costing us $785,000?” asked Thornton.
Mauro replied in the affirmative.
“I know we don’t have a choice, but this is absolutely outrageous,” said Thornton. “We don’t have any choice.”
Mauro said that there had been 100 sites on the former U.S. Navy property considered by the DEP as “areas of concern.” She noted that 75 of those sites had been investigated and cleaned and that 25 sites remain, most were on the “air side” of the airport since most of the industrial park area had been cleaned.
Mauro told the board that the firm would, by May, complete all site investigation, and two-thirds of the remediation work.
“By the end of May we will have a clear picture of everything,” said Mauro.
Thornton noted that over 20 years, the county had undertaken “a lot of cleanup…and all of a sudden it will cost us $785,000.”