Attorney General, DEP Announce Enforcement Action Against Owner of Unlawful Solid Waste Dump in Sussex County

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Lee Moore (LPS)
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Lawrence Hajna (DEP)
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TRENTON – Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Catherine R. McCabe announced today that the State has taken legal action to force the closure of a 75-foot-high pile of soil and solid waste in Sussex County that its owner has refused to remove.

In an Order to Show Cause filed today in New Jersey Superior Court, the DEP alleges that property owner Joseph Wallace is operating an unlawful solid waste dump that sits on his property in Vernon Township. The State’s filing today seeks to force Wallace to cease operating the alleged solid waste dump and immediately ban any further dumping at the site; to test for contaminants and dispose of any solid waste; and to give DEP access to the property for inspections and sampling.

Today’s Order to Show Cause builds on two Notices of Violation that DEP issued the property owner on Wednesday, February 20, 2019. The first was for the maintenance of an unlicensed solid waste facility, and the second was for the failure to permit entry to DEP inspectors.

“Today’s Order to Show Cause and the Notices of Violation issued on Wednesday are the culmination of several months of proactive investigation and the discovery of some contaminated soil at this site,” said DEP Commissioner McCabe. “This legal action is intended to stop the accumulation of unpermitted solid waste at this site and to protect the environment in response to the concerns of Vernon residents.”

“State law is crystal clear: No one has a right to operate an unlicensed solid waste dump, and especially not in a residential area,” said Attorney General Grewal. “So today, we’re going after an operator to stop building his 75-foot-high pile of soil and solid waste and start removal of contaminants—immediately. I’m committed to protecting New Jersey’s natural resources and the environmental well-being of all our communities, whether that means pursuing big natural resource damage cases and environmental justice actions, or tackling unlawful dumps in the heart of towns like Vernon.”

The DEP has conducted more than a dozen inspections of the site in recent years. On Friday, February 15, 2019, the DEP obtained the results of two soil samples collected from fill that had sloughed off the site onto a neighboring property, which DEP then tested with consent from the neighboring owner. One of the samples indicated the presence of low levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and lead above residential standards, which renders the affected soil a “solid waste” under New Jersey law. On that basis, DEP classified the site as an unlicensed solid waste facility.

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