Damn, I’m from Jersey, though Central, and this is all news to me. And I’m aware of the Frankfurt Armory explosion and all of that, but never did any research beyond. Very interesting.
It’s the old Tacony-Palmyra Drive-In site. More fun facts: part of the area they’re building on used to be a landfill for Philadelphia, which is still contaminated - they’ve just paved it over. Oh, and the condos they’re building? They’re being used to fulfill the town’s low-income housing requirements (as required by Mount Laurel I and II). I’m sure the developers are being quite open with the residents that their lovely new buildings are on top of a munitions testing site and a landfill … :(
I’m not familiar with the particular site, but having dealt with similar sites through my work, it’s presumably under the management of an LSRP as to any sort of landfill.
So landfills are pretty common everywhere. Back in the 20s, up to the 50s, they didn’t have trucks to take garbage out, and so there was just a lace in town where they dumped everything. It’s becoming common that the contents of these sites are identified, any potential contaminants are remediated, and the rest of the stuff is basically capped. There are procedures in place to demarcate where the landfill begins, in the event someone has to dig in the future, and beyond that they put loads of soil, gravel, and then a blacktop cap over top (in some cases they will leave areas green). There are strict standards for residential, and once those are met, they’re deemed safe. Very common these days. And the kind of fill in these old sites is garbage that was present in the first half of the century, and it’s mainly just junk. As I said, LSRPs would identify any potentially hazardous materials and remediate them.
Now, as far as a munitions depot, I have not come across them in my work, and so that’s new to me. That being said, the sites for these affordable housing projects under Mt. Laurel are chosen by the municipalities, and so it wasn’t a developer coming and saying yeah, it’s fine; it was the municipality saying so. They’re also generally part of a settlement in court.
During the long process of determining eligible sites, they conduct what’s called a Phase 1 environmental assessment, which identifies potential for contamination. So if there is potential, they’d move on to additional, more detailed studies. And, basically, if you’re aware of the site’s history, so are the folks involved in the project, and they’ve moved on to identifying potential contaminants and remediating it. For affordable projects, they’ll presumably get grant monies, either federal or state, which will require they comply with whatever guidelines are appropriate. NJDEP have some of the strictest standards (because we have so much experience) in the country.
But yeah, munitions depot, or at least what was essentially a firing range, is absolutely new to me, and I really hope they get some kind of UXO robots in there before you have guys in heavy machinery moving through. And I’m sure they have, because the State and the municipality would essentially be on the hook, as far as liability.
Edit: I should add, planning board and council meetings with regard to the project are open to members of the public, and in some cases they’re streamed online (one of the good things to come out of COVID). If you are interested, it’s a great place to see some of the inner workings of all of this. The municipality isn’t just stepping aside, they have their advocates, legal, engineering, and the like, and they’ll do a thorough vetting. It’s rare for affordable projects to get denied, but it does happen, and site safety can be a big factor.
