Acupuncture in Mount Olive, NJ

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CEP Renewables, along with CS Energy, Terrasmart, Lindsay Precast and NJR Clean Energy Ventures, announced the completion of the largest landfill solar project in North America. The 25.6 megawatt (dc) solar project, located in Mount Olive, has enabled the township to recoup nearly $2.3 million in past taxes while at the same time transitioning the former Combe Fill North Landfill Superfund site into a revenue-generating, clean energy asset.

“We’re pleased to have been able to work closely with our reliable, long-time partners to convert yet another, previously unusable, landfill site into a renewable energy generating power plant,” said Chris Ichter, executive vice president at CEP Renewables. “There are over 10,000 closed landfills in the US, yet only a small fraction of these parcels have been redeveloped. Transitioning more of these landfill sites into solar projects will create more local tax revenue, jobs, cleaner air, and affordable energy for residents throughout the country.”

According to the EPA, there has been an 80% increase in the number of landfill solar projects in the US over the last five years. As these landfills have existed for several decades, the key driver of this recent trend is the landfill expertise that has been developed by companies such as CEP Renewables. CEP has extensive experience in the redevelopment of environmentally impaired sites, including the BFI South Brunswick landfill, the Old Bridge Clay Pits site, the Warren Quarry and Sand Pit in Monroe Township, the BEMS Landfill in Southampton Township; and the Fibermark Paper Plant brownfield in Holland Township. This vast experience is part of why the local township agreed to enter into a public-private partnership for CEP to redevelop this landfill site. Additionally, CS Energy has completed 216 MW of landfill solar projects since 2011, making the company a perfect choice to design and construct the Mount Olive project.

“We’re proud to have been selected by CEP Renewables to provide our expertise for this impactful landfill solar project due to our track record of completing these challenging projects safely, on time and on budget,” said Mike Dillon, director of operations at CS Energy. “This is our eighth project with CEP Renewables, our seventh project with Lindsay Precast and our fourteenth landfill solar project with Terrasmart. Our strong partnerships with each of these industry leaders also enabled us to efficiently deliver this high quality landfill solar project, which will provide significant financial and environmental benefits to this community long-term.”

In addition to the substantial benefits provided to the town, the large size and the challenging nature of this capped landfill solar project, the Mount Olive project is also notable in that it involved the purchasing of the landfill by way of the redevelopment and tax lien foreclosure process. This structure was entirely unique and resulted in the project winning the 2021 Award for Innovation in Governance from the New Jersey League of Municipalities. The Mount Olive project now serves as a model for the myriad other closed landfill sites throughout the U.S. – both in terms of the redevelopment process as well as the design and construction execution, while also providing greater tax revenue and more affordable clean energy for local communities.

NJR Clean Energy Ventures will own and operate the Mount Olive solar facility long-term. CEP Renewables owns the land for this project, which is being leased to NJR Clean Energy Ventures.

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The superintendent of a Morris County district — who was placed on paid administrative leave last fall and filed a lawsuit against school board members — has resigned.

Mount Olive Superintendent Robert Zywicki submitted his resignation, effective immediately, to the district’s board of education last week. He had led the district since 2018 and was earning $238,000 a year when the school board placed him on paid leave in October for unspecified reasons.

In his April 27 resignation letter, Zywicki said some board members have “personal grudges” against him and “constructively discharged” him from his position.

Acting Superintendent Sumit Bangia accepted the resignation and the board will ratify it at the May 8 meeting, said board attorney Marc Zitomer.

“I will no longer fight for a job that has been spoiled for me. I will no longer watch this Board waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars of the taxpayers’ hard earned dollars paying legal fees to Mr. Zitomer,” Zywicki said in the resignation letter.

“I will simply move on, because my physical health and my mental well being can no longer tolerate the toxic and hostile environment perpetuated by the majority of this Board,” he said.

Antoine Gayles, the school board president, denied Zywicki’s allegations.

“As our counsel has stated in a separate letter to Dr. Zywicki and his counsel, now that the employment relationship has ended, we would expect that any disputes that the parties continue to have get resolved in the appropriate forums, not in the public domain,” Gayles said.

