ERMA – What’s under the Cape May County Airport will cost taxpayers nearly $1.5 million to evaluate and remediate.
On Nov. 24, freeholders approved a contract with Tetra Tech, Inc. to investigate and report its findings to New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection by May 7, 2016.
It’s anyone’s guess exactly what chemicals and residues, and in what quantities, repose beneath the runways, hangars, buildings and vacant acres, of the facility first used by the Navy in World War II.
Through the years, a variety of county agencies have used the airport, as have tenants in the industrial park. What chemicals may have been dumped in those earlier times, when little or nothing was known about long-term effects of those chemicals, should be revealed by the study.
County Engineer Dale Foster told the board, prior to passage of the latest contract for site remediation, that Tetra Tech has, to date, “researched over 2 million pages of documents from previous studies at the airport. They have to turn over every leaf to find out what contamination is at the airport.”
After the money is expended, said Foster, “All we get is a nice little report at the end.”
“This will be an ongoing project that gets us through May with some environmental work,” Foster said.
The work is technically a professional services agreement for engineering and license site remediation services.
The work is being performed in response to the Site Remediation Reform Act that includes “mandatory statutory requirement” to complete a remedial investigation of the entire Cape May County Airport…before May 7, 2016 for all discharges that occurred on or before May 7, 1999.”
Additionally, the task will continue investigations or oversight of environmental conditions in or “about buildings and facilities within the industrial park of the County Airport.”
The actual modification is for $1,476,200.
Tetra Tech is based in Pasadena, Calif., with New Jersey offices located in Lebanon, Morris Plains, Freehold and East Brunswick.
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