Asphalt plant, Metedeconk River are like oil and water

No one should envy the members of the Brick Township Zoning Board of Adjustment.

The board has a difficult decision to make regarding Stavola Industries’ application to increase the production capacity of its asphalt plant, located on Chambers Bridge Road.

The plant is located on 17 acres in a rural residential zone that township Assistant Planner Tara Paxton said was identified in the 1997 master plan as a good place for public land. The property abuts not only the municipal building, which is next to the Ocean County Library, but is also adjacent to county parkland, which abuts the Metedeconk River.

And here is where the application gets tricky. Officials with the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority (BTMUA) are concerned enough about this application to send Director of Engineering and Operations Steve Specht, authority attorney John P. Doyle and Executive Director Kevin Donald to the board’s hearings.

Specht said last week that this application is more critical than Home Depot’s former application to build on the old Foodtown site. Why? Because it is an industrial plant located upstream from the BTMUA’s intake. As Doyle pointed out at a recent hearing, the Metedeconk River is the water supply for approximately 100,000 people — including Brick and the BTMUA’s other customers.

Stavola officials said they’re aware of the concerns and maintain that building a new plant will bring them up to today’s environmental standards. The plant that is in operation now was built 40 years ago.

As with most things, this application seems to be riddled with the good and the bad. Building a new, more modern plant may be better for air quality and other environmental concerns. But allowing Stavola to double its output, therefore bringing more trucks onto the site, seems counterintuitive.

The company has agreed to a restoration plan for the 300-foot mandatory buffer between its plant operations and the Metedeconk River. That the township will be the enforcing power over this conservation easement is a reassuring concept.

Yet there’s the question of the contaminated soil that lies beneath the standing plant. Stavola officials have said they will remediate the soil, if their application is approved. If the application is approved, they will build the new plant somewhere else on the site and tear down the old plant, leaving the contaminated soil free to be remediated.

But Stavola has already requested a deed notice from the state Department of Environmental Protection. This is the option the company will take if its application is not approved — it would allow the company to monitor the contaminated soil to make sure it doesn’t contaminate the groundwater.

But is this enough? The contamination reaches down 8 feet deep, and the water table is 6 feet deep. Stavola’s experts said the groundwater is not contaminated, though, and there is no moving plume going toward the Metedeconk River. Still, the situation seems risky.

We commend Paxton and the other township building officials, as well as the BTMUA, for their vigilance with this application, and we ask them to continue fighting. Fight for the residents who drink water from the Metedeconk River. Keep pressing Stavola, and the DEP, to make sure that every effort is being made to protect this water source.

The state has already declared that the river is so vital to the region that it needs special protections under the C1 designation. Now it is up to township officials, the BTMUA, and in this case, the Board of Adjustment, to help maintain that protected status.