Superior Court Throws Out Baykeeper Lawsuit Against the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

NEWARK – In its 29-page opinion, a panel of three Superior Court appellate judges dismissed all allegations in a lawsuit that the NY/NJ Baykeeper filed against the Department of Environmental Protection for issuing permits in 2014 to SoilSafe, a Carteret-based soil recycler performing a site remediation, and the property owner, Rahway Arch Properties.

The NY/NJ Baykeeper is run by Debbie Mans, who is also co-chair of the Lower Passaic River Community Advisory Group (CAG).

The case, argued on Oct. 17, 2017 in Newark and decided in late December, rejected all claims made by the NY/NJ Baykeeper, in its highly-publicized effort starting in 2011 to stop SoilSafe and Rahway Arch from undertaking soil recycling and remediation of the contaminated property at the state-approved facility in Carteret.

The Superior Court judges unanimously sided with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which licensed the Class B recycling center, known as “Metro 12.”

For years, the NY/NJ Baykeeper opposed the project, sending numerous pseudo-scientific and inaccurate allegations to the media and local politicians.  DEP found the allegations meritless and issued the necessary permits.  The lawsuit regurgitated the allegations and they were all resoundingly rejected by the court. 

A sampling of the Court’s rejections of the Baykeeper’s baseless charges:

• the DEP carefully considered the environmentally-sensitive nature of the site, 
• the DEP considered and examined all findings of its own staff and engineers,
• the DEP's findings were based on sufficient credible evidence in the record, and
• DEP determined, the facility is a recycling center. Therefore, solid waste rules applicable to "beneficial use" do not apply.  (Recycling is regulated on a much more rigorous level).

The judges, a panel of Joseph Yannotti, George Leone and Hany Mawla, wrote that they addressed many of the Baykeeper’s arguments in earlier appeals, adding “Baykeeper's remaining arguments are without sufficient merit to warrant discussion in this opinion. We therefore affirm the DEP's action granting Soil Safe the Class B Recycling Center General Approval Permit.”

Mark Smith, president of Soil Safe, said, “there was never any doubt that all statutes, regulations and procedures were followed in preparation and issuance of the nearly two dozen approvals to operate a Class B recycling facility in Carteret.”  

“Baykeeper’s accusations were based on disparaging information provided to them by Andrew Voros, a so-called environmentalist secretly funded by Clean Earth, a competitor of ours,” Smith explained.

With the Clean Earth funds Voros created a dossier of lies about Soil Safe and peddled it to anyone and everyone, without letting them know who paid for it.  

In July, U.S. District Court Judge Renee Marie Bumb rejected a three-year-old complaint filed by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, affirming that Soil Safe’s recycling product is safe and its process is “…`textbook’ recycling of materials."

“The Superior Court’s decision mirrors what the federal court determined last summer in a related and ill-conceived matter brought by the Delaware Riverkeeper, Baykeeper’s sister organization, using the same false information provided by Voros,” Smith added.

References:

• The NJ Superior Court Opinion may be found at: https://casetext.com/case/raritan-baykeeper-inc-v-nj-dept-of-envtl-prot

• The US District Court Opinion may be found at: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-jersey/njdce/1:2014cv01349/300748/158/