Merck seeks to trade wetlands for potential to add parking or building

Township officials have fielded a plan from Merck to modify two areas of wetlands on their West Point campus, changes that could pave the way for future work.

“Merck has applied for a joint permit for wetlands relocation,” said Merck spokesman Greg Landis.

“What we want to do is remove about 0.35 acres of current site wetlands, in exchange for wetlands that are already in place, within the Schuylkill River service area. And this is an accepted practice — where we buy these credits, and then we’re allowed to fill in ours, and use theirs in exchange,” he said.

Over the past several years, Merck has sought and secured approvals for expanding the existing “Building 45” for labs and office space in October 2020, a new “Building 50” of roughly 101,000 square feet of manufacturing space in February 2021, a new “Building 32” for freezer space approved in May 2021, expansion of the proposed “Building 50” in August 2021, and a new “Building 63A” production facility approved in November 2021.

In early 2024 Merck also secured approvals for a new “Building 41” to be located toward the center of the company’s 320-acre complex, a new lab analysis and testing building to be built on the site of a research building that had stood on the company’s Sumneytown Pike campus from 1955 to 2021.

The latest plans, Landis told the township commissioners on Monday night, call for work that could impact four minor areas totaling 2.8 acres, and require approvals from the township, state, and federal Army Corps of Engineers, he said, as he showed a map with those areas highlighted.

“The site has four small areas of existing wetlands, that if removed give us some flexibility with the site, to add additional parking initially, and then possible future site development,” Landis said.

“We’re going to fill those in, and the wetlands get replaced through this program, down near [Philadelphia]. It’s moved off of our campus, and we’re given permission to replace them in another location outside the township,” he said.

That exchange is done under a Quaker Mitigation Bank program administrated by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, Landis told the board, and PA DEP would also be part of the permitting process needed to do work on the wetlands, convert them to parking, and add drainage piping and stormwater management features. The township’s zoning officer and engineer have vetted the plans and raised no concerns or issues, he said.

Commissioners President Katherine Carter asked if Merck would be responsible for maintaining the offsite wetlands, and Landis said it’s managed by others once the company buys the credits to do so.

“Essentially, you’re buying out of the obligation to maintain the wetlands currently on the site,” said commissioner Greg Moll. Landis agreed, and pointed out that several large stormwater basins on the Merck campus, that are capable of handling several million gallons of stormwater combined, would remain.

“The big basins remain. We still have to maintain the balance of our stormwater management onsite. So the basins have to be capable of handling a 100-year storm — that doesn’t change,” Landis said.

The formal actions sought from the township commissioners, a waiver of land development and two other waivers regarding pipe size and inlet size, were also vetted and OK’d by the township’s consultants.

“We modeled it, and we have capacity in these pipes already, at the smaller size,” Landis said, and township engineer Nick Cross agreed.

“That’s part of what we review. We don’t allow those waivers, unless they can show the system that they’re designing can handle the capacity,” Cross said.

Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on March 10 at the township administration building, 1 Parkside Place For more information visit www.UpperGwynedd.org.

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