Carteret, NJ – Mayor Reiman and Councilman Jorge Diaz announced that E.I. Dupont company has received all final approvals from the Borough, county and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and has begun the remediation of its property in Carteret. The site, a 33-acre parcel adjacent to the Arthur kill channel along the eastern portion of the borough, has sat abandoned for close to sixty years making a large portion of the waterfront redevelopment area dormant and inaccessible to the public.
“Dupont has recently initiated an active remediation program beginning with the crushing and grading of debris & stones to be used as part of an on-site cap,” said Mayor Reiman. “The site has sat for nearly 60 years in an idle and abandoned state and we are finally making progress on utilizing Dupont’s waterfront parcel to its fullest potential. ”
The Dupont site is a vacant brownfield site with a nearly 6-story pile of rocks and debris. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (“Dupont”) acquired Agrico chemical company which was located on the site in the 1920s. The Borough began work on compelling “Dupont” to remediate the site in 2008 when it was able to have the site designated a Brownfields Development Area by New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) due to its onsite soil and debris. The site is contaminated with metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in higher concentrations than allowed by law. The town also filed a natural resources damage suit against Dupont. In 2010 Dupont settled the suit from the Borough by agreeing to remediate the contaminated soil by stabilizing it, grading the rock pile over the soil for the purposes of capping the site with clean fill. The site will be cleared before being graded. The cap will vary in thickness from two to eight feet thick. Dupont will also install a stone revetment to prevent the erosion of the capped material and has agreed to donate 10 acres of waterfront property to the Borough for use for the ferry terminal, parking lot, public space and boardwalk. They will also use various dust suppression methods to prevent contaminates from drifting to adjacent sites and posing health hazards to workers. The balance of the site is currently owned by Dupont, and a future use has yet to be determined by the company and the Borough.
“The future of this site has the potential to transform Carteret into a waterfront destination by making Dupont’s waterfront property available to the public and creating opportunities for public and private redevelopment,” said Mayor Reiman. “The long term plan is expand our waterfront park and add to our portfolio of recreation activities with an urban beach, a barge pool and a boardwalk. We could also solicit private businesses to open waterfront lounges and restaurants.”
The Dupont property is adjacent to the Waterfront Park and includes much of the land directly behind the A. Duie Pyle warehouse. Waterfront Park has about 800 feet of waterfront which would nearly triple with the inclusion of the 1,500 feet on the Dupont property. Remediation will start in the beginning of November and is expected to take approximately eighteen months to complete. Work will be done on site from 7AM to 7 PM, Monday through Friday.
