Hackensack Meadowlands Ecosystem Restoration Study (HMERS) – Meadowlands Comprehensive Restoration Implementation Plan, Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement – NJ Meadowlands Commission, New Jersey

Berger has been commissioned by the New York District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to prepare the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) that provides the necessary general documentation for the USACE’s ecological restoration projects in the Hackensack Meadowlands District. This extensive report will simplify and hasten the review process for each of these projects as they are individually undertaken.

Situated in the heart of the densest industrial and commercial area in the northeast United States, the Meadowlands District’s 8400 acres of wetlands have been severely degraded in complex ways. To address the degradation and plan for restoration, the USACE has engaged Berger’s assistance in the Hackensack Meadowlands Ecological Restoration Study (HMERS), a sub-set of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Study authorized by Congress in 1999. 
 
Berger’s first step in this program was to prepare the Project Management Plan (PMP) in the initial Feasibility Study that determined the USACE’s interest in restoring the ecological functioning of the Meadowlands. The next document, the Meadowlands Environmental Site Information Compilation (MESIC), which Berger developed in 2004, gathered and cataloged all available and relevant information about fifty ecologically degraded sites in the Meadowlands District plus ecological data about the Meadowlands complex as a whole. The Meadowlands Comprehensive Restoration Implementation Plan (MCRIP) that Berger prepared in 2005 systematically identifies all the degradation factors operative throughout the Meadowlands, itemizes restoration opportunities and needs, and then provides a comprehensive menu of restoration measures that may be combined to address the unique complexity of degradation of any and all individual sites.

The PEIS is being prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which require a full and fair analysis of projects with potentially significant effects on the human environment, whether detrimental or beneficial. In it, Berger provides a detailed description of the proposed ecological restoration program, a statement of its purpose and need, an elaborate examination of the existing conditions of the affected environment, and an analysis of the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of the proposed actions and of all reasonable alternative actions.  Social, economic, health, aesthetic, historic and cultural aspects, as well as the ecological ones, are considered.

Included in the Scope of Work of this project are the Draft PEIS, the Final PEIS, and logistical support for the Public Scoping Meeting at which the Draft PEIS will be presented.  Comments made at that meeting will be included as an appendix in the Final PEIS.