CREST HAVEN – Freeholders approved an agreement, June 12, with the engineering firm Tetra Tech, Inc. for $925,000 for site remediation work at the Cape May County Airport. The funds will be acquired from two bond ordinances, one from 2016 and the other from this year.
The resolution noted that remedial investigations were done by the firm for six “areas of concern” at the airport during the past year.
As explained by County Engineer Dale Foster to the board, the work is part of an ongoing airport cleanup process in the industrial park.
He said among the areas were some tanks in the old naval disposal area, the public works facility and some DDT contamination.
The project “came about in 2012,” Foster said. That was when the state “turned over all remediation investigation and action from the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) to each agency or owner of contaminated areas to hire their own site remediation.”
The original deadline for completion was 2016, he said, but that has been extended to July 2019 “based on work that Tetra Tech has done.”
Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton recalled, “Many years ago on the Navy pollution, the feds (federal government) came in and the feds reimbursed us.”
“Yes,” Foster said, “That was a one-time deal that was done several years ago.”
Pressed further by Thornton, Foster said that insurance policies of some former tenants were also inspected for possible reimbursement.
“Settlements back then woefully underestimated the scope of the work,” Foster added.
Foster said that was one of the areas that Tetra Tech would investigate for the county as part of the resolution, where to get more remediation funds.
Cape May County – I believe it is time that California be returned to the indigenous people who lived there. They understood the land and the weather and built dwellings made as part of the earth and took care of the…
