Courier-Post, Cherry Hill, N.J.
Published: 12/15/2002

Admittedly, it'll be a headache. The state of New Jersey – painfully low on money – is being asked to relocate 40 families from the Terraces neighborhood in Camden's Waterfront South: to pay for their houses and move them maybe a few blocks away.

It'll cost anywhere from $2 million to $3 million, depending on whose real estate appraisal you believe – and an argument is brewing over that.

“Resettling people, that's tough stuff,” said Jay Jones, spokesman for the South Jersey Port Corp., the area's nearest neighbor. “It's torturous.”

But as the Port Corp. agrees, it's worth it in this case. A band of residents already has spent two years fighting to get out. They're trapped. They have trouble breathing. Joseph Balzano, executive director of the Port Corp., said he could make the Terraces part of his company's complex. In the meantime, for two years and beyond, this is what life has been like at the Terraces:

In the neighborhood

“I told you, no trucks!” Gloria Chambers, a Terraces resident, shouted at a large, trailer-less semi that rolled up South 6th Street, right past a sign that says trucks are not allowed.

Trucks have been rattling through this neighborhood at all hours, said Chambers' neighbor and fellow community organizer Gladys Blair. Originally the tonnage of the trucks was supposed to be limited. “But now they're humongous,” Blair said. And Richard Ridley, who lives at the corner where the truck just passed, points to a string of cracks that, over time, have climbed up the side of his house facing that street.

But you can see why the truckers drive through here. It's surrounded by industries. The Port Corp. has buildings on two sides. On the third side is a private road for the St. Lawrence Cement plant, and beyond that is Interstate 676. The nearest other houses are on the other side of the highway, one fifth of a mile away.

The Terraces occupy three blocks from Woodland Avenue to Fairview Street between South 6th and South Broadway. Only Fairview Street still has all its houses, and many of those have been condemned. Other streets have large patches of vacant lots and piles of trash overgrown with weeds.

This neighborhood has always been a little isolated, and it's been industrial for as far back as anyone can remember. But the amount of industry has gotten oppressive, and pulmonary difficulties reign over the Terraces like a tax that everyone has to pay someday.

Gloria Chambers' husband, for example. He died two years ago in February of a heart attack. Gloria's neighbors, the Butlers, died five years ago – her from old age, him from a heart attack.

Isaac Waiters over on Lester Terrace, a 79-year-old Burns security guard, died in September. Heart attack.

William Cooper on Gordon Terrace spent four days in the hospital in November for breathing problems, after having just been there in October. He gasps for air in between his words as he complains about possums that run through the trash nearby. He is rail thin. He walks carefully as if he might break in half and never be put back together. He is 51.

“You stay around here, you'll be like the rest of us,” said Terrance Monroe, Chambers' son. “Your chest will be hurting.”

The neighborhood reeks of dust, industry and waste. The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority's sewage treatment center on Ferry Street, about 3,000 feet north of here, handles 58 million gallons of wastewater every day. Just on the other side of Morgan Boulevard, the Camden County incinerator billows with steam (and recently was cited for not having a monitor to measure air pollution). Also not far away are the Camden Cogen Power Plant and two Superfund sites.

On April 19, 2001, when U.S. District Judge Stephen Orlofsky ruled in a lawsuit against the St. Lawrence plant, he also noted that four sites within a half mile of this area were being investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency for the possible release of hazardous substances, and that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection had identified 15 known contaminated sites in the Waterfront South neighborhood. Even on a cold breezy day, you can smell all of this – though it's hard to say whether the scent of excrement comes from the sewage treatment plant or from the abandoned houses, where squatters get along without plumbing.

“You wake up, it's the first thing you smell,” Monroe said.

That may help explain how Camden County ended up with about 200 poisonous and carcinogenic chemicals in the air at levels more than 2,000 times above federal limits, according to a recent study released by the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group. It also helps explain why a 1997 study found that 61 percent of South Camden residents had coughing problems or trouble catching their breath, as opposed to 36 to 39 percent in North Camden.

Naturally, the neighbors who die off are not being replaced. More and more houses are abandoned, which brings another problem. Squatters and prostitutes take up residence in the empty houses. One of these days, Chambers said, some part of a house would collapse and trap some squatter in a basement.

Drug dealers like these houses too, Blair said. As she walked down the street, young men emerged from some of the abandoned houses, watching her from under the hoods of their black sweat jackets.

“All I want to do is just go someplace else and not have those grim reapers walking up and down,” Blair said. “That's what I call those drug dealers,” she smiled, “the grim reapers. They have those black hoods.”

But homeowners are stuck there. Who would buy these places? And many of these people are elderly. Blair is 66. Chambers is 71. Cooper can hardly breath. They can't afford a mortgage.

Bureaucracy to the rescue

Two years ago, St. Lawrence first got permission to add its emissions into this brew – a relatively minor 62 tons of dust a year, with mercury, lead, manganese, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds – while also bringing in more truck traffic. The company isn't nearly the biggest polluter in the area. But the neighborhood finally woke up. Residents in other sections of Waterfront South sued the state for allowing this, leading to Orlofsky's ruling that New Jersey may have been guilty of “environmental racism,” for putting so many industries in a largely black and Hispanic areas. That ruling was overturned on appeal.

But Terraces residents didn't fight St. Lawrence at first. They wanted the company just to buy up everything and move everyone out. If St. Lawrence came in, perhaps the company and state would move them somewhere else. St. Lawrence even set aside $300,000 toward relocating them, saying that other nearby industries should pitch in as well.

But no other industry did. And instead of working on the Terraces, the state first relocated eight families from nearby Arlington Street because that street is right next to a Superfund site, said Charles Lyons, chief of planning for the city of Camden.

Now things are coming back around to the Terraces. But the buyout keeps changing shape. The N.J. Housing Mortgage and Finance Agency, which ran the Arlington Street relocation, is handling this one as well, according to Marci Rosenstein, the director of communications at HMFA. Funding has not been nailed down yet because the real estate appraisal isn't done.

But the Rev. Al Stewart, who runs the nearby Camden Rescue Mission and is negotiating with industries and government agencies on behalf of the Terraces residents, said he has been dealing recently with Camden's chief operating officer, Randy Primus, rather than with HMFA. Primus, in turn, has said he plans to combine state funds with proceeds from a $121 million bond from the Port Corp. In the meantime, Lyons said Stewart and his lawyer are asking more for the houses than the city and state are likely to offer.

One way or another, solid offers need to start coming in January. The push for the buyout has been going on for more than two years. The air has gotten worse. The trucks have gotten bigger. Hope is back, but it's tentative.

“We don't want to stay here and aggravate everybody,” Blair said. “We just want to go.”

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Sidebars:

When you're down, people dump their garbage by your house.

A history of the neighborhood.

Here's the first column I wrote on this topic.