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Dozzi92 t1_j6kuyun wrote

Reply to comment by JKastnerPhoto in About 60 former landfills, industrial waste sites and illegal toxic dumps in New Jersey have been transformed from poisonous eyesores to productive venues — like parks, museums, ball fields and solar farms by rollotomasi07071

So in your mind, is it just undevelopable land in perpetuity? Would you put it on the same level as John's Manville and American Cyanamid? You raised a point and I felt there needed to be some clarification, because it isn't so cut and dried.

So yeah, just in general, are you opposed to building on top of contaminated sites blanketly? And if that's the case it's obviously fine, I just like to know where someone is coming from when they say things.

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JKastnerPhoto t1_j6l4o0b wrote

Sure. To me, I would never live on land that was once industrial (specifically chemical or toxic) or used as a garbage dump. Somewhere down the line in homeownership, basements seep water, pipes leach, sewage backs up, and old crap from yesteryear comes back to haunt you. I don't trust anyone from the 80s, 90s, or today truly knows how to remediate everything and I want nothing to do with land like that. Like I said, commercial purposes is fine, but I would never want it for housing. At the very least, transparency is key. Disclosing the land's history to perspective buyers is important for their peace of mind.

>I just like to know where someone is coming from when they say things.

I'm coming from a guy who grew up in the 80s/90s in an area that was near questionable land use. I'm coming from a place where people all around our area were getting sick and wondering why the lot by my old development never grew anything despite being surrounded by woods (spoiler: it used to be a junk yard.) I'm now scratching my head as to how my mom got the kind of cancer she has now. I think it's unfortunate but the polluted land we used for industrial crap needs a lot of time to heal. There's no easy solution, but in any case, I do my homework and will never live in such a place.

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