After sinkholes, legislators weigh structural tests to prevent more mine damage

New Jersey lawmakers are considering new requirements for roadway and other infrastructure projects near underground mines, hoping to prevent collapses like the sinkholes that have shuttered parts of Interstate 80 for more than six months.

A new bill, which the Assembly Transportation and Independent Authorities Committee discussed but did not vote on Monday, would require transportation agencies to conduct structural assessments on transportation projects near operating or abandoned mines.

“This is an issue that we have to continue to address. Let’s not just respond to the larger big potholes, which are sinkholes. Let us be able to predict them. Let us not just fix the damage, but let us prevent it,” Assemblywoman Aura Dunn (R-Morris) told the committee.

The move comes more than half a year after the first in a series of sinkholes opened on Interstate 80 in Wharton last December, shuttering lanes on the highway and forcing traffic to redirect through local roads that could not bear the congestion. Wharton is in Dunn’s district.

The highway’s westbound lanes reopened on Saturday, and its three eastbound lanes are due to reopen on June 25.

“I’m the town next to Wharton where the holes were found. The impact really does stick. It was just traffic and just a very terrible time for literally thousands of people,” said Assemblyman Christian Barranco (R-Morris), who shares Dunn’s district. “I can tell you the relief is very real and very welcome.”

Lawmakers hope to prevent similar disruptions by requiring the Department of Labor’s mine safety section to determine whether proposed transportation projects are within close proximity of a mine and whether a structural assessment is needed to ensure safety.

The bill would require the transportation agency in charge of the project to perform the analysis, with post-construction monitoring for mines found to be at risk of collapses that could damage above-ground infrastructure.

That monitoring would include ground-penetrating radar scans and periodic elevation measurements to ensure no part of the roadway is falling through the ground. The bill authorizes the transportation commissioner to stop work on sites not in compliance.

The bill was sponsored by Assemblyman Clinton Calabrese (D-Bergen), who chairs the panel that heard testimony on it Monday. It has no Senate companion.

Some lawmakers expressed surprise at the Department of Labor’s role in the proposed regulatory scheme. Current New Jersey law on mine safety dates back more than 70 years, when iron and sulfur extraction were major state industries, and deal mostly with workplace safety within mines.

State records list nearly 600 abandoned mines, nearly all of which fall in the state’s northwest.

“This issue, in my opinion, should not be in the Department of Labor. It’s clearly not their wheelhouse. This to me seems to be an environmental protection issue, something like that, perhaps [the Department of Community Affairs] because of the impact it would have on applications before state agencies and local agencies,” said Assemblyman Greg McGuckin (R-Ocean).

Mining is less prevalent in the state’s economy today, and what remains has taken a different character. In 2019, state mines extracted $367 million in minerals, but virtually all of that value came from crushed stone, sand, or gravel, according to U.S. Geological Service data.

The decades-long mining decline presents lawmakers with another issue: The state hasn’t updated its mine maps in years and in places relies on contemporary maps that are more than a century old.