State officials hope to spur redevelopment of urban areas through a 1998 law that marks a significant change in the way contaminated industrial sites are viewed.

TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post Edward Williams (left), Camden city planning director, and Fred Martin, the city's Brownfields coordinator, stand at a front street site proposed for housing.

And Camden's Riverfront may become a test case to see if the new strategy will work.

The Brownfield and Contaminated Site Remediation Act protects buyers of tainted sites from private lawsuits and provides business with tax incentives to redevelop including reimbursement for up to 75 percent of the cost of cleaning up contamination.

Cleanup standards have also been eased to reflect the type of use proposed for a parcel of land. For example, it's not considered as important to completely clean up the land if it's going to be used for a park or a new industry places where people only spend part of the day and thereby would have less exposure to toxins.

And it's now considered acceptable to merely push contaminated dirt to one section of a tract of land and cover it up with a parking lot or some other kind of barrier, rather than hauling the material away at a much greater cost.

That's what was done with the construction of Cooper Waterfront Homes, a low- and moderate-income subsidized housing development on the Cooper River near the Delaware in North Camden where soil was tainted with petroleum products.

And it may be done at a proposed market-rate housing development on Front Street in the Cooper's Grant section of Camden, just north of the State Aquarium. That is now the site of an abandoned drum refurbishing business.

The 23 homes would be complemented by redevelopment of other nearby industrial land into athletic fields for Rutgers University. At some point, a 10-mile network of greenways along the city's waterways could link up near the river.

A riverfront park system … still in its infancy would become a selling point to developers who want such "quality of life" amenities to attract homebuyers, officials say.

But Tom Knoche of Save Our Waterfront, a community-based group in Camden, says Brownfields redevelopment is happening too slowly. He criticizes what he calls endemic problems with past and present city administrations that have frustrated developers and community activists who want to renovate housing, lure industries and establish greenways.

"We just haven't had it in Camden for decades … a city government that's responsive, will help out," Knoche said. "It's like a plague. We're in a constant holding pattern."

City Planning Director Ed Williams said changes in environmental standards have begun to spur interest in places like this.

"We need to begin by stabilizing blocks and neighborhoods," he said. "But it's going to take time."

The state has spent $2.4 million over the past 2" years on initial environmental investigations of former industrial sites, much of which had never even been tested. State and city officials say early investigations of the sites in the city suggest contamination problems may not be as widespread or serious as once feared.

Camden's Brownfields program coordinator Frederick Martin, for example, says many parcels have been contaminated with fuel from leaking underground oil tanks or asphalt from old roads torn up and used as fill to stabilize river banks.

But extensive chemical contamination doesn't seem as widespread as once thought, he said, and that is good for both developers and the city.

"Camden needs to rebuild its tax base if it's ever to stop begging for money from the state," Martin said.