Environmental Law

The NJDEP recently revised its Soil Cleanup Criteria for beryllium, cadmium, chromium, and total xylenes. The Soil Cleanup Criteria, which were revised on May 3, 1999, and then again on May 12, 1999 to make minor corrections, are used to select remedies under the NJDEP Site Remediation Program. The revisions (see chart below) are effective immediately.

New Soil Cleanup Criteria

In part, the revisions to the Soil Cleanup Criteria were prepared to formalize NJDEP practices in the Site Remediation Program. For example, the new criteria for cadmium and xylene routinely have been approved by NJDEP as Alternate Cleanup Criteria for specific sites. The chromium criteria were announced in December 1998 and formally included in NJDEP's table of Soil Cleanup Criteria with the revisions this May. The criteria for beryllium, cadmium, and xylene have each been made less stringent by this action.

The Soil Cleanup Criteria are broken down into three categories: Residential, Non-Residential, and Impact-to-Groundwater. Residential and non-residential criteria are established to address health risk based on direct human contact; impact-to-groundwater criteria are established to address the potential of a contaminant to impact groundwater beneath the site. Under the Technical Rules for Site Remediation, see N.J.A.C. 7:26E, and NJDEP guidance, unless a party conducting a site cleanup obtains approval of site-specific Alternate Cleanup Criteria, contaminants at a site must be remediated to address the most stringent cleanup criterion for each contaminant in any of the three categories.

When soil contamination is not remediated to concentrations at or below the residential cleanup criteria, appropriate institutional controls are required. Engineering controls also may be required if the contaminant concentrations to be left on site exceed the residential cleanup criteria but do not exceed the non-residential cleanup criteria. If contaminant concentrations to be left on site exceed non-residential cleanup criteria, then engineering controls are required. When the impact-to-groundwater criteria are more stringent than the residential and non-residential cleanup criteria, the entire soil column must be remediated to the impact-to-groundwater cleanup criterion. The responsible party may propose a site-specific impact-to-groundwater criterion based upon site conditions, including the absence of receptors, exposure pathways, or any other relevant site-specific information.

NJDEP has indicated its intention to propose regulatory soil cleanup standards some time next year. Prior to initiating a rule, however, NJDEP will seek input from interested parties on proposed standards before the end of the year. Until NJDEP adopts standards, the Soil Cleanup Criteria will continue to be presumptively applied at sites requiring remediation.

(a) Site-specific standard based on site-specific chemical and physical parameters.

(b) Ingestion and inhalation pathways, respectively. A dermal exposure criterion is under development at NJDEP. A site-specific standard must be developed for the contact dermatitis pathway.