COLUMN ONE : Debating the Limits of Progress : Development has cleaned up the Meadowlands area of New Jersey and improved the economy. Some wonder if the time has come to draw the line.

SECAUCUS, N.J. —  Environmental change--from polluted streams to congested highways and overdeveloped land--is affecting the quality of life across the nation. Such change is gradual and often goes unnoticed while it happens.

To measure how various areas have been affected over the decades, The Times dispatched reporters to the places where they grew up. This occasional series of articles examines how our hometown environments have been altered--for better or for worse. “Roll up the windows,” my father would yell as the stench from pig farms invaded our family Plymouth. “It’s Secaucus!”

So, believe it or not, it took me years to realize that Secaucus was the name of a neighboring town, not a word that meant the worst smell ever sniffed by a northern New Jersey boy in the 1950s. And that, you know, had to be pretty bad.

In those days, the marshlands just a few miles west of New York City’s Times Square were home to some of society’s least popular activities: garbage dumps, chemical processors, sewage runoffs, mosquito-control trenches, Mafia burial grounds and farms that fed table scraps from Manhattan’s fancy hotels to an army of porkers headed back to those tables eventually.

These days, Secaucus and surrounding communities in the Hackensack River Meadowlands have a different odor: the smell of success.

The farms are gone, almost all the dumps are closed, and most toxic polluters have left. In their place are office buildings, warehouses, hotels, shopping centers, townhouses, theaters, television studios and an enormous sports complex for horse racing and four professional athletic teams. In the last 15 years, about $1.6 billion worth of new construction and 60,000 more jobs have appeared in the 32-square-mile Meadowlands region, officials say.

The change was spurred by new landfill techniques that made possible large-scale construction on soggy soil and also by a state regional planning agency that took away much power from 14 blue-collar New Jersey towns not widely known for the probity of their local governments. Just as important was the location so close to New York. Like an Oz constantly promising glamour and danger, the skyscrapers of Manhattan poke through the marsh grasses on the eastern horizon.

The Jersey Meadowlands are a refuge for businesses seeking roomier, cheaper and safer digs than in New York City. “Obviously, it’s been to our advantage,” said Justin Camerlengo, spokesman for Matsushita Electric Corp. of America, the parent of Panasonic, which moved its corporate headquarters from mid-town Manhattan to Secaucus in 1975.

Yet the third of the wetlands still undeveloped also offers refuge for muskrats, ducks and crabs--and open space for humans--pressed by the rapid paving of the rest of northern New Jersey.

That is the crux of a debate now rumbling through the area where I grew up. Few people doubt that the building boom has improved many aspects of the environment, economy and quality of life. But, more recently, concerns about automobile traffic, air pollution and wetlands preservation are creating a backlash.

Conflicting Goals

There is a conflict between developers and the federal Environmental Protection Agency over filling in more wetlands, even for desperately needed housing. There are arguments over building monorails, railroad stations and highway extensions. There is skepticism over proposed construction of a baseball stadium now that the area already has football, basketball and hockey. And there is concern that not enough attention is being paid to older, run-down cities, such as Newark and Paterson, which ring the Meadowlands but have not shared in the success.

Yes, the Meadowlands have a lot more good things in them now. However, the question is if too many good things start to produce an overall bad.

The debate can be heard at that quintessential spot of old Secaucus, Charlie’s Corner. The tavern is owned by the Krajewski family, former pig farmers. Their most famous clan member was Henry Krajewski, who ran unsuccessfully for almost every available office, including President, campaigning in a white Cadillac with a pretty pig next to him. His slogan was “No Piggie Deals.”

At lunchtime, Charlie’s Corner has a bikini-clad go-go dancer on a small platform in the center of the rectangular bar. At night, country-western bands play. On the walls are posters of Elvis Presley and Hank Williams and snapshots of Bruce Springsteen, the northern New Jersey native who filmed scenes for a rock video at a Krajewski home. A pool table completes the cozy spot.

“I always have a feeling I moved even though I’m still in the same area because all my surroundings are new,” bar manager John Krajewski, 37-year-old nephew of the late Henry, said of the changes in Secaucus. He recalled how he used to ride horses and hunt ducks on land where outlet shoppers now chase Mikasa china and Calvin Klein sportswear.

“It’s not the sleepy little town we had as kids, but change is inevitable. You can’t hold it back,” he said. “The town has gotten a real shot in the arm. And we’re kind of proud of that.”

His cousin, Ann Marie Krajewski, 27, who stopped by for lunch, had more regret. “It’s kind of sad,” she said. “You want progress, but you also want to see some open space and wildlife.” A sales executive, she talked about her shock realizing that the men’s clothing firm she works for constructed a distribution center where she and childhood friends used to build play forts in the swamps.

