TOMS RIVER, NJ – In 2005, a North Jersey think tank worked together with officials from Toms River Township and the Toms River Business Improvement District to hash out future plans to develop the Ciba-Geigy superfund site.
Toms River Mayor Maurice Hill, elected to the Toms River Township Council in 2004, and township attorney Gregory P. McGuckin, who also served on the township council at the time, are the last remaining elected officials still in office who took part in that study.
McGuckin, now an assemblyman and Hill, now the mayor, had previously known about the township’s involvement in the study. Publicly, McGuckin has been silent on the matter, but Hill has lashed out at the media for suggesting officials knew about the plan.
Hill called the initial Shore News Network report in 2019, “Fake News” and denied the existence of a report. He also denied the township’s involvement in the report even though a letter obtained through an OPRA request shows town officials suggesting a meeting between BASF and Jack Morris, a developer with ties to then Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore. The subject matter of that correspondence was to develop the Ciba Geigy property.
To this day, Hill still claims the plan does not exist, and Toms River officials had no part in developing the plan that called for most of the superfund site to be developed.
Since our initial report in 2019, the plan has been scrubbed from both the “Together North Jersey” website and the Toms River Township website. Luckily, SNN knew that would happen after our report, so we held on to our own local copy of the plan.
Ciba Geigy Development report by Shore News Network
The plan calls for Route 37 West redevelopment and it centered around Ciba Giegy, the largest undeveloped piece of land in Toms River. It also happened to be an EPA superfund site responsible for the deaths of many people who worked and lived in the area of the plant and pipeline that discharged toxic waste just 100 yards off the coast of the barrier island for decades.