[CPEO-BIF] New jersey privatizes oversight

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[Environmental and community groups in New Jersey believe that sites 
with serious contamination, as well as small ones, will lose direct 
state oversight. I expect them to seek federal Superfund listing for 
major sites that have been under state lead. - LS]


Law allows private contractors to oversee pollution cleanups

BY SCOTT FALLON
NorthJersey.com
May 7, 2009

Private contractors will soon oversee the cleanup of the vast majority 
of New Jersey's contaminated sites, a sea change in the way the state 
has dealt with its long history of industrial and residential pollution.

Under a controversial bill signed today by Governor Corzine, about 
19,000 properties, from houses with leaking underground oil tanks to 
sprawling industrial sites, can now be supervised by contractors 
licensed by a new state board.

The bill, which took more than two years to craft, will cut the growing 
backlog of polluted sites, including 2,700 in Bergen and Passaic 
counties, supporters say. But environmentalists fear the lack of 
government oversight will allow property owners to skirt environmental 
regulations.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.northjersey.com/environment/environmentnews/Law_allows_private_contractors_to_oversee_pollution_cleanups.html

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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