MILLVILLE – There will be no more waste recycling at the North Mill Road industrial park, after the Cumberland County Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAC) voted to remove the site from the Solid Waste Management Plan at Tuesday's special meeting.
The meeting was held at the Cumberland County Improvement Authority building on High Street in Millville.
SWAC made the decision at the behest of Vineland, who has grappled the past year with a polluted site left by Pure Earth Inc.
“I think it was an easy decision because it was clear the previous operators of the site wasn’t following the rules,” said Jerry Velasquez, executive director of the Cumberland County Improvement Authority.
“The SWAC committee was most concerned with making sure we had an operation that was following the rules and not a detriment to the community.”
Now that the site has been taken off the Solid Waste Management Plan, any future waste management endeavors must go through full SWAC board approval, unlike sites on the plan, which only require administrative approval.
“It was good to know that they’re all in favor of us doing something about the site,” said Vineland Mayor Ruben Bermudez.
Pure Earth operated the North Mill Road facility until February 2011, when it unceremoniously vacated the site and left behind dangerous chemicals, hundreds of gallons of used oil, hundreds of 55-gallon drums of unknown chemicals and 70,000 tons of contaminated soil.
Ever since taking office this year, Bermudez and his administration has made it a top priority to clean up the Pure Earth site.
“It took a team of people and the effort of everybody working together,” Bermudez said. “It was a challenge for us but we did it.”
Recently, another waste management company named Tradebe Environmental Services LLC attempted to open up a new facility on the site, however, Vineland’s protests successfully blocked a license from the state Department of Environmental Protection last April.
“We just didn’t want to see this type of business in our city ever again,” Bermudez said.
The Environmental Protection Agency has since taken responsibility for cleaning up the dangerous chemicals, having spent over $1 million over the past year on remediation.
The decision to remove the site from the Solid Waste Management Plan now goes to the Cumberland County Board of Chosen Freeholders for final approval.
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Contact staff writer Don E. Woods at 856-451-1000, ext. 518 or dwoods@southjerseymedia.com