Anyone watching late night television in the past may have heard of Secaucus as the butt of jokes about the permeating odor caused by pig farms, garbage dumps and fat rendering factories.
Much has changed over the years as Secaucus has cleaned up its airways. Soon, the municipality will be able to benefit from an air quality and emissions study sponsored by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) to be conducted by the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), part of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
The air study will help the NJMC establish a baseline for air quality so that they can plan to control emissions for future development.
“This is the first study of its kind,” said NJMC Chairwoman Susan Bass-Levin. “As part of the master plan, we made a commitment to measure the air quality. One of the master plan’s goals is to decrease pollution.”
Executive Director Bob Ceberio said that the three likely sources of air pollution in the district are methane from landfills, manufacturing, and emissions from traffic.
“If air quality problemS are caused by cars,” said Ceberio, “we need to focus on interventions that will reduce the use of cars, such as the Secaucus Transfer Station.”
The $700,000, three-year project will be the first districtwide air quality study. There are 14 towns in the 30.4-square-mile Meadowlands District, 10 from Bergen County and four from Hudson.
“We’re trying to get three years worth of data,” said Ceberio. “We felt it was important to take a series of snapshots to make sure our readings are consistent.”
Last summer, Gov. James McGreevey commissioned a similar study at Teterboro Airport to evaluate emissions from air traffic. That study, along with a concurrent traffic study, will combine to suggest appropriate courses of action.
“The traffic model may lead us to areas where cars are delayed, generating pollution,” said Ceberio. “Everything eventually gets tied together in the end of this.”
Study may target Secaucus traffic
Mayor Dennis Elwell said that data from the study can empower the town against developers who may come to town with studies of their own, conducted to support their own projects.
Elwell said that since traffic is the main source of air pollution in Secaucus, NJMC initiatives geared towards reducing vehicle emissions will help the town.
“We don’t have factories anymore,” he said. “The pig farms left in the early 1960s, the rendering factories closed in the mid 1960s, and the dumps closed in the early 1970s.”
Both Elwell and Ceberio said that a train line leading directly to the Meadowlands will help immensely with traffic problems.
“I can’t tell you how important this train station coming from the Pascack Line is for rail access to the Meadowlands from the Secaucus transfer station,” Ceberio said. “I don’t think that the public knows what you’ll be able to do in a matter of time in terms of mass transit.”
The NJMC and EOHSI will immediately begin discussing the methodology for the study, with hopes of starting data collection by the summer. The study needs to be planned in terms of logistics such as key locations for monitoring equipment, what kind of equipment to use, and getting staff together.
“We don’t know how many monitors, or what kind to use,” said Ceberio. “Some come in small package boxes, and others in trailers. We need to address questions like ‘Can you get a trailer into a smaller location?’ ”
Once the study is completed, the NJMC can use computer modeling to calculate the effects of different development projects using the baseline data.
“If we build a warehouse,” said Ceberio, “we know exactly how it will affect air quality-based factors like how many vehicles they have and what kind of manufacturing they do.”
The NJMC uses a similar computer model to discover and address flooding problems.
Ceberio said that the study is driven by the encouragement of the NJMC Board of Commissioners to do an evaluation of policy. The master plan has a revision mechanism for changes over the years.
“You’re not going to write a master plan and put it on the shelf,” he said.