By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
FLORENCE
Dirt piled along the light rail line here contains the same low level of contaminants as the dirt amassed in East Camden, NJ Transit acknowledged Monday.
"It's the same dirt," NJ Transit spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett said, referring to excavated material that contains small amounts of benzene, PCBs, cadmium, lead and other toxic materials.
Residents and officials in both communities have been caught off guard by the dirt's contents. But the dirt, left over from work on the 34-mile, Camden-to-Trenton line, poses no threat to neighbors in either East Camden or Florence because it has been capped by clean fill, NJ Transit said Monday in a prepared statement.
Bassett Hackett said the cap consists of "18 inches of clean fill and two inches of topsoil."
The berms were created to provide both communities with sound barriers, the NJ Transit statement said.
The mounds in East Camden - as high as 30 feet in places - are mountainous compared with the berms erected in the Roebling section here, which are eight to 10 feet high.
But the berms in Roebling are, if anything, closer and more accessible to residential areas.
Neighbors and officials in Florence reacted with the same mixture of concern and anger as their counterparts in Camden.
"I don't understand that at all," said Donna McElrea, the owner of Donna's Deli and the head of the Roebling Historical Society. "We've already got a Superfund site (the former Roebling Steel Mill). We've had it up to here."
Florence officials said they were assured by NJ Transit that the soil was "clean," but asked to see test results for assurance.
That was 30 days ago, Township Administrator Richard Brook said, and the township is still waiting.
The officials said NJ Transit never previously disclosed the dirt contained toxic materials.
Mayor Michael "Mickey" Muchowski said the township "saw them bringing in the soil and were quite happy with the berm itself."
But he said there was some concern about safety and "because of our past experiences with NJ Transit we were reserving judgment" until officials saw the test results.
Muchowski described NJ Transit as difficult to deal with.
In March, residents near the berms in Roebling speculated about their purpose, most saying they assumed it was to block the rail from view.
A small, partially wooded area where adults walk their dogs and children play is all that separates the berms from a neighborhood of rowhomes.
"Kids play up there every day," John Clarke, a retiree who lives in the neighborhood, said last month, before information about the contents of the berms was known.
Hundreds of footprints on the dirt pile appeared to confirm Clarke's observation.
The East Camden Civic Association has scheduled a meeting for Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Catto School, at 32nd and Saunders streets, to discuss the berms in its neighborhood.
Reach Richard Pearsall at (856) 486-2465 or rpearsall@courierpostonline.com
