Cleaned-up landfill site may be added to park BY JESSICA SMITH Staff Writer OLD BRIDGE - Township officials are working toward a land purchase that would result in the expansion of Cheesequake State Park. The council voted Dec. 10 to apply for a grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that would defray costs of an environmental investigation required on the property, which was the Old Bridge Landfill in the 1950s and early 1960s. "Back in those days, nobody knew much about landfills and the consequences," Mayor Jim Phillips said. The tract, owned by the Sommers family, consists of 234 acres, about 10 percent of which was a "sanitary" landfill for household wastes during the late '50s and early '60s, officials said. The remainder of the property is vacant. Contiguous to Cheesequake, it is located at Route 34 and Old Road. As a result of litigation filed by the Sommers family against Old Bridge and others in 1988 that sought to have the property cleaned up, the township was court ordered in 2003 to purchase the land after its cleanup for $8.5 million. Before the town purchases the land, an environmental insurance company must verify that no further problems exist at the site, according to Township Attorney Jerry Convery. From there, the state will purchase the land from the township at its appraised value, Convery said. "It's already been settled, and we're going through the cleanup process," Convery said. "The state has always indicated to us an interest in purchasing the property once the settlement is over and the cleanup has taken place." Before the actual cleanup can begin, permission from the state is required. Due to the court settlement, an environmental investigation must take place there, and a remedial action plan must be submitted to the state in order to obtain approval. The township has agreed to pay 15 percent of the cost for the investigation, Convery said. Since the property was handled by a number of insurance carriers over the years, figuring out who will be responsible for the cleanup has been a complex process, according to Convery. A fund of $6 million is in place from the combination of all the insurance companies to take care of the re- mediation. "It [would be] very beneficial to the town to get that grant," Convery said. "We're hoping that the state will be favorable toward any grants." According to Phillips, the property, which is largely a swampland area, would be used to provide habitats for birds and aquatic life forms. The Sommers property also abuts the former Global Landfill, which has been awaiting cleanup since 1960. That property, identified as a federal Superfund site, needs to be capped, and has been undergoing monitoring since 1965, according to Phillips.