Camden Mayor-Elect Frank Moran grew up in the Cramer Hill neighborhood, two blocks away from the site of the Harrison Avenue landfill.
The city’s municipal dump was the closest thing to green space for kids in Cramer Hill, he said; a mountain of garbage that stood between them and the banks of the Delaware and Cooper Rivers.
When Moran and his friends wanted to go fishing, they had to forge trails with their bikes through the brush along the way.
“I played in this place,” he said. “‘The dumps’ is what we called it when I was a kid.
“We made what we could of this circumstance growing up.”
But now, after a decade of multi-agency planning, and thanks to a $25-million allocation from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), “the dumps” will be transformed into a 62-acre waterfront park in the next two years.
Outgoing NJDEP Commissioner Bob Martin said the project has been a priority for his eight-year tenure under Gov. Chris Christie, and that the agency “wanted to make sure that we finished this and we moved it forward” before he left office.
“We spent over $26 million of hazardous discharge site remediation money to help clean up the site you’re standing on as part of the Kroc Center,” Martin said Wednesday at a press conference announcing the project.
“Probably the most important thing to us is the emphasis of the quality of life; making sure there is a future for the children of these neighborhoods,” he said.
After the remediation is complete, the Cramer Hill waterfront park will feature one mile of stabilized shoreline along the banks of the Delaware and Cooper Rivers, freshwater tidal wetlands, a fish pond, and recreational trails throughout.
Most of all, it will give residents of the neighborhood access to the Camden waterfront for the first time in 70 years. Moran called it “an opportunity to enjoy the recreation that’s to come.
“This is going to give you a view of the Philadelphia skyline; all those benefits that really develop the soul of an individual,” he said.
Camden County Freeholder Carmen Rodriguez, who also grew up in Cramer Hill, said she hadn’t known the neighborhood had any body of water until she was in college.
“There was no waterfront,” Rodriguez said. “It didn’t exist. We have beautiful places [in Camden] that we just cannot access.”
Rodriguez, a former science teacher who oversees bilingual education for the Camden School District and is the liaison to the county health department, drew a direct line between the city’s environmental issues and the instances of asthma among its children.
In converting brownfield sites to usable space, she said Camden is preserving its youngest citizens’ futures.
To read the full story, visit http://www.njpen.com/nj-dep-commits-25m-to-transform-former-camden-landfill-into-waterfront-park/.