The "brownfields" bill that New Jersey Gov. Whitman signed into law in January has been billed as an effort to encourage developers to clean up abandoned factory sites in the cities. Participants in a panel on the new law at Monmouth University yesterday said it will also help spur development of former farm sites and other areas in the suburbs, such as in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

Brownfields are vacant, inactive or underused commercial, industrial or residential properties tainted by pollutants but potentially suitable for environmental cleanup and redevelopment.

"A great deal of (Monmouth and Ocean counties) was farmland in the past on which agricultural chemicals were used," said lawyer George J. Tyler, of Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla P.C., a Middletown Township law firm. "This law makes it easier and less risky for developers to clean up   these properties and use them."

The new law, The Brownfields and Contaminated Site Remediation Act, S-39, is the latest effort by the state to strike a balance between the desire to protect public health and the desire to see land developed and used, so businesses will succeed and jobs and tax ratables will be created.

New Jersey has an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 brownfields sites out of about 9,000 known contaminated sites nationwide. Tyler could not estimate how many brownfields sites are in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
 
Since the 1970s, when events such as the oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., inspired elected officials to protect the environment, laws in New Jersey and elsewhere have sometimes tipped that balance too far toward environmental protection and away from business, said Jim Sinclair, an engineer and first vice president of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association. The association represents business interests.

"Our espoused theory was `We want good clean industry!'" Sinclair said. "The theory in use was `Screw you guys (land owners, developers and business owners)!'"

The brownfields bill shows that the attitude of state government has changed, he said.

In 1983, New Jersey enacted the Environmental Cleanup Responsibility Act, requiring industrial and commercial sites to be clean before they could be sold, transferred or closed.

That law created ambiguity and confusion, Sinclair said.

With The Industrial Site Recovery Act in 1993, legislators added language that says the risk of getting cancer, after exposure to any contaminant at a site, must not exceed one in a million.

The brownfields bill retains that standard, but it also gives businesses immunity from being sued by the state for contamination at sites they acquire and are willing to clean up. The state Department of Environmental Protection will agree not to sue once it has declared a cleanup complete.

The law also provides financial incentives for developers. The state could pay them as much as     three-quarters of the cost of cleaning a site if state tax revenue the site will generate exceeds that amount. In practice, only large commercial sites would likely generate that much sales tax, Tyler said. The state also will provide cash for innovative cleanup techniques.

The panel was sponsored by Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla P.C., the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, Professor George Korfiatis of the Center for Environmental Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, and Professor Donald M. Moliver, director of the Real Estate Institute at Monmouth University. Copyright 1998, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News., All Rights Reserved

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