The Meadowlands boom was guided by the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission, a state planning agency formed 20 years ago. The idea was to avoid hodgepodge development and improve the environment in the 20,000 acres washed by the salty, and at that time very polluted, tidal waters of the Hackensack River down to Newark Bay. The agency pools tax benefits among the previously fiercely independent towns in Hudson and Bergen counties, including East Rutherford, Lyndhurst, Ridgefield and North Bergen, where I went to school.

The agency was at first greatly resisted and resented. But some of that melted away as large-scale development began, property values rose a hundredfold in some spots and the worst polluters were replaced by cleaner industries. For example, Giants Stadium was built on top of a reputed Mafia burial grounds.

A big hurdle was management of the garbage dumps that dominated the landscape and local consciousness as much as the New York City skyline. More than 1,000 acres in the agency’s district had been used for dumping, and now only 12 acres still are legally used for that purpose, although some illegal dumping continues. The rest of the legal dumps are either closed or being converted to parkland.

A good deal of trash is being shipped to Pennsylvania and Ohio, while New Jersey considers construction of giant garbage incinerators. That was ironically noted by Dan Montella, New York area chief of wetlands protection in the federal EPA. “In an attempt to clean up the Meadowlands, we are dirtying the Midwest,” he said.

In one very unusual Meadowlands project, a 125-foot trash mound near the New Jersey Turnpike will be sculpted into a Stonehenge-like landmark with grooves to capture the rays of the sun and moon. New York sculptor Nancy Holt is “is trying to create a positive aesthetic experience out of what would be just a mountain of garbage,” explained Anne Galli, the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission’s director of environmental operations.

Galli took a visitor on a tour of the agency’s environmental center in Carlstadt. The facility is in the center of a state park being carved out of wetlands and former dumps. A small museum about garbage and recycling opened there a few months ago, with one room filled with the contents of a trash dump, minus the smell. Outside, a balcony over a quiet estuary offers views of egrets nesting in the tall grasses, as well as turnpike traffic, Amtrak trains and the fancy high-rise apartments built in Secaucus.

“When we talk about striking a balance here between development pressure and the need for open space, . . . you come out here and it immediately becomes clear and obvious,” she explained.

In the adjacent headquarters, agency spokesman Robert Grant referred to recent surveys showing that the area is a habitat for 246 species of birds and 35 species of fish, significantly higher than in the early 1970s. “Nature turned out to be rather forgiving,” he said. “Today we can say the Hackensack (River) is well on its way to a healthy state.”

Those who trap and fish still seek muskrats and fiddler crabs there as they have done for generations. But the presence of four toxic dumps slated for cleanup under the federal Superfund program has led to continuous warnings about eating some of the wetlands prey. Among the residual pollutants are poisonous mercury and cancer-causing PCBs.

“I think the jury is still out on whether the environmental improvements are substantial enough,” Philip Kieffer, town administrator of Secaucus since 1970, said during an interview at the modernistic municipal center.

“Certainly the river is less polluted and there is less raw sewage. But the people who live here aren’t about to sit in an estuary to see if the birds are there or if the crabs are there and are edible. They may be there, but they may glow in the dark.”

According to Kieffer, the biggest improvements have been in new jobs, new shops and new tax revenues. Secaucus used to bus its high school students to other towns; higher taxes bought a new high school, along with a pleasant swim club, recreation fields and a well-regarded program of services for senior citizens. The center of town, with its diner, cigar shops and insurance agencies, is about to get a face lift.

“I don’t think there is any place that has changed as dramatically as the Meadowlands and this town in particular,” said Paul Amico, the mayor of Secaucus for the last 26 years. He remembers when raw sewage would at times flow down the streets.

Asked about a seeming growth in resentment against development, he replied: “I think those people are in the minority. I think people have a tendency to say. ‘Oh, I like it the way it used to be’ when they are sitting in an air-conditioned office and living in a town other people can’t afford. It’s easy to be comfortable about the old days if you are enjoying the benefits of today.”

However, resentment exists, especially about increased auto congestion and the resulting air pollution.

For example, Winnie van Meir moved to Secaucus 25 years ago from Brooklyn, N.Y., and now helps out with secretarial chores at the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in the center of town.

‘It’s Not the Same’

“Most people who came to Secaucus looked for a country kind of atmosphere close to the city. It’s not the same anymore, and I think the last five years been the most dramatic,” she complained.

