Clean Water News

As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this news release. 

"We applaud Senator Torricelli and Senator Corzine for making corporate polluters pay to clean up toxic waste sites that threaten public health throughout New Jersey," stated Jasmine Vasavada, Environmental Advocate for the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) Citizen Lobby. "With more Superfund sites than any other state in the nation, we in New Jersey cannot afford to let polluters off the hook."

NJPIRG Law & Policy Center released a report on April 15 estimating that 59 Superfund sites in New Jersey risk a slowdown in the pace of cleanups and less EPA oversight of clean up activities conducted by polluters if the Bush administration and Congress fail to reauthorize the corporate Superfund taxes.

The report, Can Superfund Continue to Protect Public Health? documents that the Bush administration has slowed down the pace of cleanups by more than 50 percent. Increasing the pace of these cleanups is necessary to protect public health and critical water supplies from toxic contamination.

With 111 sites, New Jersey has more Superfund sites than any other state in the country, and consequently more sites in danger of slowed or weakened cleanup. These sites contain toxic chemicals, such as arsenic, lead, mercury and PCBs, which cause cancer, brain damage, and birth defects. Furthermore, groundwater has been contaminated at more than 80 of these sites, and more than half of all New Jerseyans rely on groundwater for drinking water.

Every administration since 1980 has supported Superfund's polluter pay taxes, but the Bush administration opposes their reauthorization. The taxes expired in 1995.

"Until the polluter pay tax is reauthorized, polluters are enjoying a $4 million a day tax holiday that already totals more than $10 billion. This comes at the expense of individual taxpayers, whose annual burden will increase to an estimated $700 million in 2003," said Vasavada.

"New Jersey is fortunate to have so many representatives taking leadership to clean up these sites," stated Vasavada. "We hope that the Bush administration will follow their lead, putting protection of public health and environmental quality before the interests of corporate polluters."

NJPIRG is New Jersey's leading non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy group with more than 20,000 dues-paying members throughout New Jersey. For more information about this and other NJPIRG projects, or for a copy of the Superfund report, please visit our Web site at www.njpirg.org.