Source: http://www.nj.com, January 16, 2015
By: S.P.Sullivan
The company selling the former Hoffmann-La Roche campus in Clifton and Nutley plans to complete its large-scale clean up of contaminated soil ahead of construction of the state’s first private medical school on the property, company officials said Thursday.
But ongoing groundwater remediation at the site, where pharmaceutical giant Roche operated for more than 80 years, will continue for some time, according to a spokeswoman.
At a news conference Thursday, Gov. Chris Christie and officials from Seton Hall University and Hackensack University Health Network announced the plans to build the new medical school on 14 acres of the 119-acre campus, kickstarting what company officials hope will be a complete redevelopment of the site.
First they’ll have to complete the ongoing cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater, which is tainted with common industrial byproducts, including the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE) and heavy metals such as lead and arsenic.
Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the DEP, told NJ Advance Media that the TRC Environmental Corp. has been overseeing the cleanup for Roche under the state’s Licensed Site Remediation Professionals program, and that the agency has also assigned a case manager to the site. He described the set-up as “an added level of state oversight” put in place “because of the complexity of the remediation issues and the size of the site.”
Bob Garrett, president and CEO of Hackensack University Health Network, said that Hoffman La Roche was “taking full responsibility” for the remediation of the campus.
“They have guaranteed that they will be turning over an environmentally clean site to both us and to the developers,” Garrett said.
In recent years, the company has performed soil remediation projects and groundwater investigations in several spots across the campus, and it expects to conduct more soil and groundwater cleanups this year, according to documents posted on a website dedicated to the project.
In 2013, neighbors became worried when the company began drilling more than 200 monitoring wells in the area surrounding the property to determine if tainted groundwater had traveled offsite, which raised concerns about contamination of nearby homes.
However, the company claimed in a report submitted to the federal Environmental Protection Agency last fall that there were “no unacceptable human exposures under current land and groundwater use conditions.” The EPA later approved that report.
Darien Wilson, a Roche spokeswoman, said the contaminated soil “will be cleaned up by Roche by the end of this year, including any soil in or around the building where the medical school would be located.”
“As for groundwater, any contamination flowing onto and through the Roche site is more than 80 feet underground and would have no impact on anyone in the building as there is no way anyone can come into contact with it,” Wilson said.
The company is expected to submit a complete soil remediation plan to the DEP this spring, which will be subject to public hearings and an approval process, Hajna said.
NJ Advance Media reporter Adam Clark contributed to this story.