New Jersey DEP and Me

Have you ever had to deal with the Department of Environmental Protection, aka the DEP, in your state? If you have, you can probably relate to this blog. If not, well you're in for a treat. As I mentioned in my “To be or not to be an Executor or Administrator of an Estate" blog, I have a building or warehouse that, at this point, is all mine.

Now looking at this picture you might be thinking this isn’t too bad. You own this 25,000 sq. ft. warehouse, so you must be doing ok. Well, nothing is the way it seems. Just like in life, you cannot judge a book by its cover. This building was purchased in 1994 by my brother and myself as a future investment and to add very much needed warehouse space for my father’s Masonry supply business.

The prior owners had a nickel plating business at this facility, and there was a very serious incident where someone had dumped a very nasty product into the storm sewer, which in turn had killed two Township workers that had inhaled the fumes. Obviously, the company was sued, and they had to shut the business down. The building sat vacant for years before we got involved. Since we knew the history and my dad knew the owners, we made them an offer with a very specific condition. Besides the price, the prior owners had to bring the building up to Residential standards. What that means is that they had to clean the building to DEP’s Residential standards, so if we wanted to put a childcare center there, we could without any consequences or worries about the chemicals used there for all those years. We all agreed, and the prior owners cleaned the property to Residential standards just like we asked. The gave us the discharge from DEP showing the property had been cleaned, and that they were happy with the process releasing them from any further actions.

Once we purchased the building we had to clean it up some. Haha, it was disgusting. You have no idea how much pigeons shit over the course of a few years; what is worse than that, is that the dust from their shit is hazardous to breathe in. So the fun begins. My dad (or, actually, the masonry supply company) sunk a lot of money into the building, adding a parking lot, and installing concrete driveways around most of the building. We filled up the full 25,000 sq. ft. pretty quick with products. We had excess tools, cement, and specialty masonry repair products along with a full rental shop for concrete and paver businesses. Things were good.

About a year into buying the business, we were approached by a testing company that said they had to drill some test holes and do some water sampling. It was not intrusive and they worked around our schedule, so it was really no big deal. We all assumed that the prior owner had to have these tests done yearly to make sure there were no issues with the prior discharge that had happened years ago. Keep in mind, we were not getting any of these reports from the testing company because he was not working for us; and we were Concrete guys, not Hazmat guys so we continued with the thought that this was a mandatory issue the state of New Jersey made the prior owner do.

As years pass by more testing is being done and now they are adding air sampling to the mix. Still, our thoughts have not changed, and we saw no reports about what was going on. If you read my last blog, you would see that after my brother and mother passed away, my step-niece was given my brothers shares of the building. She had made it so tough that I decided to sell the building to get her off my back. This was in 2016. I had an agent come out and do a comparison of the building and she did not like the price. I told her to get her own people then and at that point, they brought up the equipment that was installed for air sampling. I told them what I had thought it was for but we had to dig deeper to see exactly what it was all about.

I contacted the company that had been doing the testing there for over 20 years and, to my surprise, he told me he had removed himself from the case because he was not getting paid. Since he was no longer working for the client, he told me that I have a contaminated building and that he has been doing remediation since day one. I told him that is not possible, we have the discharge of remediation for the DEP. I sent him a copy and said very simply that my Discharge, my Golden Ticket, or what was thought to be, was only for the ground, and that he has been working on the groundwater which I now know is a totally different thing. Now I’m pissed, I have to hire another attorney and money is very limited. I contact an environmental lawyer that was referred to me and I send him a box full of documents and tell him what was happening, and that I have my Golden Ticket from DEP. So two weeks and thousands of dollars later, I get a reply from the lawyer confirming what the testing company told me: I have a dirty building, and we bought it that way.

I just could not believe that after 23 years have passed, I am just finding this out. When I asked the attorney if I can go after the prior owner for withholding this information, he told me it’s water under the bridge. Now I’m really pissed off. At the same time, I’m in court with my Step-niece and again, if you have read the last blog you know I had to pay her off to get rid of her. Now I officially own a 25,000 sq. ft. warehouse that is 100 percent worthless. Yay me!!!

My lawyer contacts the higher-ups he knows at DEP to find out exactly what the deal is with this case. The total estimate to clean the building is 1 million dollars. DEP has been holding about $250,000 in an escrow account from the prior owner. They also had done a financial audit on him and determined that he was capable of paying the rest of the money to complete the remediation. That was done in 2016 the same time that the prior owner told DEP he would complete the remediation.

Now for the fun part. DEP sends both my LLC and the prior owner a notice saying that one of us must reply within a certain date on whether we will finance and complete the work needed to clean the groundwater. He respectfully declines. What the hell does that mean?, You respectfully decline? That is supposed to make it better because you politely declined? I don’t think so.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, he dies. Now I have to go after his estate, which says they only have a few thousand dollars, but less then a year ago they had close to a million. So New Jersey does what they do best and go after the local guy. Why chase someone who is a 1,000 miles away when we can go after the LLC that is in our state? I ask my lawyer a simple question and it was, "Why has DEP not used the money that has been sitting in escrow to get something done?" I mean, they are the organization that is supposed to make sure our state is clean from pollution, hazardous waste, and etc.

His answer was simply this: "The DEP’s position is that if they don’t have the full amount to do the work, then they do nothing." That is the craziest shit I have ever heard. Needless to say, we are still going after the estate of the prior owner to pay for this mess and we are still trying to get DEP to release some of the escrow money, which can really get a lot of work done. It blows my mind how our laws and state rules are in New Jersey. No wonder nothing ever gets done.

I can only hope that one day this huge ass mess is done with so I can sell this building that was supposed to be an investment for my future and now has become just another issue that is slowly ripping parts of my soul away.

Stay tuned for more fun from life. Although I have all this shit going on I know deep down that I can have things much worse. Sometimes you just need to look around to see that your life is not as bad as you think.