No shortage of takers for dredge materials Local merchants, environmentalists back bay cleanup plan BY KAREN E. BOWES Staff Writer KEYPORT - Perhaps the best way to encourage recycling is to appeal to that most American of pursuits: making money. People who make their living off the area's waterways packed borough hall Thursday night, lending support to a grassroots effort aimed at making local waterways cleaner and less expensive to dredge. The forum was hosted by Joe Reynolds, co-chairman of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council. Reynolds, who has been working for several years to obtain state grant money to come up with a plan for creative reuses for dredge materials, may have accidentally brought together the very people who are capable of making his goal a reality. Although professionals are still calculating the final figures, project Manager Steve Taylor estimates the Bayshore is capable of producing a total of 190,714 cubic yards of dredge materials, not including Naval Weapons Station Earle, Middletown. The naval base would add another 1.5 million cubic yards, Taylor said. With so much material and some of it destined to be contaminated, what can it all be used for? Enter Jeff Weiner, owner of International Bio-Solutions Inc. The unassuming businessman just happens to be in the market for half a million cubic yards of dredge materials. Weiner, who is currently filling a quarry in Somerset County with dredge materials, said he did not wish to sound dramatic, that he could just as easily get by with 200,000 cubic yards of materials. Weiner raised his hand during the public portion of the forum, asking how to get in touch with people willing to sell their dredge materials. "Hold the phone!" Taylor said. "We'll get back to you on that." Weiner has already used 35,000 cubic yards of materials, he reported, but still needs much more. To put things in perspective, Weiner explained that one cubic yard of dredge materials weighs about 1.2 tons. Taylor said not only is the project a good way to recycle, it helps create a wildlife habitat. The same can be said for a similar project currently under way at the Belford landfill in Middletown, Taylor explained. There, a mixture of mulch and dredge materials is being used as ground filler. Reynolds, who began the "regional dredged material management plan" as a way to improve the dredging process overall, can also now be seen as a source for business contacts. During the public portion, the majority of questions came from business owners wishing to buy or sell their dredge materials. Clean Ocean Action's Cindy Zipf, one of the evening's featured speakers, pointed out the economic benefit of the waterfront industry, saying local municipalities can easily make money by enforcing ordinances. "So, towns need to understand how valuable that is and start issuing fines," Zipf said. Zipf said the best way to remove sediment from waterways is to catch it before it enters. Zipf touched on the overall importance of coming up with a regional plan for dredge materials. "We're out of the days of stockpiling materials in big piles forever that nobody knows what to do with," Zipf said. "That is so 20 years ago." John Tiedemann of Monmouth University agreed that towns and the public need to get more involved. "We need to get the municipalities more actively involved with enforcing existing ordinances," Tiedemann said. "It's an uphill battle. The state is not going to restore these watersheds, so we have to start at the local level." Taylor spoke about his recent visits to eight Bayshore centralized disposal facilities, or CDFs, where dredge materials are currently stored, or were once stored in the past. Sites in Aberdeen, Keansburg, Leonardo and the old Aeromarine site in Keyport are considered historical CDFs, Taylor said, because they are no longer active dumps. Taylor said the Aeromarine site may be viewed as a "site of opportunity," meaning he's heard mention of removing the old debris and replacing it with dredge spoils. Active sites, such as the Monmouth County Marina in Port Monmouth, land near Shoal Harbor, Atlantic Highlands, the Belford landfill, and the property formerly owned by the Hans Pedersen & Sons boat yard in Keyport are all to be considered as having "potential for reuse," Taylor said. Clean Ocean Action provided surveys to the audience requesting information regarding the needs of marina owners and all others who dredge. Questions - such as How often do you dredge? How do you currently manage your dredged materials? and, Do you test for contaminants? - will be used for the purposes of the overall dredge management plan, which the forum hopes will someday become the law. Suzanne Dietrick of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection specializes in dredging and sediment technology. She told the audience not to worry if their dredge materials test positive for contamination. "If you do have some contaminants, we have the flexibility to put it on a brownfields site," Dietrick said. The forum was also sponsored in part by the Hazlet Area Quality of Life Alliance. For more information regarding the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council's plan, contact Joe Reynolds at sosap2002@comcast.net. For a dredging survey, contact Clean Ocean Action at (732) 872-0111.