Assemblyman Tim Eustace hopes the federal government will hand the property to local authorities once the cleanup ends.
MAYWOOD -- The Maywood Chemical Company site has been undergoing various cleanup efforts since the early 1960s.
Assemblyman Tim Eustace speaks to protesters outside PNC Bank in Hackensack, Feb. 23, 2016. (Myles Ma | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) Once it's done, a state legislator from Maywood hopes the former radioactive ore processing site can be converted into a transit hub.
The site, just off Route 17, is an ideal site for a Transit Village, Assemblyman Timothy Eustace, a former mayor of Maywood, said.
"It would ideally be a mix of retail, professional and possibly residential with a rail station included," he said.
Eustace has asked the Maywood council to pass a resolution asking the federal government to hand the site over to the community once the cleanup is completed.
The site is still in the midst of a cleanup expected to cost $17 million, Elian Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said. The Army Corps of Engineers is excavating radiologically contaminated soil and shipping it to specially permitted landfills by rail. The Corps is also planning to remove contaminated groundwater.
The Corps administers the federal "Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program" for former atomic sites. The Maywood site was placed in the program in 1997 because of its similarity to other FUSRAP sites.
In addition, the Stepan Company, which bought bought the Maywood Chemical Company in 1959, is designing other remedies for soil cleanup. The company plans to sample soil and install monitoring wells.
Eustace, who said the federal government would "have no use" for the property once it's cleaned up, said he's talked to Rep. Bill Pascrell about the possibility of turning the land over to Maywood. Eustace envisions linking a New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway line running through the site to Hawthorne and Hackensack.
Pascrell is part of a coalition to revive a long-dormant plan to run rail from Hawthorne to Hackensack to the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail line.
"It is not unusual for the federal government to hand over land to local authorities," Eustace said. "In light of the fact that this was a low-level radioactive waste site for over 30 years, and the community never received any compensation for it, I think they would look favorably on Maywood."
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