[CPEO-BIF] New Jersey DEP plans to overhaul cleanup program

["Robert Hersh" <b_hersh@verizon.net>]

Short staff troubles DEP chief

The Record
New Jersey
April 11, 2007

By ALEX NUSSBAUM

New Jersey's regulators are so overworked they're finding it nearly
impossible to track many of the state's polluted properties, the state
environmental commissioner said on Tuesday.

"We have, literally, cases where submissions come in and sit in somebody's
in-box, on a desk somewhere, for years," Lisa Jackson told a gathering of
environmental consultants. "At a minimum, somebody needs to crack [a file]
open and make sure that something isn't there that would be a concern for
us."

Jackson's speech touted the economic benefits of redeveloping blighted land
-- and praised New Jersey's cleanup program as "second to none in the
country."

Still, she noted, the Department of Environmental Protection has only 300
managers to oversee 18,000 sites. The short-staffing contributes both to
safety concerns and the glacial pace of cleanups, Jackson said.

Jackson said she fears a repeat of last year's discovery in South Jersey,
where officials allowed a day-care center to open on a factory site tainted
with mercury.

"What would worry me, as an environmental professional, is that on my desk
lies the next Kiddie Kollege," she said, referring to the Gloucester County
center shut down by the DEP last spring.

The comments before the Environmental Business Council, a group of engineers
who help design private cleanups, came as Jackson's department prepares to
overhaul the state's system to track contaminated sites.

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Bob Hersh
CPEO



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