TOMS RIVER - The former Ciba-Geigy Superfund site could soon be home to a massive solar farm that could generate up to 35 megawatts of electricity.

Toms River Merchant Solar LLC plans to lease about 166 acres of property at the Superfund site from BASF — which purchased the land from Ciba in 2009 — and install solar panels on the land.

The project would be the largest solar field in New Jersey, according to the state Board of Public Utilities.

The Washington, D.C.-based Solar Energy Industry Association says 1 megawatt of solar-generated electricity is enough to power an average of about 190 homes.

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Toms River Merchant Solar is expected to present the solar farm proposal to the township's Planning Board on Sept. 18. The planning board meeting starts at 6 p.m., and is held in the L. Manual Hirshblond Meeting Room on the second floor of town hall, 33 Washington St.

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Ground-mounted solar panels would be installed in the areas of the 1,200-acre site that were used for Ciba's industrial dye-making operations. The massive Ciba site is located off Route 37, near the Garden State Parkway, with its main entrance now on Oak Ridge Parkway.

Toms River Merchant Solar is a subsidiary of EDF Renewables, a renewable energy company that has developed dozens of solar projects throughout the country, including several in New Jersey. EDF's other renewable energy projects in the state include the Bayshore Recycling Solar Project in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, and the Matrix Solar Project in Perth Amboy, developed as part of PSE&G's Solar 4 All program.

Township Planner David G. Roberts said that because the former Ciba property is a Superfund site, the planning board has limited jurisdiction over activities there. The site is overseen by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

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Linda L. Gillick, who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said while the committee has not endorsed the solar field proposal, the group feels "this is step in right direction to help the environment."

Gillick has chaired the committee since 1996, when it was formed to investigate the elevated levels of childhood cancer that plagued Toms River in the mid- to late-1990s. Gillick and other residents and activists have long expressed concern about any potential development on the Ciba site.

The Ciba solar project received conditional approval earlier this year from the state Board of Public Utilities. It would be built on a "brownfield" site, property that has been previously contaminated.

A similar solar farm has been operating for several years at the site of the former French's Landfill in Brick.

The BPU said Toms River Merchant Solar must meet requirements put in place by the DEP, including assurances that the solar field does not exacerbate pollution on the Ciba site and does not interfere with the ongoing groundwater clean-up there.

The Ciba property is still zoned for industrial use, and the solar field project requires no variances from township land-use codes. Roberts said installation of the solar panels will require the removal of some "isolated stands of trees" near the solar field.

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The solar farm proposal for the former Ciba site says the solar panels would generate 5 megawatts of electricity for customers enrolled in New Jersey's Community Solar Energy Pilot Program, while the remaining 28 megawatts would go into the grid connected to Jersey Central Power & Light Co.'s distribution system.

The EPA has been overseeing cleanup at the Ciba site since the property was placed on the federal Superfund list in 1982. Ciba is one of two Superfund sites in Toms River; the other is Reich Farm, located off Route 9 in the Pleasant Plains section of town.

More than 10 billion gallons of polluted groundwater has been extracted from the ground, treated to remove contaminants, and then recharged onto the ground in the property's northeast corner, according to EPA. Groundwater cleanup is expected to continue for at least another 20 years.

Learn more about the clean-up in the video above this story.

Ciba-Geigy, initially called Toms River Chemical Co., made millions of pounds of industrial dyes and resins on its property from 1952 until all manufacturing operations ceased in 1996.

Pollution history

Once Ocean County's largest employer, the company would eventually become known as a notorious polluter.

In 1992, two former Ciba executives and the corporation pleaded guilty to illegally dumping pollutants into two landfills on the company's property, and agreed to pay fines. All industrial operations on the site ceased in December 1996, the same year a groundwater treatment operation began there.

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Ciba spent more than $300 million to treat groundwater and clean up toxic waste on its property, and spent millions more to settle three lawsuits related to toxic waste on its land and the polluted groundwater that it caused.

A 1999 state and federal study determined that some Toms River residents had been exposed to chemical pollutants from the site that had leached into private wells and the public drinking water system decades ago.

The same study determined that the site no longer posed an environmental threat because polluted wells have been sealed and groundwater treatment is in place.

Most of the buildings that housed Ciba's dye-making operations have been razed. The sprawling property — larger than the city of Hoboken — is mostly vacant, except for two to three employees who oversee the mostly automated cleanup of groundwater contamination.

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Cleanup of toxic soil and the removal of thousands of waste-filled drums was finished in 2010, and BASF finished construction of a more efficient groundwater treatment system in 2013, and began operating it in 2014.

About 200 homes are located north of the property, and another 250 to the south. The West Dover Elementary School is adjacent to the site.

Jean Mikle covers Toms River and several other Ocean County towns, and has been writing about local government and politics at the Jersey Shore for nearly 35 years. A finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in public service, she's also passionate about the Shore's storied music scene. Contact her: @jeanmikle, 732-643-4050, jmikle@gannettnj.com.