Ray Cantor – Vice President, Government Affairs
Since its enactment in 2009, over 38,000 cases have been closed using Licensed Site Remediation Professionals under the Site Remediation Reform Act SRRA), please click here for an overview. This law, sponsored by Senator Bob Smith, has been an unqualified success in helping to clean up contaminated sites and move properties into the marketplace for redevelopment. Still, over the last decade, many lessons have been learned in the law’s implementation, and revisions to the law are in order.
Senator Smith has been meeting with NJBIA and other industry stakeholders for the last two years in order to determine how to make SRRA work even better. These efforts resulted in the introduction of S-3682 by Senator Smith and A-5293 by Assemblywoman Nancy Pinkin. Despite the fact that these bills have been introduced, the stakeholder meetings continued up until this week as we discussed several outstanding issues which will be addressed as committee amendments. The Senate Energy and Environment Committee will hold a meeting on June 6 to hear testimony from the public and plans to release an amended bill on June 17. The Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee plans to hear and release the bill on June 10. It is possible that the bill may be voted on by both houses of the Legislature and be put on the Governor’s desk before the summer recess starting July 1.
While NJBIA is supportive of the current bill with the amendments we have discussed in the stakeholder meetings, we remain concerned that other amendments can still be made that can be very problematic to our members. One change being contemplated could require disclosure of information gathered during the due diligence phase of a property purchase. We fear that this disclosure can have a chilling and negative effect on commercial and industrial property transfers. Another change could eliminate the self-guarantee provisions currently in the law.
NJBIA will keep you posted on these developments. Once adopted, we will also be actively involved in the regulatory process by DEP to implement the new SRRA 2.0. Please let us know your comments and concerns by emailing Ray Cantor at RCantor@njbia.org.
