Project Highlight: 
NJ Transit Corporation, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit System (H-BLRTS) 
Hudson and Bergen Counties, New Jersey

Background

The 20.6-mile long Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit System (H-BLRTS) project was one of New Jersey’s largest public works projects ever, with service beginning on its initial operating segment in 2000. BEM has provided full Environmental Engineering and Consulting Services to NJ TRANSIT on this project since 1990—specifically, participating in the upfront planning and scoping, conceptual design review, NEPA documentation, SHPO support, permitting, evaluation of alternative analysis, design, property acquisition, site remediation, construction, and operations and support. BEM has played a significant role as the liaison between the various federal, state and local regulatory agencies, cities, municipalities, other transportation agencies, Design Build Operate and Maintain (DBOM) contractor, the public, and other stakeholders.

Problem

Coordination with various stakeholders and acquisition of over 200+ properties in historically industrial and densely populated urban area. Remedial investigations confirmed the presence of contaminated soil throughout the project corridor. Given the extensive volume (~600,000 cubic yards) of contamination, and the high costs for “clean fill” in northern New Jersey, BEM was presented with the challenge of providing a cost effective and time efficient remedial alternative.

Solution

Throughout the performance of the NJ TRANSIT contracts, BEM conducted Environmental Assessments, prepared Environmental Impact Statement support documentation, prepared and obtained approvals for site and remedial investigations, and developed remedial approaches to address a number of contamination issues related to Brownfields, abandoned corridors, buried objects, and old structures to be demolished along the project corridors.

Our engineers and scientists also developed an innovative remediation method consisting of the reuse of contaminated soils. BEM successfully negotiated a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the NJDEP to allow the beneficial reuse of contaminated soil as construction sub-base within the project corridor; saving NJ TRANSIT approximately $12M in contaminated soil transportation and disposal costs.

Challenge

Another major part of this project involved the acquisition and cost recovery for over 300 properties—many of which contained contaminant pollutants. To streamline the environmental due diligence and property acquisition process, BEM developed PAECETrak, a web-based system for managing all aspects of the property acquisition process in accordance with Federal Guidelines. An aspect of this system is the development of the Property Acquisition Environmental Cost Estimating (PAECE) report, which insured that all cost estimates developed for negotiating the cleanup and/or deduction from the property’s purchase price were defensible.

Data management and construction monitoring were also substantial project aspects, which BEM supported by developing and implementing a sophisticated GIS-enabled e-RAR (for the MOS-1, and MOS-2 Projects, including project-wide Deed Notices and Classification Exception Area) and several GIS/Web-enabled systems to manage the data collected during the project.

Current

Today the light rail line serves over 44,000 weekday passengers, with 24 station stops, running through the most congested, and what were previously the most contaminated, portions of northern New Jersey.