New Jersey Environmental Justice Law Forces Contaminated Site Cleanup

In 2020, the “New Jersey’s Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Law” was adopt­ed that requires the state’s depart­ment of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion to eval­u­ate the pub­lic health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of facil­i­ties on over­bur­dened or dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties when new per­mits are sub­mit­ted for review. This law allows for manda­to­ry per­mit denials if the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice analy­sis deter­mines that the per­mit for a new facil­i­ty neg­a­tive­ly impacts a com­mu­ni­ty dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly. Of course, it can be hard to describe in ana­lyt­ics what con­sti­tutes a com­mu­ni­ty over­bur­dened or dis­ad­van­taged, but this is the state’s first step in cre­at­ing a health­i­er envi­ron­ment with­out the expense of cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. Com­mu­ni­ties defined as over­bur­dened must be con­sid­ered either 35% or more low-income house­holds, 40% or more lim­it­ed-Eng­lish house­holds, or 40% or more minor­i­ty or trib­al res­i­dents. This encom­pass­es 4.6 mil­lion peo­ple which is half of the state’s pop­u­la­tion. The law also requires that every two years the list of com­mu­ni­ties must be re-eval­u­at­ed and requires com­pa­nies to pre­pare envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice impact statements. 

This law and over­all aware­ness of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice has led the state to file law­suits over con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed site cleanups in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties. Cleanups include those from dry clean­ing busi­ness­es that have failed state-ordered requests to clean up pol­lu­tion from PCE for over 30 years. PCE at high lev­els was found in the ground­wa­ter and indoor air near­by the busi­ness. A for­mer coal ash dis­pos­al site was also tar­get­ed as NJ seeks to col­lect $597,000 in civ­il penal­ties after ille­gal dump­ing occurred at the coal ash dis­pos­al site. The com­pa­ny being sued was sup­posed to use clean fill to cap the coal ash mounds to con­tain the dis­pos­al site, but instead fill with ele­vat­ed lev­els of PAHS, lead, and arsenic was used. In 2016, two notices were issued to the com­pa­ny who signed an order to resolve the mat­ter, but instead sold the prop­er­ty with­out reme­di­a­tion. Sim­i­lar law­suits have been filed to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties impact­ed by the neg­li­gence of com­pa­nies in the area, and to ensure respon­si­ble busi­ness oper­a­tions and waste disposal. 

CEE sub­jects: Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Sus­tain­able Infrastructure

• How can civ­il and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neers accom­mo­date laws like New Jersey’s Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice law in our careers? What role do we play in ensur­ing the integri­ty of the law?
• Con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed site cleanups are a con­cern and key respon­si­bil­i­ty for many civ­il and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing con­sult­ing com­pa­nies. What duties do we have as engi­neers in ensur­ing sites are cleaned up equi­tably and how do we allow for equi­table cleanup?
• While a step in the right direc­tion, this law has the poten­tial to deny per­mits for dif­fer­ent treat­ment plants which may pose issues if high­er ener­gy is being expend­ed to trans­port resources or waste longer dis­tances. What are some solu­tions to this pos­si­ble issue?

• Peer reviewed articles 
  • EPA OFFICIAL SEES NEW JERSEY ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE LAW AS NATIONAL MODEL
• Pop­u­lar media/news references 
  • New Jersey’s Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Law.
  •  30 years of pol­lu­tion: DEP sues Bergen busi­ness, say­ing it failed to clean up discharges
  • Pol­lut­ed sites in Cen­tral Jer­sey focus of state law­suits look­ing to force cleanup