New Jersey Sea Grant College Program adopts NOAA’s strategic plan for rebuilding sustainable fisheries

(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association March 2000 Newsletter)

A decade ago New Jersey passed the Clean Water Enforcement Act of 1990. This law was passed in an effort to protect our over polluted waters from illegal dumping. Today we have seen the number of illegal dumpers sharply decline. This decline can be correlated to the implementation of the Clean Water Enforcement Act of 1990. Since the implementation of the clean water enforcement act NJ is ranked 41^st in the nation by percentage of facilities in significant noncompliance for permits (i.e. illegal pollution). Unfortunately this is not something that we can rejoice about.

The decrease in illegal dumping is overshadowed by the amount of toxins we legally dump into the water. In fact New Jersey is the largest discharger of reproductive toxins in the nation. We emit three times the amount of reproductive toxins as New York, which is second in the nation for these toxins. As far as carcinogens being dumped into our waterways New Jersey is not any healthier. We are currently ranked 7^th with over 113,868 pounds of carcinogens entering our waterways annually.

Instead of cracking down on polluters the government is letting them off the hook. What good is enforcement if you just give dischargers a permit to pollute and don’t force them to reduce their toxic emissions?

Another tactic the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has come up with is weakening the standard for clean water in the state. With a lower standard the DEP will be able to tell us that the water is safe when it is still overburdened with pollutants. We have had attempts to roll back our clean water standards in 1996. Thanks to the work of many activist groups those rollbacks were stopped. Then late last year we saw newly introduced rules that would have further weakened our clean water standards. Fortunately this process was slowed down by public outcry. This April the DEP will propose a new draft of the standards. It is important that we all get involved by calling on the Governor to live up to her commitment and strengthen our clean water laws and not weaken them.

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