the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, this Sunday, the Ridgewood Daffodil and Earth Day Fair is set to take place, promising cheerful festivities and eco-conscious rhetoric. But as the community gathers to celebrate environmental stewardship, a shadow looms over the event.
While residents enjoy “sustainable” activities this weekend, they may not realize that just a short distance away, the Zabriskie-Schedler property—a historic and ecological treasure—is mired in an environmental disaster caused by the very officials who claim to champion the environment.
Over 24 million pounds of toxic soil, transported in more than 400 truckloads, were dumped on the property. Despite the magnitude of the crisis, there has been no accountability for the officials or contractors responsible.
At the Council meeting on Wednesday night, residents were hit with another blow. In 2015, test pits were reportedly dug at the Schedler site, but no one performed essential permeability tests or even logged the pit locations. Now, the Village must spend an additional $28,400+ to perform the necessary geotechnical work to comply with stormwater rules—work that should have been done right the first time.
This added expense highlights a troubling pattern: hasty decisions, poor planning, and no accountability. Taxpayers are left to foot the bill, costing millions, yet no one is being held responsible for the environmental crime.
The timing couldn’t be more ironic. As residents are invited to celebrate environmental stewardship, the reality of Ridgewood’s toxic soil crisis undermines the very principles the event is meant to uphold.
BEYOND GREENWASHING
Earth Day should be a time for genuine reflection and action, not an excuse for performative environmentalism. As Ridgewood gathers this Sunday, let’s remember: real change doesn’t come from fairs or slogans—it comes from accountability, integrity, and a community unwilling to accept anything less.
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Lets not lose sight of the fact that the decisions highlighted here – the soil, the test pits – were made by a prior administration.
Let’s not loose sight and deflect. The Village staff responsible for the contamination are still active Village employees, Village Manager (Heather Mailander) and Village Engineer (Christopher Ruthihauser) and the streets division that transported the dirty dirt.
The current Council and Village Manager dismissed the residents demanding studies. Residents had to seek help outside the Village and prompted an investigation with NJDEP. Only after NJDEP mandated testing did this CURRENT ADMINISTRATION move a finger to comply.
And why hasn’t this Council and Village Manager #Keith Kazmark filed disciplinary actions against those involved or seek restitution? Better yet, give the case to the Attorney General.
Agree with your valid points. Obviously administrations, as is being proven over and over again, have no clue what the workers of Ridgewood are doing. Heather Mainlander was Chris Rutihauswer and Jovan Melandrovic’c boss/supervisor and it has been also been proven that they were all negligent and complicit. All of this has cost taxpayers a good deal of money and it just keeps happening with no circumstances.
Then administration should be focused on cleaning it up not blaming someone else. Stop the blame game
Throw an Earth Day Fair and ignore your own environmental disaster? Bold move. Maybe next year’s theme can be “Accountability: The Missing Ingredient.
Rising taxpayer expenses from repeated mismanagement. Will the a village Manager ever take a stand against the negligent and corrupted Engineering Department?
photo op village mgr is too busy ….with photo ops
self serving and cares only about his image.
Village Manager doesn’t have an image 🐍
The village Manager is so involved with the Mayor. Ran his campaign. And the mayor owes the sports people for all their funding. It is one enormous kettle of shit.
Still no public admission of fault or plan for restitution. This Village Manager and Council is just as responsible as the soil dumpers.
Accountability and integrity isn’t in their vocabulary. They don’t pass the buck—they bury it under 24 million pounds of toxic soil and call it a day.
Integrity and proper protocol in Ridgewood’s administration is like Bigfoot—lots of rumors, no actual sightings.
No logging of pit locations, leading to incomplete records and untraceable data? How is this possible and no one is facing charges or loosing their job? Please explain.
Exactly, as a foreman/supervisor/director/manager/council member,/mayor, it’s common sense. No one said anything, asked if the soil is safe. Common sense look where it came from how stupid can you be. It’s not like it came from a piece of land that was untouched for 100 years, it came from industrial locations. Everyone’s just saying I don’t know, I was just doing what I was told. OK well I’m telling you to jump off the bridge. Go do it. Stupid asses all of them. They should all be at least suspended, some should be fired and brought out of village Hall in handcuffs. We’ve had employees fired for doing real little things. There’s so much blackmail going on. It’s ridiculous.☠️
I know the village mayor council just met for the new budget, they better make sure they put enough of money on the side for the health and well-being lawsuits that will be coming in regarding employees and residence that have been affected by the contamination. Remember, there’s no timeframe on a lawsuit. No one knows what’s going to happen. Five years down the road. And I’m sure this mayor council administration will all be gone. They’ll be all new people.