In March, the board certified tenure charges against Zywicki and sent them to the state, said Vittorio LaPira, an attorney hired by the board in January to handle employment matters related to Zywicki.

Because of the tenure charges, Zywicki’s suspension shifted to unpaid leave and he lost his health benefits, LaPira said.

Zywicki, who was placed on paid administrative leave in October, also cited the loss of health benefits as part of his decision to resign in an interview with NJ Advance Media.

A month after he was suspended, Zywicki filed a lawsuit against the board alleging members violated state laws when they put him on paid administrative leave. In December, a Superior Court judge denied his motion to be reinstated to his position. The lawsuit was dismissed and he dropped his appeal, Zitomer said.

Neither Zywicki nor the board has publicly said what led to his suspension.

In February, one board member filed tenure charges with the board secretary against Zywicki, seeking to have him fired. The tenure charges made several allegations, including that Zywicki pressured a school board architect to donate $100,000 to help fund a new football field scoreboard and pay for the gift by secretly inflating his regular fees paid by the district.

Zywicki denied any wrongdoing, saying the charges were in retaliation for his own whistleblowing last July exposing other problems in the district.

The tenure charges also alleged Zywicki was “double-dipping” by getting paid by the district as superintendent while also doing work for Rutgers University, an allegation he denied.

Another school board member asked the state Department of Education to intervene and appoint an independent monitor to oversee the 4,600-student district earlier this year amid the ongoing turmoil.

Separately, Zywicki’s lawsuit against multiple board members remains pending.

The lawsuit was updated in late April to name several current board members and one former board member as defendants. Zywicki alleged in the suit that the board retaliated against him for whistleblowing and exposing improper behavior by the board members.

The lawsuit also alleges board members orchestrated a scheme to destroy the superintendent’s reputation. Ethics charges Zywicki filed against several board members also remain pending.

Members of the board previously declined to comment or did not respond to requests to comment on Zywicki’s allegations.

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Mount Olive School District Superintendent Rob Zywicki announced his resignation Thursday, but the conflict resulting in his October suspension by the Board of Education will continue.

In a letter sent to the district on Thursday, Zywicki made his announcement "with great sadness" and asked that the board accept his immediate resignation.

"For six months, the majority of the board and its legal representatives have rejected one opportunity after another to engage in meaningful settlement dialogue," Zywicki's resignation letter reads. "They prefer, instead, through malicious actions, anonymous letters, rumors and innuendo to make it impossible for me to return to Mount Olive and, as a practical and legal matter, they have constructively discharged me from my position."

Zywicki has been on paid suspension since Oct. 11, when the board took action without publicly stating a reason. Zywicki responded in November with a lawsuit alleging the board violated the state's Open Public Meetings Act while voting to suspend him in a closed session. Zywicki also filed tort claims stating his intention to sue school board members Antoine Gayles and William Robinson for $5.13 million each.

He later updated the suit, claiming "whistleblower" status, and added two more board members, Anthony Strillacci and Anthony Giordano, as defendants in a suit seeking "compensation for multi-million dollar damages" incurred by Zywicki as a result of an "orchestrated scheme" by the defendants "to punish him and destroy his reputation" after he reported "ongoing violations of policy, code and good practices" by some board members to the entire board.

While the board never publicly stated the grounds for Zywicki's suspension, a letter from Zywicki's attorney, Stephen Edelstein, outlines some of the conflicts.

Charges leveled against Zywicki include him having "double-dipped" on several occasions, including "numerous out-of-district, in-services days" working with the Rutgers Center For Effective School Practices without taking vacation or personal days. The Edelstein letter also identifies timelines and other evidence to refute each alleged incident.

Zywicki's resignation comes a few days after the Supreme Court of New Jersey's district committee for Morris and Sussex counties agreed in writing to launch an investigation into subsequent allegations against Mount Olive Board of Education attorney Marc Zitomer. That decision follows Zywicki's complaint filed to the board that Zitomer has committed violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct.

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Zitomer served as counsel for the Sparta Board of Education during a period when Zywicki served on that board. Zywicki said he was initially friendly with Zitomer, who represented him in board matters and in incidents of bullying involving his disabled son, a student in the Sparta district.

