Environmentalists, alleging contaminated soil at Glouco park, seek access for samples

An environmental advocacy group is asking a federal judge to uphold a subpoena giving it access to Gloucester County's DREAM Park, an equestrian park, to conduct soil sampling there. The organization claims the park has been a repository for contaminated soil.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network filed suit in federal court in 2014 against Soil Safe, saying its Logan operation was not properly cleaning the contaminated soil it recycles, some of which is used as fill for the nearby county park site, which used to be a dredge spoil dump area.

While the county isn't named in the suit, Michael Angelini, co-general counsel for the Gloucester County Improvement Authority, which operates the park, wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge Karen M. Williams last week supporting Soil Safe's opposition to the sampling. Angelini wrote that the group's testing would be unnecessary because of Soil Safe's existing sampling procedures and oversight by the state. He further said such sampling — including "penetration and removal of material" — would harm environmental measures in place at the park.

In many parts of the park area in question — a riding area still under construction — a "cap has been fully constructed, including placement of the final 12-inch topsoil layer and seeding with grass seed," Angelini wrote, adding: "The GCIA would be forced to bear the consequences of the damage to the remedial cap."

He said news accounts of the lawsuit had "generated fear and concern among GCIA employees, customers of the DREAM Park equestrian facility, and citizens who have visited" the park. "The court's ordering of sampling over the objections of Soil Safe and the GCIA almost certainly will be misinterpreted by the media as evidence that the existing sample results are untrustworthy," he added.

On Wednesday, Debra Sellitto, spokeswoman for the county and the GCIA, said in an e-mail that the improvement authority's position "has been and continues to be that Soil Safe is operating under a permit issued by the" New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

"The NJDEP does regular inspections for compliance. The NJDEP has not notified the GCIA that any violations of those permit conditions have happened," she said. "If there were an issue, there is little doubt that the NJDEP would contact us in a timely manner. That has not happened over the course of this permitted activity taking place."

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network's attorney, Bradley Campbell, a former state environmental commissioner, said in a letter to the judge responding to Angelini's letter that the sampling plan had been revised to minimize disruptions and that the group would be obligated to "restore the sampling sites to their pre-sampling condition."

Campbell said a decision to void the subpoena would handicap the group's ability to gather necessary data. The organization has claimed the soils, based off reports submitted by the company, have a high presence of benzo(a)pyrene, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has labeled a "probable human carcinogen."

Soil Safe has consistently refuted the allegations of the group. Its lawyers said in a recent court memo that the complaint was "unsupported by any evidence."

"We can only make informed decisions if we have the data," Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, said Tuesday. "We believe the public is being exposed to some very dangerous toxins."

In response to Angelini's letter, van Rossum asked GCIA acting Director George Strachan to reconsider. "We ask GCIA simply to recognize that the interests of GCIA, the county, and the public are all served by having the sampling proceed," she wrote in a letter.