I have found that if you go into a place and there are ethics signs posted all over, that place is corrupt.
It’s sort of what’s attributed to Groucho Marx.
in substance, “How do you know if a man is honest? Ask him! IF HE SAYS HE IS, HE’S A CROOK.”
KazMark is a bald face liar. And so is Vagianos.
The town is responsible to provide all of the necessary information on the property. And it will never be put to bed. No time frame on the health of the community and employees past and present.
It’s amazing with speaking with TV personality investigators that are watching this situation as we speak, that there’s no regard for the employees that have worked at multiple locations where the contamination has been found by the DEP, how is it that they never reached out to the employees. End during the investigation, we found out that One employee has recently retired that worked at that location for many hours at a time. How do we know who has been contaminated or not. We feel that the village responsibility is to make sure everyone is healthy, just may be by reaching out They can avoid further trauma with everyone. This is actually shocking that they are turning their eyes to another direction when they are blatantly, knowing exactly what’s going on. And it’s amazing how some individuals are putting thumbs down on health well-being that shows they really don’t care. This is just thicken themselves a deeper and deeper hole. We have a state officials, high ranking politicians, observing this situation. It just can’t be ignored. The village needs to do the right thing. And they are not. And why are so many employees so quiet are they scared for their job, obviously,
How much has this engineering company gotten paid so far. Seems Keith must have had a relationship with them maybe when he was the Mayor of West Paterson. Did he call balls and strikes there too? Funny for a guy who is a former whistleblower, he certainly deflects a lot. You would this accountability would be a top priority.
Here’s my take on why Manager Kazmark has not opened an investigation towards disciplinary actions. It will take too long. Prior to the NJDEP stepping in to mandate testing and clean up of the dirty dirt, Vagianos, essentially his boss, had his shovel in the ground. He ran all over NJ bragging about the field that he has promised and told people the ground breaking would be happening. These investigations would take time, on top of that, they would then have to replace Heather, a friend to Keith, replace Chris and Jovan and so on and so forth. This would be colossal and they simply felt that it is easier to say that there was an error and have the tiniest bit of egg on their faces all the while deflecting to say that it wasn’t under their watch-technically Keith is the boss of engineering and clerks, so saying bye-bye to this group would have made his job harder and more complicated, on top of this, they would really be admitting to liability and lawsuits would abound. These guys may be dumb but they are not stupid. I am certain that the village attorney has coached them all on how this was going to go down.
Please stop with attacking our village manager. What if he gets upset and leaves to go somewhere else? What will happen to our town? Think people, think 🙂
Oh please, you will hear cheers from the streets. Heather was a pushover and got away with a good deal of inept behavior and cutting corners, so she was no picnic, but Kazmark is awful and was hired to promote the narrative of only listening to the mayor and council and not doing his a good deal of due diligence when it comes to important matters that concern residents in addition to sugar coating finances in an unrealistic fashion and reckless spending totally misaligned with the fiduciary responsibility and accountability that matter.
he quickly learned what the priorities are. Fields, sports #1, falling down infrastructure next, fleets of vehicles shiny and new to keep up the image, covering up for inadequacies or ineffectiveness with excuses, photo ops and grant writing or bonding or flat out passing the buck to taxpayers. doesn’t seem like a winner to me. At least we now know one person likes him.
We should be so lucky to have Keith Kazmark leave and never come back.
“The sea is selective, slow at recognition of effort and aptitude, but fast at sinking the unfit”
-Felix Reisenberg
Why does Habernickle look so disgusting. I haven’t been there for a while but there are old tarps on some new crappy mulch that is getting on the pathways. Looks like this tarp has been there for over a week with some random clipping and dirt on it. No one put it away?? Also larger green sanitation grade plastic garbage bins out on display in that garden. Why are these out? Dead grass everywhere. What’s going on over there. It used to be a beautiful park?
🧑🏼🦲☠️👀👨🏻⚕️💋