McGreevey's administration gets tough with polluters. (New Jersey).

This spring hundreds or thousands of New Jersey businesses and property owners may be required to pay for loss of natural resources, including groundwater and wetlands, as the state's Department of Environmental Protection begins to aggressively pursue Natural Resource Damages claims against polluters and other responsible parties.

Under New Jersey's Spill Compensation and Control Act and other existing laws and regulations, site owners responsible for oil spills or discharge of hazardous substances are required to conduct ecological evaluations of resulting damage to natural resources. The responsible parties may then be required to pay compensation for natural resource damages, independent of any other required remedial actions.

Until recently, the state has rarely pursued such claims, but that seems likely to change soon.

"Governor McGreevey's administration has clearly stated its intention to pursue NRD damages much more aggressively than in the past, and we expect the number of claims in New Jersey to start rising dramatically within weeks," explained Doug Real, senior project manager of environmental consulting firm BEM Systems, Inc. Real was recently named to chair a new Natural Resource Damages subcommittee for the Environmental Business Council of the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey.

"By a conservative estimate, there are at least 12,000 sites in New Jersey that. could be assessed damages, from dry cleaning plants and gas stations to major industrial and manufacturing facilities," he said. "If only two-thirds of these sites are non-residential, with an average groundwater contamination claim of $100,000, the total damages statewide could quickly pass $750 million for groundwater claims alone. In many cases, owners and operators who already have approved cleanup programs in place or have obtained conditional No Further Action letters may still have to pay for natural resource damages.

To help potentially affected companies understand and prepare to respond to the new policy, BEM Systems will host a free breakfast program early this spring on natural resource damage regulations and their impact. The date will be announced in early March.

NJDEP has not announced details of how it will calculate compensation for damages, but the agency's office of natural resource restoration has retained outside legal counsel to develop a target list of NRDA candidate sites. Late last year, NJDEP announced a $3-million settlement with multiple parties for contamination of a local drinking water supply in New Jersey's Morris county. Industry observers anticipate a large number of claims to follow, perhaps as early as February.

Although New Jersey is the first state to launch such an aggressive NRDA program, others are expected to follow suit shortly. Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration and other federal trustees have also shown increased willingness to assert NRD claims against responsible parties as part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or "Superfund," re-mediation process.