Subject: Judge permanently bans Mullica trash station: Curiously buried on page four of the Region section, the article leaves some questions unanswered. County is oddly silent.
By ELAINE ROSE Press Staff Writer, The Press: Plans to build a trash-transfer station on a 20-acre property on Route 30 are officially dead, the New Jersey Pinelands Commission announced Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Jerome B. Simandle signed a consent order March 26 that permanently bars construction of a solid-waste transfer station on the property, and precludes “disposing, processing, dumping, transferring, transporting and/or handling solid or hazardous waste in any manner” on the site, the Pinelands Commission said. The restriction will remain on the title to the land in case it is sold. In a statement released Wednesday, Pinelands Commission Director John C. Stokes called the court order “a major victory for the protection of the ecological treasure that is the New Jersey Pinelands.” The Southern Rail Co. of New Jersey had planned to build a trash-transfer station, which would accept waste from garbage-hauling companies and transfer it by rail to landfills. Many residents objected to the plan, and signs stating “No Trash in Mullica” in both English and Spanish were seen on lawns throughout the township. The rail company had argued that a loophole in the 11-year-old Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act allowed them to operate the transfer station over the objections of the township and the Pinelands Commission. Simandle granted the Pinelands Commission a temporary injunction against building the transfer station in December 2005. The railroad company did not file an appeal by the February 2006 deadline and agreed in the current consent order to refrain from building the facility. Mayor Kathy Chasey, who last May urged a congressional subcommittee to close the loophole in the federal law, said she is thrilled with the decision and it is a win for Mullica Township. The consent order also includes the township and Atlantic County taking title to a strip of land on the property, parallel to the railroad tracks, as an extra bit of insurance. “The end result is there will never be a dump in Mullica,” Chasey said. “We stuck to our guns, dug our feet in the ground and said, ‘This is not going to happen here,' and it did not happen here.”


AN ANALYSIS OF THE PINELANDS’ VICTORY IN MULLICA

The steve THE SCOFFLAW waszen effort to have his garbage company Magic Disposal masquerade as a rail carrier and thus be able to run a garbage rail transfer station in Mullica was in reality dead with the Federal Court finding that South Jersey Rail would NOT be running the proposed rail garbage transfer station, but instead it would be run by the garbage hauler. This is the primary reason there was no appeal of the Federal Court’s temporary injunction halting activity at the old Perona Bros. Junk Yard site on the Pike in Elwood. This does not mean that another attempt in The Pinelands to run one of these rail garbage transfer stations that are exempt from local and State laws would not ultimately win Court tests based on the Constitution’s ‘commerce clause.’

That however would be a costly legal battle given that The Pinelands is a Federally created National Reserve. Given extant law, my money would be on the rail carrier but again the cost of the legal battle would seem to push rail carriers to place these types of operations outside the Pinebarrens. It seems clear that the strategy now is to place a highly profitable garbage rail transfer station just outside The Pinelands and thus save tens of thousands of dollars in disposal costs by shipping Atlantic County garbage out of State...most likely Ohio. The push to locate in Pleasantville seems strong as there is property there that is already owned by the rail carrier who THE SCOFFLAW waszen attempted to use as a front for his garbage aspirations in Mullica.

Rumors suggest that money in the form of a tonnage fee is being waved in front of Pleasantville politicians a long with dickering to expand the property owned by South Jersey Rail by purchasing adjoining property...the lumber yard. Given the economic realities in terms of dollar savings it would seem to make more sense for the ACUA to extend a rail line into its operation and run the garbage rail transfer station which seems an inevitable reality in some form in Atlantic County. The record of THE SCOFFLAW waszen in terms of compliance with minimal health and safety laws would seem to make it imperative for the citizens of Atlantic County to remove him as one to be too intimately connected to any area garbage rail transfer station.

Campaign contributions to the political campaigns of Republican County players like jim THE ETHICALLY CHALLENGED curcio would seem to make this an unlikely prospect while Republicans control Atlantic County. This should seem to push for environmentally concerned voters this November to defeat all three Republican Freeholder candidates and turn County control over to Democrats who would be more likely to act more for the greater good of County residents than Waszen indebted Republicans.

The additional ornaments on this decision...and easement and a ban of this type of operation on the land at the Elwood site are in reality superficial. To have traded away anything substantial for these meaningless accouterments would have been a bad deal for the community. We will soon know what THE SCOFFLAW waszen got for his campaign contributions. He had already it would seem have bought a no fine for his last dumping of rail stone illegally on the Elwood property courtesy of THE ETHICALLY CHALLENGED Mullica Republican Prosecutor jimmy curcio.