It took a while to get the legislation in place, but the backlog of projects requiring remediation decisions should start to ease now that the Site Remediation Reform Act has been passed. The changes resulting from the act’s passages were discussed at a NAIOP NJ roundtable recently, with speakers claiming it’s a “paradigm shift,” according to a summary sent by the association’s spokesmen.

Back in June, I attended a NAIOP NJ meeting focused on “Environmental, Economic & Land Use Planning Issues,” which discussed the program and its ability to ease the burdens on the Department of Environmental Protection, which now has a backlog of some 14,000 cases. [ At that time, speakers strongly recommended that state-approved Licensed Site Remediation Professionals (LSRPs), qualified consultants, oversee environmental investigation and cleanup to help the DEP out.

“[The DEP] looked at Massachusetts and modeled our LSRP program after theirs,” said Jorge Berkowitz of Langan Engineering & Environmental Service, a former DEP official. “LSRP is here now – May 7 will mark the complete conversion. Every project will be required to have an LSRP.”

Filings and implementation must take place in March and May, otherwise the DEP must impose direct oversight, noted Sean Monaghan of Drinker, Biddle & Realth.

Another caveat: there are still a limited number of LSRPs to go around, though many projects already have one in place. Even so, get your filings in early.

Other questions remain, including DEP’s standard for overturning an LSRP decision. But anything that helps projects currently stuck in a pipeline progress is good news.