Chatham Township's rural, woodsy, open character has long attracted city dwellers. At the turn of the century New York labor unions, in order to give its members a healthful change of scene, established a summer colony, since transformed into the present day Colony Club, in the Township. That same open space also attracted enterprises such as landfill operations which need lots of acreage.
In those days no regulations existed concerning the types of waste material that could be dumped, so everything could, and was, deposited in the 250 acre Rolling Knolls landfill at the end of Britten Road. Local pharmaceutical companies dumped wastes there.
As long as not many people lived in the area indiscriminate dumping didn't present much of a threat to clean drinking water, although it certainly didn't do the animals and fish any good. In 1989 a United States Geological Survey investigation found concentrations of lead in shallow groundwater around the perimeter of the landfill exceeded primary drinking water standards. Today, with development crowding the borders of the Great Swamp, runoff from driveways, parking lots, manicured lawns (just as bad as parking lots), and roads doesn't have room to soak back into the ground. It goes into storm sewers that empty into open ditches which drain into brooks; at least three of these brooks flow through the Rolling Knolls landfill, then into the Great Swamp and finally into the Passaic River. In most of Chatham Township, the water that comes out of faucets is pumped from the Passaic River.
The Great Swamp Watershed Association recently recognized that pollutants leached from the Rolling Knolls landfill by runoff present a serious threat to water quality and alerted Township officials and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The Township and DEP immediately took steps to mitigate the situation. The Township has acted to slow further increases in impervious cover associated with development by requesting that the DEP withhold approval of a Discharge Allocation Certificate (DAC) allowing 250,000 gallons per day of additional flow into the Chatham Township sewage treatment plant. No DAC means no new sewer permits can be granted. The DEP has requested that the Federal
Government declare the Rolling Knolls landfill a superfund site.
Senator Frank Lautenberg is also upset. He wrote in a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dated October 29, "As you may know, the Great Swamp Watershed Association has long raised concerns about the potential threat from this landfill, which contains multiple sources of hazardous waste. I share the Association's concern, however, that a thorough assessment of the entire landfill needs to be conducted." He insists that the entire landfill, not just the 30 or so acres which lie within the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, needs to be included in the study.
Rural, woodsy, and with clean drinking water -- this is the future the Great Swamp Watershed Association is working to assure for Chatham Township. -- DS
