Former Gas Plant Site Reuse Can’t Include Buildings

CAPE MAY — After remediation of underground contaminants by Jersey Central Power and Light (JCP&L), the city intends to purchase a number of properties along Lafayette and St. John streets to create a continuous parcel to create a multi-use park.
Those properties include the site of a former manufactured gas plant, which burned coal to produce gas for cooking and heating and left a number of toxins below ground. Those substances range from naphthalene to benzene. The contaminants extend as deep as 40 feet, but plans call for covering the site with clean soil and a geotextile barrier rather than excavating to that depth.
The city signed an access and remediation agreement with JCP&L last year. The city agreed the remediated properties would only be used for a municipal city park with uses such as basketball, tennis, football and soccer. The agreement stipulates use cannot involve occupied buildings.
It notes any disturbance to the ground cannot involve disturbances deeper than any cover planned or used by JCP&L in the remediation.
A concession stand and restroom is an approved use, but the properties are not to be occupied by a person for “permanent or temporary residential purposes, not to use on site septic, groundwater discharge or injection, avoid use of basement or subsurface construction or subsurface parking.”
JCP&L will create a “clean zone,” including the property being sold to Cape May, approximately two to four feet below ground of capping or cover material such as a building slab, or parking or driving surface, example one foot on deed notice.
The city requested JCP&L provide four feet within the portion of the premises to be enclosed by the underground primary containment wall instead of a lesser two feet as previously planned by JCP&L. Since the city and JCP&L “agree that such a deeper clean zone is not needed for every agreed use and in every location,” due to costs to JCP&L of earlier excavation and refilling, the work will not extend beyond three seasons.
The agreement notes the clean zone should extend to 4 feet below the ground so support poles, basketball backstops, or tennis courts don’t contact MGP materials. It notes a concession stand must include a Vapor Mitigation System and must be located outside of the area of a primary containment wall to be constructed underground.
The agreement allows a municipal parking lot “to support the use of adjacent or nearby municipal property but also conceivable supporting a nearby municipal office or service building e.g. a garage or library or fire station or a third party property…”
The city’s agreement with JCP&L addresses any owner’s disturbance activities that uncover any newly discovered manufactured gas plant conditions noting “every owner agrees that it and its contractors and agents will use best efforts not to further disturb and/or aggravate any newly discovered MGP condition and to stockpile and cover such soil or materials as have been previously removed, make the excavation safe and suspend its work and promptly notify JCP&L of their discovery.”
JCP&L agrees to be responsible for the testing and remediation of such stockpiled soils or materials containing MGP materials due to a newly discovered condition as were located in the then undisturbed clean zone, in no event deeper than four feet which varies from parcel to parcel, at its own cost and expense.”
The agreement specifies, “However in no event is JCP&L obligated to pursue additional excavation or removal or treatment of MGP materials in order to minimize the effects of or from or mitigate or avoid any temporary material adverse effect or any material adverse effect, nor is it obligated to use an innovative technology or use an alternative remedial strategy that poses substantially similar or worse new or alternative side effects or is otherwise impractical or commercially unreasonable including reason of being too expensive, all as determined reasonably by JCP&L.”
The agreement specifies the city and JCP&L “acknowledge that the currently planned primary work is not extensive enough to permit JCP&L to seek and obtain a final FRD (Final Remediation Document) for all media and receptors at all properties affected by the MGP site.
It notes JCP&L may request issuance of and/or DEP, may elect to issue separate FRD for different media, different areas of concern or receptors, different phases of remediation, or different parcels of the premises.