Polluters rewriting rules for site cleanup NJ

[DainBramaged]

Key committees writing rules for New Jersey's new program to clean up contaminated sites are made up entirely of the polluting companies and their contractors.

The 16 committees, which have been putting together rule and guidance documents, include no one from environmental or resident advocacy groups, no health specialists, and no outside experts who aren't affiliated with the cleanup industry.

"It's a who's who of corporate polluters and their hired consultants," said the New Jersey Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel. "These oversight rules will be written so loosely there will be nothing to enforce later."

Officials with the Department of Environmental Protection counter that an overarching steering committee has four environmentalists among 25 members and that environmentalists were offered a chance to join the committees, but failed to do so.

David Sweeney, the DEP's assistant commissioner for site remediation, said the DEP e-mailed an invitation to a listserv of potential stakeholders in January 2010. He said the names on the list included prominent environmentalists, including Tittel and David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/122850829_Polluters_rewriting_rules_for_site_cleanup.html


http://www.northjersey.com/specialreports/full/toxiclandscape.html

[madinmaryland]

1. This guy really makes a person yearn for the days of Jon Corzine and Jim McGreevey.

He is even making Christine Todd Whitman look like a socialist.

:wtf:

[DainBramaged]

2. We are so fucked

[madinmaryland]

3. What really upset me about his helicopter ride, was not that he used it to see

his kid play, but that he used it to make sure he got to his fat-cat fundraiser with Iowa Repukes.

:mad: