In 2002, the Port of New York/New Jersey began dredging the harbor to accommodate container-carrying ships which was expected to result in a doubling of import business during the next decade.
In anticipation of increased demand for warehouse and distribution space, Keystone Property Trust acquired Greenville Yards. The 26-acre brownfield is ideally located near the ports of Elizabeth and Newark, N.J., on the Hudson River. Garden State Engineering was hired to complete site design for two frozen food warehouses with 72 truck bays and new parking lots.
Addressing the problem
The project engineers faced many challenges, including the prohibition against removing the contaminated soil found on the site and the need for new drainage systems and maximized parking space.
In order to pipe water flow from Greenville Yards directly to the Hudson River, the New Jersey Department of Environment Protection (NJDEP) required treatment of site stormwater runoff. The stormwater treatment system had to be integrated into the site plan to maximize parking space.
Solution found
The engineers considered biological and physical treatment systems but because of the site constraints, the project engineers decided that a vault-style filtration system would be the most appropriate for this project.
The StormFilter from Stormwater Management, Inc., was chosen because it was the only manufactured stormwater filtration system that had received a Conditional Interim Certification from the NJDEP.
The StormFilter is a flow-through filtration system. An underground concrete structure houses a siphon-actuated rechargeable filter cartridge that traps particulates and adsorbs pollutants.
Six precast StormFilter vaults, three CatchBasin StormFilters, and four StormGate high-flow bypasses were installed. A total of 166 cartridges were filled with media to target oil, grease, suspended solids, soluble metals and organics.
Because the system was installed completely underground using up no land area and allowing parking above‹concerns about physical site constraints were mitigated.
"With 72 truck bays at the warehouses, the amount of truck traffic at the site will be considerable," explained Nicholas Agnoli of Garden State Engineering. "Having a stormwater filtration system that can be installed completely underground was an excellent solution to the question of how much space we could allocate for parking and truck maneuvering."
Moving toward final certification
Final field verification by New Jersey Corporation for Advanced Technology (NJCAT) of the StormFilter is in progress. An extension to the StormFilter's Conditional Interim Certification was issued by NJDEP in December 2004. As a result of the field evaluation, the system is now allowed to be used as a stand-alone Best Management Practice (BMP) throughout New Jersey.
The field-testing is almost complete and the StormFilter should have both NJCAT Final Field Verification and NJDEP Final Certification as a stand-alone BMP by spring 2006.