During that time, Zitomer was able to obtain private information about Zywicki and his children, who were later moved to a private school, the complaint letter states. Zywicki claims Zitomer later shared his confidential information with Giordano, a behavior that is "part and parcel to a toxic pattern of gaslighting, manipulation and intimidation via a weaponization of his multiple conflicted attorney-client relationships."

Zitomer referred questions about the conflict to Jeffrey LaRosa, a partner at the law firm of Schenck, Price, Smith & King, where he chairs the firm's school law practice group.

"All that has happened at this point is that a grievance has been filed," LaRosa said of the ethics investigation. "That investigation is in the early stages. The investigator has not completed his investigation and the committee has not decided whether to file a formal complaint."

Mount Olive District Acting Superintendent Sumit Bangia said the district does not comment on personnel-related or pending legal matters.

In addition to Mount Olive, Zitomer serves as board attorney in several other New Jersey school districts, including Randolph, Sparta, Mine Hill, Mansfield, Mahwah, Nutley, Marlboro, South Plainfield, Jackson, Frelinghuysen, Green Township, Lafayette, Warren Hills and Ewing.

Zywicki was hired in 2018 and his contract was renewed in 2018 and 2019. Public records list his annual salary at $237,350.

"I only wish the best for the fine students, teachers, staff and families at Mount Olive, with whom I was proud to serve," Zywicki concluded his resignation letter.

His legal battle with the district will continue, however.

"Please rest assured that this does not mean that I will surrender to those who have wronged me and my family and even taken away health benefits from my disabled child," he wrote. "I have filed ethics charges against several board members. I filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights against the board, I filed a grievance with the New Jersey Supreme Court Office of Attorney Ethics and I have filed a Superior Court civil lawsuit. My attorneys will now expand that lawsuit and see it through to a fair conclusion."

"We're confident that once the investigation is complete, the matter will be dismissed," Larosa said.

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Fifty acres of solar panels are now generating electric power on the grounds of a former Mount Olive landfill once identified by the federal government as a toxic Superfund site.

JCP&L this week announced that it has completed a grid connection to the "largest landfill solar project in North America." The array south of Route 80 was built by owner CEP Renewables LLC of Red Bank through a public-private partnership with the township.

Mount Olive and CEP broke ground in 2021 to redevelop the property into a solar energy facility, with CEP acquiring the 65-acre Combe Fill North Landfill via foreclosure.

"The landfill had a long and complicated history that challenged our community with environmental and financial hurdles," said Mount Olive Mayor Rob Greenbaum. "By taking the site through the redevelopment process, and through a partnership with designated redeveloper CEP Renewables, this site has become a model for brownfield and landfill redevelopment projects in New Jersey."

The 25.6-megawatt Mount Olive Solar Field will provide clean power for more than 4,000 homes. The township expect to recoup a $2.3 million tax lien on the property which will generate about $50,000 in annual tax revenue going forward, according to Greenbaum.

The landfill, located behind the ITC Crossing South shopping center off routes 46 and 206, operated as a municipal landfill from 1966 to 1978. But it was not properly closed when the owners went bankrupt in 1981, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection later discovered contaminated groundwater beneath the site and in private residential wells nearby.

After the landfill was declared a federal Superfund site, the EPA and state partnered on a cleanup plan that began in 1986 and was declared complete in 1991. The site was removed from the Superfund list in 2004.

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CEP currently has 16 solar projects under development on former landfills or other contaminated "brownfield" sites, the company said. It has completed more than 100 megawatts of solar projects in New Jersey in support of the state’s Energy Master Plan.

"The Mount Olive solar project will contribute substantially to New Jersey's renewable energy mandate of 50% clean energy by 2030," said CEP Renewables CEO Gary Cicero.

Jim Fakult, president of New Jersey operations for JCP&L parent company FirstEnergy said the utility was "pleased to have worked with CEP Renewables to connect this innovative solar project to the grid and enable the delivery of clean energy to local communities."

New Jersey has 114 sites on the federal Superfund list, which includes contaminated locations identified by the EPA as poising a threat to public health or the environment. Morris County has 10 of those sites, more than the total in 12 states.

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.