Plant that spewed tons of sewage into bay during Sandy still not hurricane-proof

A lack of board members stemming from a corruption scandal and the loss of its top executive have hurt the Pssaic Valley Sewerage Commission Watch video

NEWARK -- Like much of New Jersey, the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission plant along Newark Bay dodged a bullet this month when Hurricane Joaquin spun out over the Atlantic and away from the East Coast.

But just shy of the third anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which flooded the plant and spilled billions of gallons of raw and untreated sewage into the bay, the commission has a leadership vacuum and the project most critical to preventing a similar environmental disaster continues to languish.

A critical flood wall would completely surround the plant. But its construction has been stalled by lingering effects of a pre-Sandy corruption scandal, which left the PVSC board without enough members to act on the project.

Political wrangling among elected officials within the plant's five-county service area and Gov. Chris Christie, who appoints new commissioners, has delayed the appointment process.

The lack of a quorum that has kept the commission's board from voting to act on the plan to build a flood wall appeared to be compounded this weekend with word that the PVSC's top staffer, Executive Director Michael DeFrancisci, was stepping down.

PVSC General Counsel Greg Tramontozzi confirmed over the weekend that DiFrancisci would stay on until Oct. 30, with Tramontozzi filling in as acting executive director until a permanent replacement is named. DeFrancisci, a former state consumer protection director and mayor of Little Ferry, had been named by Christie to head the PVSC in summer 2012.

When Sandy struck two months later, on Halloween night 2012, it sent a storm surge over the plant's bulkhead and down into its largely subterranean complex of concourses and spillways, knocking the plant out of operation for days, and allowing only the barest chemical treatment of wastewater for weeks after that.

More than 200 million gallons of salty bay water destroyed the plant's underground electrical system and ruined generators, pumps and other equipment. It also poured into settling tanks, killing freshwater bacteria employed to digest the solid waste of the three million Northern New Jerseyans served by the plant.

Environmentalists said damage from the spill included creation of oxygen-depleted dead zones in local waterways caused by waste-fed algae blooms, high concentrations of E.coli and other pathogens that could be ingested by fish and sicken humans who ate them, and an overall degradation of local water quality.

After getting the plant dried out and back into operation with help from the Army Corps of Engineers and more than $20 million in grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, PVSC officials decided to build a flood wall completely surrounding the plant to keep out waters from the bay and the adjacent Passaic River.

But lack of a quorum of five commissioners dating back to the 2011 corruption scandal has prevented the board from issuing bonds to build the wall, and construction has not begun, meaning the state's largest sewage treatment plant remains vulnerable to the next storm surge.

The PVSC scandal broke after a series of articles exposed rampant abuses at the authority, including nepotism and cronyism in hiring, and the use of plant workers by commissioners for work on their homes. Christie dismissed all but one of the PVSC commissioners and dozens of staff members, and criminal indictments and convictions followed in the scandal's wake.

But the process of replacing the ousted commissioners has been held up by a dispute between the Republican governor and Democratic officials over representation on the commission, which serves 1.4 million households and businesses in Essex, Passaic, Bergen, Hudson and Union counties.

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And with just one new commissioner sworn in since the scandal, for the current total of two, the PVSC still lacks a quorum necessary for a vote to issue bonds to pay for a list of more than $250 million in post-Sandy resiliency projects, including the flood wall.

Last week, before his resignation was announced, Franscisci said in an interview with that progress had been made on the wall's planning and design work.

There has also been some progress in filling the vacant commission seats, with two new Christie appointees, Newark City Council President Mildred Crump and Councilman Luis Quintana, now awaiting swearing-in after having been ratified by the state Senate this past summer.

The PVSC's two current commissioners are Thomas Tucci of Nutley, sworn in in June 2014, and Kenneth Lucianin of Passaic, the sole commissioner to survive the agency's scandal-related housecleaning.

State Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex), whose district includes the PVSC plant, said it was up to governor to nominate additional candidates to fill at least one of the five remaining open seats and allow the board to act on the wall and other needs.

"It's not the like the legislature is holding up anything," Rice said.

Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts had no comment on when or if more nominations were on the way.

Crump said she looked forward to being sworn in and getting the wall built as soon as there was a quorum.

But even then, Quintana said the flood wall should not be the commission's first order or business. Rather, Quintana plans to take up what he says has been the over-billing of Newark residents and businesses compared to other PVSC customers, a problem that now threatens to divide the new board even before it's fully reconstituted.

"We've been getting ripped off for years," Quintana said.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.