[CPEO-BIF] Municipalities and New Jersey's Licensed Professional Program

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Towns face added hurdles in site cleanup program
DEP measure still wins praise, but municipalities' needs for extra time 
may pile on prohibitive costs

By Evelyn Lee
NJBIZ
June 15, 2009


The new Licensed Site Remediation Professional Program is expected to 
put polluted properties in the Garden State back into productive use, 
but municipalities could face particular challenges in cleaning up such 
sites, according to brownfield redevelopment experts.

Brownfield sites - vacant and underutilized properties with known or 
suspected contamination - "are lost opportunities for redevelopment 
throughout the state," said Mark Mauriello, acting commissioner of the 
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, at a breakfast 
meeting of the Economic Development Association of New Jersey earlier 
this month. "It forces developers to look at other sites, sites that are 
not contaminated," which leads to sprawl and multiplies environmental 
problems in the state.

Overall, the program - where private-sector environmental engineers and 
consultants will be licensed to oversee and approve non-sensitive site 
cleanups - "is a good thing," said Leah Yasenchak, principal at 
Brownfield Redevelopment Solutions Inc., a consulting firm with offices 
in Manasquan and Camden. "The LSRP was something that had to happen, 
because New Jersey doesn't have the resources to manage the [DEP Site 
Remediation] program" on its own.

But some difficulties could arise for municipalities under LSRP.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.njbiz.com/weekly_article.asp?aID=76746809.9141707.1018797.6353377.3404279.688&aID2=78360

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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