ANOTHER major step in restoring the Meadowlands area to environmental health was taken this week, with a settlement affecting waste transfer stations alongside rail lines in North Bergen. The stations must now comply with state and local regulations and clean up the sites.
This is a major victory. These are not someone's back-yard trash bins. The stations amount to a string of garbage piles along a two-mile stretch of North Bergen. The depots hold thousands of tons of construction and demolition debris waiting to be loaded on to rail cars for trips to landfills, and at one point, the trash was piled as much as 2 1/2 stories high. The debris has posed a health and environmental risk to nearby homes and businesses as well as wetlands. Elevated levels of lead, arsenic, mercury and copper have been found in wastewater at three trash sites.
State and local officials have been fighting to regulate the stations for four years with little success. Last year, a federal judge ruled that the state had no such authority because the New York Susquehanna & Western Railway was exempt from state oversight, under federal laws that give railroads special protection.
But Congress stepped up to the plate. A bill drafted by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and sponsored by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., made waste transfer facilities subject to state and local rules. It was approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and recently signed into law by President Bush. Now the depots must meet state Department of Environmental Protection standards.
The new law covers sites across the nation but is particularly cause for celebration in North Jersey. There are five waste transfer stations near rail lines in North Bergen and one in Paterson, among others in the state. Seven more such stations have been proposed, including three in North Jersey.
Under a settlement approved by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, the operators of the sites have now agreed to follow state solid waste and local health rules.
Meadowlands Commission chairman Joseph Doria referred to the sad environmental history of the region in praising the settlement this week. "We cannot return to the dark ages of illegal dumping in the Meadowlands," he said, "when waste fires smoldered and unknown chemicals oozed into our fragile ecosystem."
Unfortunately, those days are not all that far behind us. The Meadowlands is still in the process of recovering from generations of environmental abuse. There should be no excuse for any more degradation or risk of pollution, especially in an area that has been literally dumped on for so long.
But even after all that this region and its residents have suffered at the hands of polluters, it took several years and the coordinated efforts of public officials at the federal, state and local levels to win this battle.
The victory should serve as a warning to anyone seeking to evade environmental oversight and regulation. Public health and safety will eventually win in the end, no matter how long it takes.
