Four enforcement orders totaling $1.2 million remain pending as Pacer Group Holdings begins six-month testing; first DEP town hall set for Sunday.

KEYPORT, N.J. — First Street has looked the same for decades: small houses, a creek that empties into Raritan Bay, and a 62-acre industrial graveyard that the state ordered closed in 1979 and never capped. Records from the state Department of Environmental Protection show the Aeromarine landfill shut down 47 years ago for "numerous operating and engineering deficiencies."

The site’s 1990 Closure and Post-Closure Care Plan Approval produced no remediation. DEP has issued four enforcement orders since 2021; none have been resolved. Bay Ridge Realty Corporation, the owner, owes $1.223 million in penalties. Payment remains uncollected 15 months after the largest invoice came due.

NJ.com first reported on this story on April 17, and has tracked the human toll since then. 

The difference now is the reported count. NJ.com reported this week that resident-reported cancer cases have surged to more than 180, a fourfold explosion since Rusty Morris started mapping diagnoses on a Google Map in February and Sal Liguori—who began speaking out after his son died of cancer in December 2022—encouraged neighbors to add their names to the list.

Twenty-eight of the original 41 mapped cases clustered on or around First Street, located within breathing distance of a site where 2010 testing found benzene, PCBs, arsenic, and vinyl chloride leaching into groundwater and Chingarora Creek. The 2010 assessment was the last environmental study done before April 2026; sixteen years passed with no follow-up.

The state has known about this site in three distinct phases. DEP initially ordered the closure in 1979 for operational violations. Contamination was documented in 2010, but no follow-up testing occurred for 16 years. Enforcement began in 2021 but remains unresolved, and no remediation has occurred.

DEP inspection records from 2002, 2010, 2017, 2020 and 2022 document cover failures including inadequate cover, exposed waste, or missing cover material. A 2014 inspection found construction and demolition waste deposited on the roadway. The 2025 AONOCAPA, a $891,000 penalty for 198 days of continuing violations, states that Bay Ridge Realty's representative met with DEP on September 10, 2024. After the representative "committed to addressing the regulatory violations," they stopped communicating entirely. DEP has the legal right to escalate to Superior Court for enforcement, but has not done so at time of writing.

Four AONOCAPAs (Administrative Order and Notice of Civil Administrative Penalty Assessment) have been issued since 2021: $15,000 (2021), $20,000 (2023), $297,000 (2024), and $891,000 (2025). Bay Ridge Realty requested administrative hearings on every penalty. An administrative law judge has scheduled Bay Ridge Realty for a hearing in June 2026 to challenge the fines, according to the Two River Times. The AONOCAPA explicitly states: "Submittal or granting of a hearing request does not automatically stay the terms or effect of this AONOCAPA." DEP could therefore enforce payment while hearings pend.

The prospective buyer complicates this further. Pacer Group Holdings, LLC, a Massachusetts-registered real estate investment firm, has been negotiating with DEP since August 2025. Pacer's Chief Investment Officer, Lior Zamir, told the Keyport Borough Council on April 21 that cleanup was the firm's "No. 1 goal." Two days later, DEP issued a six-month permit for Pacer's consultant, SESI Consulting Engineers of Parsippany, to conduct soil, groundwater, and soil-gas testing. DEP will collect independent samples simultaneously.

Pacer's business model is redevelopment-as-remediation. Its April 24 press release states the site "will not be meaningfully addressed without our redevelopment." The group also argues that an amended redevelopment plan is the practical path to fund and implement landfill closure. Greg Remaud of the environmental group NY/NJ Baykeeper described this model as failing before. "Past efforts to marry cleanup to private redevelopment faltered when developers walked away because of remediation costs," Remaud said. His warning refers to statewide patterns, not Keyport specifically; no prior developer has walked away from this site at time of writing.

The borough already tried the courts. Keyport sued Bay Ridge Realty in 2021 seeking to compel cleanup. A judge dismissed the case in 2022, ruling that enforcement sat with DEP, not municipal government, according to NJ.com. That ruling left DEP administrative orders as the only mechanism still active against the owner.

