Only in New Jersey: Adding Costs and Paperwork to Cleaning the Environment

Your trusty blogger joins you from the road this morning, as we await a presentation by Dr. Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace) on ways to improve our environment while producing the energy necessary to meet our 21st Century needs.

Of other environmental importance is a story in today's Record regarding proposed new Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) regulations that would create additional notification requirements for site cleanup. The proposed new mandate states that those cleaning the site must notify neighbors within 200' of the property about the removal of contaminated materials in very specific ways. It's another idea that seems benign on the surface, but will actually make it more difficult to clean contaminated sites and therefore lessen the probability they will be cleaned.

Our friends at the Sierra Club ask,

In California, for instance, remediators must notify the public with a 4-foot-by-8-foot sign, he said. "Why are the businesses complaining?" he said. "What are they trying to hide? People should know what's happening in the neighborhood."

It's tough to have an honest discussion when one group's default position is that businesses must be attempting to hide something. Remember, these are the same businesses who clean contaminated areas with regularity.

The DEP already has adequate notification requirements. To make businesses notify those who are unaffected by the cleanup (in their native languages) goes beyond what is necessary. Then, if there are public places within 200', a business would have to notify the users of an area such as a park that something is about to be cleaned (again, in the native language of park goers). Furthermore, the regulations require notification for those within 200' of the property line, not 200' of the clean-up area. A large property with a small clean-up would have to notify those well outside the boundary of any potential impact.

CIANJ members have weighed in and continue to do so with the Department of Environmental Protection. Sometimes, issues are more complicated than the rhetorical questions asked about them.