Opinion Pieces

East Brunswick has been paid for hosting the landfill every year since 1985 — about $4.5 million in 2026. It has also been on the receiving end of thirty years of odour complaints, a withdrawn plan to dig up old waste, two federal settlements and a school evacuation nearly four miles away. The final part of a four-part Eyes on EB series.

The original Edgeboro landfill had a legal end date written into a state permit in January 1984: December 31, 1992. It did not operate beyond it. It was capped, and it is still there — underneath a second landfill, separately permitted, built on top of it. Part 3 of a four-part Eyes on EB series.

East Brunswick did not choose to take in seven counties’ garbage. A slope collapse in Old Bridge, a court order and a series of state emergency orders took the truck traffic from a few hundred a day to well over a thousand — and Middlesex County went to court to stop it, and lost. Part 2 of a four-part Eyes on EB series.

Thousands of us drive past the mound on Edgeboro Road every day. It began as a sand-and-gravel quarry before 1954, it is really two landfills stacked on top of each other, and almost everything it does is invisible from the road. Part 1 of a four-part Eyes on EB series.