Maraziti Falcon, LLP is proud to have been selected by Save Barnegat Bay, Inc. (“SBB”), a non-profit whose mission is to “restore and protect Barnegat Bay and its ecosystem,” by filing an Appeal opposing the August 16, 2023 Voluntary Administrative Settlement of Natural Resource Damages (“NRD”) between the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (“NJDEP”) and BASF Corporation.

The Settlement Agreement relates to the historic decades-long pollution by Ciba-Geigy at its former specialty chemical plant located in Toms River, New Jersey. The saga of the egregious release of hazardous substances into the environment is the subject of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction: Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, by Dan Fagin.

SBB asserts in its Appeal that NJDEP acted in an arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable manner throughout the process by which it entered into the Settlement Agreement, and challenges many of the terms of the Agreement itself, as the accepted restoration projects do not “repair, restore, or replace” the damaged natural resources, in contravention of NJDEP’s own natural resource damage policy objectives.

Learn more about Save Barnegat Bay and their mission: https://savebarnegatbay.org/

Joseph J. Maraziti, Jr. represents both public and private sector clients in regulatory, transactional and litigation matters having local and national significance involving environmental and redevelopment issues. He has many years of experience representing public sector clients throughout New Jersey in redevelopment projects, condemnation, land use, real estate transactions and litigation in federal and state courts. He is well-versed in redevelopment law.