| The Associated Press
May 11, 2000 Dumps to duffers: Florida company plans golf courses atop landfills By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press Writer
BODY: High atop stinking, wind-swept garbage heaps, a Florida company plans to build a hotel, marina, office space and lavish golf courses with the Manhattan skyline providing a spectacular backdrop to an ambitious environmental reclamation project. Bergen County officials say the plan would transform six landfills, five of which are inactive, into a verdant, money making enterprise that also would relieve taxpayers of the burden of cleaning- up the old dump sites- But the project could interfere with New York City`s plan to shut down the massive Fresh Kills Landfill an S=m Island earlier than planned if a trash transfer station it had hoped to use in North Arlington is closed as part of the golf course plan. The Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission is close to an agreement with Tampa, Fla.-based EnCap Golf L.L.C. to transform dump sites in North Arlington., Rutherford, and Lyndhurst into championship -caliber golf courses with as many as 72 holes, a hotel, marina and office building. Neither the commission nor the company could provide a cost estimate for the project. EnCap, a 3-year-old partnership specializing in building golf courses a top old landfills or polluted industrial sites, would assume all the costs of cleaning up and capping the landfills, which would save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, said development commission Executive Director Alan Steinberg. "We'd be getting out of The garbage business and into the golfing business," he said "This would be one of the largest landfill closure efforts ever in New Jersey, and would turn a wasteland into a green, verdant area of open space and recreation. "We look forward to the day when people driving through the area on the New Jersey Turnpike can look left and right, and instead of seeing landfills, they'll see beautiful green golf courses," Steinberg said. "I think this is the biggest win-win project I've seen in all my years in government." EaCap would use dredge spoils dug up from the bottom of New York harbor to cap the landfills. The company would build a processing facility along the Hackensack River to clean contaminants out of the muck, and use the sanitized remains to seal off the landfills, which have been oozing toxins into area groundwater for decades. The sites are the Rutherford and Lyndhurst landfills, the Avon landfill in Lyndhurst, a dumping site known as "I-E" in North Arlington, The Kingsland Landfill, which straddles North Arlington and Lyndhurst, and the Erie landfill m North Arlington "This is taking material that's problematic for the river and processing it so that it can have a positive use," said Cynthia Zip, executive director of the Clean Ocean Action environmental group at Sandy Hook. "It's an economic investment in the region where there's now an economic and public-health liability." The proposal needs several layers of approval, including permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers To fill in wetlands along the perimeter of the landfills, and to dredge a section of the Hackensack River and build a bulkhead to receive shipments of dredge spoils that would be used to cap The landfill. It also requires approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection. Jeffrey Cappola, an attorney for EnCap, said the company hopes to have a final agreement signed with The Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission by the end of May. He said 364 of the approximately 600 acres of land included in the plan are developable. EnCap would fill in 8.9 acres of contaminated wetlands as pan of the landfill remediation, but would not need to fill in any additional wetlands as part of the development, he said- Steinberg said EnCap has agreed to pay the commission $6.25 million per year for 99 years TO offset the loss of revenue from solid waste disposal operations, but Cappola said that agreement has yet to be finalized. The Bergen County trash transfer station in North Arlington would be transferred to the Meadowlands commission and closed as part of the development said Torn Ammirato, a spokesman for Bergen County Executive William "Pat" Schuber. That would enable The county to retire $100 million in debt IT incurred building the facility. That, however, would complicate New York City’s efforts to close Fresh Kills by October, 14 months ahead of schedule. The city had planned to ship as many as 3,000 tons of trash per day to the transfer station on its way to more distant out--of-state landfills. "Yes. it definitely would have an impact" an the early closure plan, said Deputy New York City Mayor Joseph Lhota. "If it becomes part of a golf course, obviously no one can use it. I'd have to go to Other options," |