Solar Bid a No-Go for Brick Council

Brick's township council unanimously rejected a bid to install solar panels at the former French's Landfill site in the Herbertsville section at a meeting Tuesday. But the council also authorized a resolution allowing further negotiations with Intra Inc., the lone company to submit a bid for the project.

Details on the company's bid were not provided since the township intends on continuing a negotiation process, said township attorney Jean Cipriani.

"The terms that were proposed were not entirely acceptable," Cipriani said, of the bid. "Because we're entering negotiations with them, we don't want to go into too many details."

Township officials announced last November that Pinelands Development would install a solar farm at the former Superfund site and operate the facility for five years. The initial lease agreement called for Pinelands to own the solar panel system for five years, with the township having the option to purchase the operation at the end of the fifth year. If the township did not exercise its purchasing right, it would have continued to receive 20 percent of the profits of the energy generated at the site for the following 10 years.

But in July, the township council voted to go out to bid for a second time, with officials saying the market changed since the previous fall and more companies would be interested in bidding.

The landfill, a former Superfund site located between Sally Ike Road and the Garden State Parkway, operated between 1946 and 1973 as a community garbage dump owned by the Shoreland Corporation. In December 1973, the township bought the property and operated it until 1979, when officials closed the site and covered a portion of it with two feet of soil. Remediation of the property began in 1983, but the township wrangled with the state and federal governments for years on the final cleanup plan. On June 23, officials gathered at the site to before the solar panels can be installed. The installation of the final cap is .