County Approves $7.7M Contract for Reclamation Center Facility

The Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders approved a resolution authorizing the execution of a $7.7 million service contract for the design and construction of a Reclamation Center Leachate Pretreatment Facility.

The resolution, which was unanimously approved at the regular Freeholder meeting Thursday, details a $7,794,880 contract for design and construction, plus $1,457,170 for the annual operation of the facility.

“I think it’s great,” Freeholder Director Thomas Arnone said. “It’s another way that this board shows that it tries to have continued cost savings.”

The county has contracted with Applied Water Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Natural Systems Utilities, LLC to design, construct and operate the new landfill that will be located in Tinton Falls.

Leachate is the liquid that flows through the landfill and has to be disposed of, said Rick Sapir of Hawkins Delafield & Wood, LLP, a special solid waste counsel for the county. The Monmouth County Reclamation Center generates 150,000 to 160,000 gallons of leachate per day.

The leachate was previously transported to a facility in Tinton Falls but the county was barred from continuing that process due to the liquid’s “nasty nature,” Sapir said. Currently, the leachate is trucked off site to distant wastewater treatment facilities — “an expensive but necessary operation.”

This new facility, based in Tinton Falls, will pre-treat the leachate so it can be treated by the Township of Neptune Sewerage Authority, mitigating the costs and negative environmental impacts involved with the former process, he said.

The county will finance and own the facility while Applied Water Management operates it, he said.

It will cost the county $1.4 million annually in operation costs for 140,000 gallons of leachate to be treated per day. For each 1,000 gallons above that threshold, the county will pay $23.50. Costs for additional gallons could rise to $170,000.

The expenses will be paid through the reclamation budget, not the county’s, Arnone said.

Previously, the county spent more than $4 million a year trucking leachate. Approximately 38 to 50 trucks were utilized each day with a cost of $400,000 per truck, Sapir said. Trucking costs have gone up more than 25 percent in the last five years.

The service contract has a 15-year term and addresses substantive matters relating to the treatment of all the leachate generated at the facility, the resolution says.

Natural Systems Utilities, LLC will also construct improvements to an existing pump station, which is necessary to convey the treated leachate, as part of the leachate pretreatment system.

Arnone said the project will have “extreme” cost savings and will be environmentally friendly and efficient.

“This project is a huge, huge project and it has to be built,” Arnone said. “For this project to be built, we’re again doing something that we’re achieving here through economic development by putting people back to work. We took every part of what county government should be from shared services to putting people back to work all in one project.”

A second resolution, approved Thursday, authorizes the County application to the local finance board for approval of the proposed service contract.

This resolution states that the service contract is in the public interest, the improvements are for the health, wealth, convenience and betterment of the inhabitants of the county, the amounts to be expended for the facility is not unreasonable or exorbitant and that the proposal is an efficient and feasible means of providing services.

The bond for the project has been authorized but is not yet issued. The county needs approval from the Department of Community Affairs before work on the pretreatment facility begins.