U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli and U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, both D-N.J., promised to look for more money to pay for alternative dump sites after meeting Thursday with South Jersey officials, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Delaware River Port Authority, which is sponsoring the project.

"New Jersey is simply not going to bear the entire responsibility of these dredge materials," Torricelli said.

One alternative under consideration is to use the dredge materials to fill abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania.

Plans to deepen the river to 45 feet from the mouth of the Delaware River to the Camden-Philadelphia harbor ran afoul of local officials and environmental groups when the Corps identified four South Jersey locations as the only suitable dump sites.

The project, scheduled to begin later this year, will remove 33 million cubic yards of material from the riverbed.

The Army Corps, which is directing the project, has not made its final recommendation on the dump sites. The sites it has focused on include two in Logan, at the foot of the Commodore Barry Bridge, and another in Oldmans Township, Salem County. Land in National Park now used as a dump by the Army Corps also could be used for the project.

Gloucester County officials, backed by the two lawmakers, have put up fierce resistance to becoming the host of much of the dredge spoils, saying Pennsylvania should take its share.

Andrews said a simple message was delivered Thursday to the Army Corps and the DRPA: "You will not dump on South Jersey."

If there is not a fair settlement in distributing the dredge materials, Torricelli said, he and Andrews will use their political clout to stop the release of federal funds for the project - about $200 million of the estimated $311 million cost. Torricelli said the lawmakers hope it will not come to a showdown.

Torricelli and Andrews said they are working to tap a federal fund set up to reclaim Pennsylvania's abandoned coal mines. Called the Abandoned Mines Reclamation Fund, the fund gets about $200 million a year from a surtax collected from the coal industry.

"What we see as a problem, Pennsylvania sees as an opportunity," Andrews said, describing the abandoned mines as "huge craters in the middle of communities." Clean dredge materials can help the state reclaim the areas, he said, and solve a public safety problem.

The legislators estimate it will cost less than $50 million to ship most of the dredge material to Pennsylvania.

The current budget for the dredge project does not include funding for transporting the spoils that far inland, which would cost 10 to 30 times more than pumping mud and sand onto the riverbanks, Army Corps spokesman Ed Voigt said.

Torricelli and Andrews asked the Army Corps to come back with a cost estimate and a reaction to their plan within 30 days.

Just in case their proposal does not work, the two legislators have asked the DRPA to devise a marketing plan to use or sell the dredge material quickly and remove it from the dump sites. They also want the DRPA to use only existing dump sites for at least the first three years of the project and to reimburse host communities for the lost tax revenue from the sites.

Gloucester County Freeholder-Director Stephen Sweeney called the lawmakers' demands "common-sense answers" to his county's dilemma.

"Hopefully, from what I've seen today, we're going to be successful," he said.

Logan Mayor John Wright, who also attended the meeting, told the legislators that if the DRPA does buy the two sites the Army Corps has identified, the township would lose a quarter of its tax revenue. With congressional backing, he said, that might not happen.

"Logan has a possibility of getting zero dredge materials," Wright said.

Despite Torricelli's position, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network environmental group maintains the dredging project still doesn't make sense.

"I think, from our perspective, no matter where you put the spoils, it's a bad project environmentally and a bad project economically," said Riverkeeper Maya K. van Rossum. "It's not going to provide the big economic benefits the DRPA pretends it's going to provide."

However, van Rossum said, if the project does go through, Pennsylvania should be required to pay its share.

DRPA officials characterized Thursday's meeting as positive. DRPA spokesman Joe Diemer said filling in old mines has always been a possibility, but transportation costs have been considered prohibitive.

Diemer insisted the DRPA has yet to determine exactly what it plans to do with the dredge material.

"We haven't approved any (disposal) plan, but we want to make this a model project," Diemer said, adding the DRPA plans to develop a plan to market the materials for beneficial uses such as landfill cover and fill for construction projects.

He said the port provides 54,000 jobs and argued the maritime community fully supports the project.

"This is a World War II vintage channel, while the rest of the world is going to deeper channels," Diemer said. "We just don't think we can afford to be the shallowest port on the East Coast."
-- KIM MULFORD