Northvale — With a lost lawsuit and deficiency deadline looming near, Northvale agreed to pay $332,000 in last year’s bills to its former environmental engineer.
Or rather, most of it.
Council members voted unanimously April 29 to pay Remington and Vernick approximately $307,000 for cleanup costs at the Deluxe Dry Cleaners site and $25,000 for grant-writing services.
A $306,500 state grant would pay for the environmental cleanup, but officials would have to finance its grant-writing bill through a bond ordinance.
Remington has not yet approved the payment conditions, confirmed officials.
Even if Remington accepts, the Borough still owes another $17,200 in unpaid bills for work on the Tect-Danzig site that it had submitted to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Democratic Mayor John Hogan said that the Borough may "ask for a 30-day extension to negotiate with them."
Replaced by Arcadis BBL with Joe Hochreiter, the former environmental engineer filed a lawsuit two months ago against Northvale for failure to pay.
The former environmental engineering firm won the lawsuit in a default judgement because the Borough failed to appear in court, Hogan said.
"We could’ve fought the judgement, but that would’ve cost legal fees," Hogan said, alluding to the Borough’s financial woes heightened by an introduced 21.7 percent tax levy budget increase.
Borough attorney Thomas Randall said that if the borough and Remington cannot "settle [the matter] through negotiations, we’ll move to continue in the course of the litigation and restore the case to the [court] calendar."
The Republican-led council initially pushed for the delay until the newly appointed Borough attorney could examine the bills. The mayor and his Democratic allies said they worried that a delay would interfere with cleanup progress at the two environmentally hazardous sites.
When the Borough later received a DEP notice of deficiency, Republican councilmen said that the letter was proof the firm did shoddy work.
"If Remington wants to act professionally and to eventually receive payment, they should fix the problem," wrote Sokoloski in an e-mail soon after the notice’s receipt.
The state agency gave the Borough a May 15 deadline to correct a list of 13 deficiencies such as vapor intrusion studies, soil delineation and the submittal of a remedial investigation work plan on the Deluxe Cleaners site. Republican Councilman Scott Furletti had explained that while some of the deficiencies were administrative, others were "pretty serious."
Hogan said the firm now "has all that work done, but they’re not going to hand work to the state until paid for work they’ve done." The mayor quickly added Arcadis BBL would complete two deficiencies noted in the DEP letter only because it’s work included under the next remedial phase.
"Which makes sense because Remington will not be here for the next phase," he said.
For Sokoloski, he said that he just hopes "to get this matter settled and behind us."
E-mail: gonzalezso@northjersey.com or call 201-894-6711