Yes, there are more opportunities in town, she said, but people now think twice about battling the traffic to take advantage of them.

“When they present plans to you as growth and development, they tell you (that) you are not a progressive person if you oppose it. But they don’t tell you the cost,” she said.

Recognizing the traffic mess, the state government recently proposed an ambitious plan for a light-rail system and other mass-transit connections between the Meadowlands, the sports complex and the newly revived Hudson River ferries. Hartz Mountain Industries, the largest developer in the area, wants to construct a monorail system and blast a tunnel through the solid rock Palisades to the Hudson waterfront where another building boom is taking off.

For a native New Jerseyan visiting from his more recent home in Los Angeles, the newly built areas of the Hackensack Meadowlands look weirdly reminiscent of Costa Mesa and the outer reaches of San Diego. The isolated office campuses, franchise restaurants and eight-screen movie houses set by enormous parking lots are very dependent on the automobile.

Two years ago, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger called most of the new Meadowlands construction “banal” and wrote: “There is little sense of place--this could be a cluster of buildings off a freeway outside of Dallas, or Phoenix or Atlanta.”

That contrasts with the grittier upland neighborhoods only a couple of miles away, where the Italian, German, Slavic and Jewish families I knew were pushing their way into the middle class. Tightly packed one- and two-family homes, small factories and pedestrian shopping streets still provide a strong local identity, even though many older residents have left for the suburbs, replaced by a vibrant community of Cuban and other Latino immigrants.

Some of those neighborhoods, particularly Hoboken and downtown Jersey City, which have easy subway access to New York City and a picturesque housing stock of brownstones, are experiencing a startling revival and influx of young professionals. But others, particularly the black ghettos of Jersey City, Paterson and Newark, seem to have worsened recently under the crises of homelessness and drugs.

Barbara Lawrence, vice president of the Regional Plan Assn., an area think tank, talked about that uneven development. “It may be they didn’t know what a gem they had (in the Meadowlands) . . . how good the location was. So they offered suburban- or exurban-style development to attract people. But what happened is they wound up choking on their own traffic,” she said in her downtown Newark office.

“Maybe the best thing that can happen to the North Jersey cities,” she added, “is that congestion will get so bad in the Meadowlands, people will look to the cities again.”

If the EPA has its way, such a shift will happen. The agency has gotten much more vigorous about wetlands protection since 1980. Rules now say that wetlands should not be filled in unless the developer can show that no other upland site is practical. In that case, the builder has to clean nearby wetlands that remain dedicated to open space. Those rules would have forbidden much of what now exists in the Hackensack Meadowlands, including the popular sports complex, officials say.

The biggest fight now centers on a proposal by Hartz Mountain Industries to build 3,300 townhouse and condominium units on 97 acres of filled land in Secaucus. Hartz, which grew from the pet-food producer, has built industrial parks, shopping centers and 1,100 units of housing. Hartz promises to restore to health a polluted tract of wetlands near the proposed apartments by improving river flow and planting richer vegetation.

Everyone agrees more housing is badly needed, but agreement ends there. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to issue the necessary landfill permit, and the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission concurs. However, the EPA wants to veto the project.

“We will fight it to the bitter end,” William Muszynksi, EPA’s deputy regional administrator, said in his Manhattan office. “Every little bit of the Meadowlands we have left is more valuable. That’s why we have to be very careful about what we give away today.”

Fight With EPA

The EPA’s stance angers Richard Fritzky, president of the Meadowlands Chamber of Commerce for the past eight years. “We will say it loudly and clearly. This is a better environment today because of the development and the investments made,” he said.

“EPA has forgotten that, in this most populated region in the most densely populated state in the country, people are part of the environment. The EPA is more focused on the habitat of a muskrat than on the needs of the people of Secaucus, North Bergen and Jersey City.”

The pull between wetlands protection and economic growth comes through in chats with local residents and businessmen.

For example, I visited Plaza Dining in downtown Secaucus. It’s the kind of beloved round-the-clock establishment where you can order blueberry pancakes, Hungarian goulash, cheesecake or veal picatta at 2 a.m. after a night at the race track. It’s the kind of place I miss most about New Jersey.

“You are not going to stop progress unless you bring the pigs back, and that’s not going to happen,” explained John Linaris, who began the diner with his father 35 years ago. He lightheartedly referred to all the construction by Hartz Mountain and the new customers it attracted as “my retirement annuity.”

Yet, later in the conversation, Linaris recounted how he was driving up the turnpike recently and spotted a large flock of egrets. The white-plumed birds were taking off from the reedy shoreline of the Hackensack River.

“I thought that was marvelous,” he said.