The New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) is finalizing a Remedial Priority Score (RPS) for all but a few categories of sites where soil and/or ground water contamination has been reported. It's a requirement decreed by the Site Remediation Reform Act or SRRA, according to a February bulletin issued by Boston-based GEI Consultants, a consulting firm with expertise across water, energy and sustainability sectors.
NJDEP developed its scoring methodology by calculating the risk a site potentially poses to human health and the environment, based largely on the most recent sampling data and whether a pathway to a receptor is “open” or “closed.” Receptor pathways are open if people or local ecology can be exposed to contaminants, such as a water supply well within a contaminated area, and delineation of soil and groundwater has not been achieved. A closed receptor pathway means that exposure mechanisms are not present, such as the site operator, with NJDEP approval, has completed an Interim Remedial Action or IRM.
NJDEP will assign each site to one of five categories, with Category 5 sites ranked as the highest potential risk in the RPS system. The ranking does not reflect compliance and there is no direct correlation between the ranking and enforcement or other response actions from the Department. NJDEP will use the RPS as one factor in determining the allocation of its resources and regulatory attention.
The Department is beginning the process by issuing all responsible parties (RPs) a draft RPS score. Once issued, RPs will have 60 days to review and update and/or correct the RPS data upon which the score was based. RPs will be able to ask NJDEP to consider previously provided site data that NJDEP may not have factored into the draft RPS either because NJDEP could not find it, the information had been misfiled, or for some other administrative reason.
RPs also will be able to identify incorrect GIS data and have it changed, such as demonstrating that the site area now is connected to a public water supply. NJDEP has signaled that it will be reluctant to accept and evaluate new or previously un-submitted site data during the RPS review period. NJDEP plans to publish all final rankings on its publicly-accessible website. NJDEP’s current plans are to update the RPS every six months for the first year and perhaps quarterly thereafter.
The regulated community will need to carefully review their RPS. If a site is assigned a high risk rank, it may impact property or transactional value, community and employee relationships, and remedial action timing. Although responsible parties can no longer influence scoring methodologies, the data upon which NJDEP has relied in developing a site-specific RPS can be checked, corrected, and updated.
GEI Consultants has been involved extensively in the stakeholder process for the RPS as well as other, ongoing programmatic changes at NJDEP. The organization states that it's “very familiar with how the RPS was developed and can quickly review, identify, and challenge incomplete or erroneous data that may be contributing to an inaccurate or inflated RPS for a particular site.”
