From the JJ comments..

A couple of things..Healy should never have been quoted in the piece. He is the killer of all parks. What the JJ piece failed to mention is how HC wanted the entire 70-acre site for an extension of Lincoln Park. Healy for some odd reason was on the side of the California based ABM Corporation who wanted the site to build an 880,000 sq ft (8 football field) trucking terminal. Healy said it would bring hundred?s of jobs and tax money into JC. Well of course Healy got his way, by saying some of the land would be used for the creation of a smaller park. The County caved in. How freakin stupid is Healy to support the building of a trucking terminal on one of the most congested roads in NJ. Someone said there would only be 75 trucks leaving and entering a day. ONLY? Thank goodness it looks like the trucking terminal may not be built because of the bad economy. (thanks Obama) Rumors are that a BJ?s or Wal-Mart may be built instead. Still a traffic nightmare. Gee just think it really could have been JC?s biggest park at 70 acre?s instead of the 32 if it wasn?t for HEALY.

Very good link for ?Talking Politics? about the ?deal?.

http://www.talkingpolitics.net/PJP.htm

Also great picture of the Marion Greenway Park.and the BIG ugly white trucking terminal in the background. From the Jersey City Independent. (www.jerseycityindependent.com)

http://www.jerseycityindependent.com/ ... PJP-Park-aerial-Final.jpg

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Yeah, pretty much. My original JC landlords died in the 80's of bone cancer. Both. They were in their 70s. Coincidence? I don't think so. Between the chromium and benzene exposure, your long-term survival horizon shrinks considerably in JC.

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It's a metaphor for Jersey City.

Shame the multi-purpose fields were dropped and it will now be passive only, we desperately need sports fields in Jersey Ciy for soccer, baseball and lacrosse.

Robin.

Almost three decades later, a once-simmering Jersey City landfill site is poised to become city's largest park

September 24, 2012, 8:25 AM
By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal

On March 24, 1985, about 20 Jersey City firefighters began pouring roughly 300,000 gallons of water on the PJP Landfill, a 70-acre site in the shadow of the Pulaski Skyway where underground fires had raged for three decades.

Smoke from the blazes had been getting worse, according to a Jersey Journal report from the following day, and city officials decided that their attempts to extinguish the blazes might spur state and federal officials into action.

But the city?s attempt only made the smoke problem worse. About a month later, the state finally gave the OK for a plan to excavate the site and douse the underground fires which often sent smoke billowing toward the now-demolished A. Harry Moore public-housing complex once and for all.

?It was a mess,? Mayor Jerramiah Healy said last week on a tour of the former landfill.

Flash forward 27 years, and half of the former PJP landfill has been cleared of the contaminants that caused the notorious fires. The city awaits a decision by federal environmental officials that would remove the 32-acre property from the list of Superfund sites.

The city plans to transform the former dump into the Skyway Riverfront Park, a mostly passive park that would include a pedestrian bridge connecting it to a planned extension of the waterfront walkway on Jersey City?s western border. It would be Jersey City?s largest public park.

The other half of the former landfill is set to become a trucking warehouse.

The city and Hudson County just received $800,000 in grants from the state to fund the new park, which the project?s architect said in May will cost about $10 million, though some of the original plans have since been curtailed. Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis said this week the cost will probably stick closer to $5 million.

The park will not feature amenities like baseball fields or a playground there will be another public meeting this fall to seek input from residents but there is a plan to build a pedestrian bridge over the stream that runs along the western edge of the property.

Sen. Robert Menendez, seeking re-election this November, wrote a letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency in September asking it to remove the site from the Superfund list, saying the former landfill is now ?virtually unrecognizable as its former self.?

Indeed, in portions of the park where abandoned truck trailers and soiled mattresses were once piled, there are now swaths of black-eyed susans and spartina (also known as cordgrass) and tall, dense areas filled with phragmites.

That last plant, an invasive weed, is not optimal New York City parks officials have enlisted the help of goats to get rid of the weed by eating it. But it?s a far cry from how the former landfill used to look, according to Morris Verdibello, a city environmental commissioner who was the lead engineer back in the 1980s when the city finally extinguished the fires on the site.

?It?s an incredible transformation,? Verdibello said last week.

Healy agreed: ?You used to see the fires, the dump. Now you see nothing but green, open space.?

An EPA official said the agency is looking into Menendez?s request.

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index ... ree_decades_later_a_o.htm

Forty Jersey City residents briefed on new 32-acre park to be built on cleaned-up landfill

May 29, 2012, 3:00 AM
By Rafal Rogoza / The Jersey Journal

A Jersey City landfill in the shadow of the Pulaski Skyway is slated to become a park and roughly 40 residents gathered at the Ethical Community Charter School on Broadway earlier this month to get briefed on amenities planned for the site.

"It's a much better ending to the PJP saga than I could have imagined," Mayor Jerramiah Healy said May 17 to the residents inside the school's lunchroom.

PJP Sanitary Landfill Co. leased the property, located between the Hackensack River and Route 440, from 1968 to 1974 and engaged in the disposal of solid waste. The EPA designated the landfill, which for years was the site of underground fires, a federal Superfund site. The clean-up is complete, city officials said.

The city has hired T&M Associates, an architectural firm based in Middletown, to design the proposed 32-acre park. So far, plans include a "riverwalk" path with benches and site furnishings, rose gardens, multipurpose fields, parking, and a pedestrian bridge over a stream that runs from the Hackensack River through the center of the park, officials said.

The city also plans to build a pedestrian bridge to the park across Route 440.

"We watched that thing burn for 40 years," said Mike Manzo, a retired firefighter who lives on Wright Avenue. "Something like this, where you watch the grass grow and geese is wonderful."

Residents suggested adding more facilities for children. Some residents raised concerns about traffic and crime. Phase 1 of the project is expected to cost $2.5 million, and the entire project will cost roughly $10 million, according to T&M Group Manager Evan Stone.

Officials hope to begin construction in early 2013 and are exploring county and federal grants to help with the costs.

Two more public meetings and a tour of the site are being planned for the summer, officials said

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index ... ey_city_residents_br.html

Landfill burned for 30 years

Friday, January 18, 2008

The PJP Landfill site has been a source of controversy for years.

It had been used as a dump since the days trash was transported by horse and wagon, longtime residents said in 1985 when a cleanup was getting under way. The PJP designation came from the PJP Sanitary Landfill Co., which leased the property from 1968 to 1974 and engaged in the disposal of solid waste.

Officials at the time said the fire that burned under the landfill was ignited by volatile solvents and hazardous chemicals that seeped into the earth. Longtime residents said it had been going on for 30 years, from roughly 1956 to 1986, when the state DEP spent $19 million to douse the flames and excavate and remove the more than 5,000 barrels of toxic materials.

Residents said at the time it wasn't until around 1984 that the smoke and fumes made their way to the surface.