In the meantime the borough, currently led by Mayor Rose Araneo, is attempting its own investigation. The Keyport Borough Council voted on April 21 to authorize up to $7,500 to re-engage Excel Environmental, the firm that conducted 2009–2010 investigations whose recommendations were never implemented. Councilman Robert Bergen stated those reports "laid out exactly what needed to be done at that time" but "remediation... never happened." The borough also received a letter from Bay Ridge Realty claiming "a plan is nearly approved, though its details are unknown," a separate plan that may conflict with Pacer's testing regime.

The borough's hiring of Excel Environmental creates a parallel review structure: DEP as regulator, Pacer/SESI as developer-funded tester, Excel Environmental as borough-hired reviewer. This is the first time the borough has directly funded an environmental review of the landfill. The 2009–2010 Excel Environmental investigations were DEP-funded, and the 2005 Aeromarine Area Redevelopment Plan incorporated existing data without conducting new testing.

The public health response is structurally delayed. The NJ Department of Health's April 30 joint update with DEP states that ATSDR public health assessments require either Superfund listing, a formal request from environmental agencies, or a community petition. The Aeromarine site is not on the National Priorities List. DEP must complete testing and determine "if there is a pathway for human exposure" before DOH can begin its review. A 2012 American Cancer Society report on New Jersey cancer surveillance noted that full registry data typically takes 12 to 18 months to become available for statistical analysis after the close of a diagnosis year. The April 30 update does not indicate DOH is conducting independent sampling.

The DEP town hall, scheduled for May 17 at 4:30 p.m. at Keyport High School, is the first state-run town hall on the site in the current crisis. Acting DEP Commissioner Ed Potosnak visited the site in early May. Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger, Senator Declan O'Scanlon, and Assemblywoman Victoria Flynn, all Republicans from the 13th Legislative District, confirmed the testing timeline.

DEP's AONOCAPA states it "does not waive its rights to initiate additional enforcement actions." As of writing, no additional action has been taken. Bay Ridge Realty's $1.223 million in penalties remains unpaid. And the resident-reported case count continues to rise.

Related Articles

• Keyport Cancer Cluster: 41 Cases, $900K in Unpaid Fines, and a 40-Year Enforcement Gap

Sources

• DEP, AONOCAPA EA ID # PEA250001-133613, "Administrative Order and Notice of Civil Administrative Penalty Assessment" (January 31, 2025)

• DEP, "Keyport Municipal Landfill," dedicated site page (updated May 11, 2026)

• NJ Department of Health and NJ Department of Environmental Protection, "NJ Department of Health and NJ Department of Environmental Protection Joint Update on Keyport" (April 30, 2026)

• NJ Department of Health, "Cancer Cluster Response Protocol," current

• Keyport Borough, "Aeromarine Area Redevelopment Plan" (2005)

• Keyport Borough, "Walnut-Oak Neighborhood Plan" (2005)

• Rep. Frank Pallone, "Pallone Demands Federal Action on Keyport Cancer Cluster," letter to EPA, ATSDR and CDC (April 17, 2026)

• Rep. Frank Pallone, "Pallone Presses EPA on Keyport Cancer Cluster at Budget Hearing," press release (April 28, 2026)

• NJ.com, "N.J. Cancer Cluster Fears Intensify Amid 'Astounding' Spike in Cases" (updated May 16, 2026)

• NJ.com, "Keyport Residents Alarmed by Cancer Cases Near Former Landfill" (April 17, 2026)

• News 12 New Jersey, "DEP Testing Wells in Better Condition Than Anticipated at Former Keyport Landfill" (May 13, 2026)

• NJ 101.5, "NJ DEP to Hold Community Meeting on Keyport Cancer Cluster" (May 15, 2026)

• Two River Times, "Officials Vow Action on Keyport Cancer Concerns" (April 23, 2026) [print edition dated April 30 – May 6, 2026]

• New Jersey Monitor, "N.J. Health Commissioner Questioned About Keyport Cancer Cluster at Budget Hearing" (April 22, 2026) [Assembly Budget Committee]

• Pacer Partners, "Pacer Partners Announces Environmental Testing Agreement for Keyport Municipal Landfill," press release (April 24, 2026)

• ZoomInfo, "Pacer Group Holdings" business profile

• CBS News New York, "Keyport Residents Demand Answers as Cancer Cases Near Former Landfill Mount" (April 22, 2026)

• New Jersey Department of Health, New Jersey State Cancer Registry Program Manual (2026)

• New Jersey Administrative Code, Title 8, Chapter 57A, Section 1.4