2 weeks Ago
WOODBINE — As it stands, a fenced-in swath of empty land in the shadow of the borough’s water tower is not doing anyone any harm, according to environmental consultants. But it isn’t doing much good, either. Once the site of a factory that burned down in the 1970s after being shut down, the area has been cleaned up, to a point, helped by a $1 million state grant.
On Tuesday afternoon, local, state and federal officials gathered by the fence around the site to celebrate an additional $1 million from the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s brownfields program, part of a $1.5 billion bipartisan infrastructure package. The funds will go toward cleanups at four sites in the community, including the former hat factory.
Mayor William Pikolycky wants to return the property to productive use, and to the tax rolls. Joining Pikolycky were Lisa F. Garcia, the EPA administrator for Region 2, which includes New Jersey; state Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette; Jane Asselta, the state director for the New Jersey Department of Agriculture; and MacKenzie Belling, the South Jersey director for U.
S. Sen. Cory Booker’s office.
“The EPA is really happy to be able to announce $1 million to help clean up this site,” Garcia said. “The brownfields money is meant to clean up abandoned sites that are contaminated.” It is aimed at communities that are struggling to figure out where the money could come from for remediation, which will allow the sites the be used again.
She said the work in Woodbine will be an example for other communities to follow. Atlantic City International Airport and airports in Ocean City, Hammonton, Woodbine and Millville will receive Federal Aviation Administration grants to make improvements to runways, taxiways, safety and sustainability projects, as well as terminal, airport-transit connections and roadway projects. Belling read a letter from Booker, D-N.
J., in which he touted the federal money that has already flowed to the community, including more than $6 million for the nearby airport, as part of a multibillion-dollar federal effort to modernize airports. Several of the speakers brought up Woodbine’s record of drawing grant money, with LaTourette joking that Pikolycky had texted him during the event to ask for more money.
In his comments, Pikolycky said the federal grant would help to draw more money for the project. That will include looking for more money from the DEP to close the case on the hat company site so it can be used again. “A million dollars doesn’t go very far anymore,” said Thomas Maher with the engineering firm Taylor, Wiseman and Taylor, which is working on the project with the borough.
He described the history of Woodbine, which was once an industrial hub for South Jersey. At the start of the 20th century, the town was thriving, he said, with manufacturing plants stretching along Dehirsch Avenue, named for one of the founders of the borough. It began in the 1890s as a planned community for Jews from Eastern Europe, with farms, factories and an agricultural college.
In World War II, the army built an airfield, which is the site of the current Woodbine Airport. LaTourette described New Jersey as a birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, in places like Woodbine and more densely developed communities like Paterson, where the falls powered textile factories and other manufacturing. “We were really the backbone of Cape May County,” Pikolycky said.
The Woodbine Zoning Board will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. Jan.
10 to consider a company's request to open a cannabis business in a former bookbinding factory located in the airport business zone. In addition to hats, the factory made rubber cement and other products over the years, Maher said. But as markets changed, manufacturing died off in the Northeast, Maher said, relocating south and then overseas.
That was a significant change for Woodbine. “Not only did we lose the manufacturing and all the jobs, we lost the population,” Maher said. The officials planned to visit each of the sites in Woodbine on Tuesday afternoon, before a public meeting in the evening.
Garcia, LaTourette and others were set to visit the airport, the site of a former school that was demolished in the 1980s and a landfill; not the landfill operated by the Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority on the outskirts of town, but an earlier site operated privately and long the repository of Woodbine’s trash. Pikolycky said that landfill has never been properly capped. Local officials said the site was in use for about 14 years and has been waiting almost 40 years to finally be capped.
For the past five years, planning has been underway for a 10-megawatt solar project on that property. “None of these properties represent a health risk, based on their current use,” Maher said. But the properties could be put to new use or see an improved use.
The Dennis Township Board of Education is asking the voters for approval to spend $2.2 million more than this year’s approved budget, an increase that district officials describe as necessary to support students, staff and the community. The district points to years’ worth of declines in state aid, pulling some $4 million out of the district budget.
Pikolycky described the federal investment as significant. “As an overburdened and economically distressed community, Woodbine is ill-equipped to address contamination at these brownfields sites on its own, meaning outside resources such as this are critical to our ongoing efforts to improve the local environment and the quality of life for all residents, and we are deeply appreciative of the USEPA’s commitment to and partnership with the borough,” he said in a statement. Contact Bill Barlow: (609) 272-7290 bbarlow@pressofac.
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