WAS THE NJMC DUPED OR JUST CO-OPTED?

 BOROUGH OF NORTH ARLINGTON 

 Was The NJMC Duped? Or just Co-Opted?

MAYOR, COUNCIL PRESIDENT SAY MEADOWLANDS TOWNS OWED COMPENSATION FOR THE NJMC’S FAILURES 

North Arlington – Borough officials are saying that recent comments on the EnCap fiasco by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, suggesting the NJMC was somehow duped into selecting the North Carolina developer to remediate the local landfills, are evidence that the agency failed to protect local communities.  

Because of that failure, say Mayor Peter Massa and Council President Steve Tanelli, the NJMC and the state should be providing financial help to the municipalities harmed by the EnCap developments. 

According to a published report last week, Robert Ceberio, the executive director of the NJMC, said the agency failed to ask the tough questions about the qualifications of EnCap’s parent company -- Cherokee Investment Partners to do the landfill remediation in New Jersey. 

Ceberio said top NJMC officials spoke to city officials in Houston, TX who vouched for EnCap’s ability. Ceberio told a reporter he regrettably never asked to see engineering or construction documents relating to the project. 

“I find the comments very revealing about the way the NJMC operates,” said North Arlington Mayor Massa. “I also find it disturbing that the agency that possesses a lot of expertise failed to use that expertise to protect the people in the meadowlands – particularly the people of my community.” 

The article published online by the South Bergenite suggested that the NJMC was “duped” by a changing cast of characters behind the EnCap project. 

Council President Tanelli said that the NJMC stumbled when it failed to conduct a fair and open process to select a developer for the meadowlands landfill remediation project – a fact that was raised by the State Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper in her investigation of the EnCap debacle. 

Ceberio also is quoted as saying the NJMC was not alone in believing that EnCap had the financial ability to complete the project. If the NJMC were duped, then the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and several private lending institutions were also duped, said Ceberio. 

Tanelli said he found Ceberio’s comments “hardly reassuring.” 

“It is pretty obvious that back channel political pressure was put on the NJMC, some of its commissioners and state agencies to select a firm with political connections and a well known lawyer,” said Tanelli.

“And it is pretty obvious that many people in and out of the NJMC were influenced by that law firm and the political contributions it could make.”  

 COMPENSATION OWED

Both Tanelli and Massa said that because of the NJMC’s failings, their community and others are owed compensation by the state and the opportunity to terminate their community’s agreements with EnCap. 

“I am particularly upset that an agency like the NJMC – which has a budget four times our own – and has at its disposal highly paid engineers and other experts – failed to use those resources to honestly evaluate and monitor Cherokee and to assess the EnCap projects ” said Massa. 

“If they couldn’t do their job representing my community given all the resources at their disposal  -- then they failed us and they need to make us whole,” said Massa,  who said the NJMC and other state agencies  should pay the borough’s legal fees for its EnCap litigation. 

Tanelli agreed, noting that the NJMC has spent a $1 million for its own EnCap litigation. “That’s our money,” said Tanelli. “that’s money that belongs to the residents of the meadowlands and should be used to protect us, not to protect the NJMC."

The council president added that he is upset “that there are people in state government and in the NJMC family that want to make political points by blaming the communities for succumbing to the pressure of EnCap. 

“The reality is that we didn’t pick EnCap – they did. We didn’t vouch for EnCap’s credentials, the NJMC did?  We didn’t give EnCap hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money – the state did,” said Tanelli. “They pushed Cherokee and EnCap on us and now they have left us stranded in a middle of a mess they caused.”  

Councilman Al Granell asked why the NJMC employed no competitive bidding process to ensure that the state was getting the most qualified firm to do the remediation work.

“The problem as I see it is the lack of oversight and standards from the state agencies that should have been overseeing the project. This was the biggest remediation project to come before any body in New Jersey. Why was there no effort to get the most qualified company to do the work?  They should have done everything to protect the public. But they did not.”