A legislator who represents Florence asked state officials Friday for an inventory of the contaminated dirt NJ Transit has piled up in the township's Roebling section.

And if it's not "home grown," Assemblyman Jack Conners, D-Burlington, said, he wants it out of there.

"I request that your respective departments initiate plans to remove any contaminated soil from Florence and stop using the township as a dumping ground for soil from other communities," Conners, a Pennsauken Democrat, said in a letter to the heads of the Department of Transportation and the Department of Environmental Protection.

NJ Transit could not immediately identify the source of all the dirt that has been piled into berms in Roebling.

Nicholas Marton, project manager for the South Jersey Light Rail Line for NJ Transit, offered different accounts of the dirt's origin.

Conners' letter Friday followed close on the heels of a letter sent to the DOT and DEP by Assembly Majority Leader Joe Roberts, demanding that contaminated soil be removed from the berms erected in his district, in East Camden.

NJ Transit disposed of excess dirt excavated during the construction of its 34-mile, Camden-to-Trenton rail line by piling it into huge mounds in the Pavonia Rail Yard in East Camden, mounds as high as 30 feet, and smaller berms in Florence.

Both sets of berms are next to the tracks and close to residential areas.

In East Camden, the berms abut the back yards of some rowhomes.

In Roebling, they are across the street from a neighborhood of rowhomes.

The dirt in both berms contains low levels of hazardous substances, such as benzene, lead, arsenic, cadmium and polychlorinated biphenyls.

The levels are too high for residential areas, according to DEP regulations, but acceptable for nonresidential areas provided they are covered with an 18-inch-thick layer of cleaner soil.

The soil can be mounded and capped in this fashion, the DEP ruled, because it is being re-used on the site where it was excavated.

The site includes the rail line's entire 34-mile right-of-way, NJ Transit says.

The debate over the berms has centered on the contents and origin of the soil.

NJ Transit initially asserted that 85 percent of the dirt piled in Camden came from that city, but an inventory provided later by NJ Transit showed that only 42 percent originated from the city.

Friday Marton said that most of the dirt in both berms came from within the same municipality or from "areas close by."

But Marton also said the contaminated dirt was excavated from the right-of-way along the entire length of the line. He described the soil along the right-of-way as "uniformly characteristic throughout the alignment."

And the inventory provided on the Camden berms suggests that the dirt could have come from almost anywhere on the line.

The excavation involved such tasks as replacing utility pipes, installing fiber optic cable, building drainage swales and replacing old roadbed, Marton said.

Marton said he believes the media has exaggerated the threat the dirt poses, while downplaying the stringency of the DEP's regulations and the benefits of the berms.

Among the latter, he cited remediation of some old commercial sites in East Camden, identification of the contaminants in the long-polluted Pavonia freight yard, and cutting down on "unfettered access to potentially hazardous materials."

Robin Perkins is an East Camden resident who has been active in protesting the berms and the lack of notification to residents before they were built.

She said Friday she had been told that an NJ Transit official would attend a community meeting there Tuesday as part of the agency's efforts to explain the berms to residents.

A spokeswoman for NJ Transit said she could not confirm that because the agency and the DEP were still firming up a schedule of meetings with residents and officials.

Florence Mayor Michael Machowski said last Friday he expects to meet with NJ Transit officials Friday to discuss the berms in his township.