Owners Of Middlesex Boro Industrial Site Sued By State

MIDDLESEX BOROUGH, NJ — The state of New Jersey filed a legal action Wednesday against the owners of a Middlesex borough industrial property, one of seven sites named by the state as polluted.

The New Jersey Attorney General and Department of Environmental Protection also filed legal complaints against a Tremley Point Road site in Linden and the B&S Oil Corporation site in Rahway, plus industrial sites in Newark, Ewing and Elmwood Park.

The seventh lawsuit was filed against a blueberry farm and blueberry processing center in Hammonton, which the state says has migrant workers who live on site and has unsafe drinking water wells.

The Middlesex borough site is the S. Burger Wire property at 277 Lincoln Boulevard. The state says there is soil and groundwater contamination there.

According to the complaint, from approximately 1956 through 2003 S. Burger Wire and Tubing, Inc. manufactured fine round metal wire and tubing on the site. S. Burger halted operations in 2003.

Soil and groundwater contamination were detected on the site that same year, and again in 2004.

Among other contaminants, there is TCE (tetrachloraethylene) and PCE (trichloroethylene) in the ground there, says the DEP. Those chemicals are commonly found after metal degreasing, dry cleaning, textile processing and other industrial and manufacturing operations.

Two corporate entities — 277 Lincoln Holdings, LLC and 277 Lincoln Boulevard, LLC — are named as the defendants and property owners. In 2005, 277 Lincoln Holdings, LLC entered into a Remediation Agreement with the DEP and purchased the property.

Wednesday's lawsuit alleges that 277 Lincoln Holdings, LLC failed to clean up the property as they promised. In 2018, a vapor intrusion evaluation of neighboring properties was undertaken, and it found traces of PCE and TCE in soil gas vapor samples taken at one nearby home.

The state of New Jersey says it is seeking damages and trying to get the LLC to honor their previous agreement.