Palmyra Obstacle
The 104 acres, called a mess by the borough, are central to plans for redevelopment. Now the company is suing.
Consultants examining 189 acres targeted for redevelopment in Palmyra found the largest property owner's site in disarray.
The Fillit Corp. site, they wrote in a report last year, was covered with ground-up vegetation, mounds of mulch and topsoil, a dilapidated office trailer, inoperable vehicles, and piles of junk abutting Pennsauken Creek.
Also, it and nearby properties were the subject of ongoing investigations into contamination from a long-closed landfill, while its soil samples had elevated levels of pesticides, arsenic, and other chemicals, according to borough records.
Now Palmyra is fighting a legal challenge from Fillit over the borough's designation of the area as in need of redevelopment - a lawsuit that has thrown another obstacle before a major South Jersey project already scaled back because of the economy.
Once a sand- and gravel-mining operation, the land is mostly used as a recycling facility where vegetation waste is turned into products such as mulch and wood chips, according to court records. The site is part of a state-designated Brownfields Development Area, where an environmental contractor is conducting an investigation that will lead to environmental-remediation and reuse plans.
The area has been used for deposition of dredge spoil from the Delaware River, an airport, and a munitions testing area.
A municipality that takes certain steps under New Jersey law to designate an area as blighted, and hence in need of redevelopment, may take the property by eminent domain.
Fillit's real concern is it doesn't want to give its property away "and owe money, and the lawsuit makes everybody come to the table and makes everybody sit down and discuss it," Rucker said. "We don't want it to be tied up, they want to sell it, so there's got to be somewhere in the middle we can reach."
In its normal avaricious fashion, a New Jersey community is making a 'contamination claim' to support a desire to condemn a property. Clearly, the eminent domain process contemplates acquisition for public use, fully contemplating public safety as such a public use. Nevertheless, behind the veil of 'contamination' courts should skeptically review whether the police power argument is simply a way to obtain a parcel which otherwise could not be purchased.
