Environmental sites at fort subject of meeting Nov. 3 meeting on 43 sites in need of remediation BY LIZ SHEEHAN Correspondent TINTON FALLS - Representatives of local municipalities will be able to get information on Nov. 3 about 43 environmental sites at Fort Monmouth that are in need of restoration. The sites are described by the Army as subjects of "environmental restoration actions that have been, and continue to be, addressed in conjunction with and in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection." The information session will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Gibbs Hall. At a meeting of the Fort Monmouth Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) held at Gibbs Hall on Tuesday, Wanda Green, the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) environmental coordinator who chaired the meeting, said there would be experts available at the session to explain the conditions at the sites and answer individual questions about them. Col. Stephen Christian, the garrison commander, said the Nov. 3 meeting would be about all 43 sites, their location, what has been done with them and what will continue to be done in the future. Green declined to answer questions about the sites and said the Tuesday meeting was held to introduce the community and Army members of the Restoration Advisory Board. The community members are residents of neighboring towns who are serving as liaisons from their towns to the army in the restoration process. According to an information packet distributed at the meeting, the RAB serves "as an advisory board and as a medium for local community involvement in the installation environmental restoration program." The community members of the board introduced at the meeting are Dan Levine, Little Silver; Dianne Crilly, Shrewsbury; Pippa Woods, Tinton Falls; Frank Barricelli, Oceanport; Jim Allen, Tinton Falls; and Ed Dlugosz, Eatontown. The U.S. Army base will be shut in 2011, since it was named as one of the bases in the country to be closed by the Department of Defense through the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. The information packet distributed at the Sept. 4 meeting listed 43 sites, which include four closed solid waste landfills, an asbestos storage area, a pathogenic waste incinerator, two pesticide storage buildings, a sludge dump, a PCB transformer and a hazardous waste storage area. Green said that reports on the individual sites are available at the Monmouth County Library. The packet given to the handful of people who attended the meeting Tuesday outlined the environmental restoration proposed for the sites at the fort and called it "a phased approach." The steps include a preliminary assessment to see if the site is either releasing or has the "the potential to release, hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants to the environment, and whether the release requires a response action." If "reasonable efforts" don't show such a release, the site will be closed out, the handout said. If the initial investigation results in no information "to support a No Further Action (NFA) determination," a site investigation will be begun. A "removal action" would be put into place if "an imminent threat to human health and the environment is recognized," the handout said. If there is no imminent threat, the process then calls for a site investigation, remedial investigation, a feasibility study, remedial design, and putting the remedy in place, with long-term monitoring if needed until the site close-out phase. "If a site does not threaten public health or the environment, it should be closed out," the handout said. At that time, an NFA letter would be requested from the DEP, it said. Larry Quinn, the case manager for the DEP who sat on the panel at the meeting, read a statement from the DEP that said the department "is satisfied with Fort Monmouth's site restoration efforts." He said the DEP's Site Remediation Program had "provided oversight of the site restoration efforts" at the fort since 1993. There are 43 sites within the main post and Charles Wood Area that are now being cleaned up and monitored, Quinn said. The DEP has issued NFA determinations for 15 contaminated sites, he said, while "NFA requests on 11 other sites are awaiting NJDEP review and approval." Quinn said Tuesday that the 15 sites that NFA were issued for were not included in the 43 now being monitored. "To the NJDEP's knowledge, none of the contaminated sites at Fort Monmouth is currently posing an imminent threat to human health or the environment. The DEP believes that some of the contaminated sites need further evaluation to make cleanup decisions, and the agency expects to work cooperatively with Fort Monmouth on the sites in the future, Quinn said. He said that "unfortunately," the DEP had not provided "a timely response to numerous technical reports submitted by Fort Monmouth during the 2003-2006 time frame." This was due to competing priorities and workload, and the fort is "still awaiting review and comment" on 42 technical reports on 22 contaminated sites, Quinn said. The DEP "reprioritized Fort Monmouth" in late 2006 and has now begun going through the backlog of reports and comments on the fort and will continue to do so over the next few years, he said.