[CPEO-BIF] Activists: New Jersey "using schools to clean up tainted sites"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

$8.6B STATE PROGRAM
Activists: State using schools to clean up tainted sites


ENVIRONMENTALISTS: State offers de facto incentive to use polluted land
SCHOOL DISTRICTS: Must clean up pollution to build a school on a site

BY JASON METHOD
Asbury Park Press
December 6, 2005

A national environmental activist group said New Jersey has used its
$8.6 billion school construction program as a hidden way to clean up
contaminated sites.

The co-author of a report issued by the group said the state has built
in a de facto incentive for municipal and education officials to build
schools on polluted land.

"Cities and towns get stuck with this land through tax foreclosure; they
can't clean up the sites and they can't find developers to clean them
up, so they look to the state to reimburse them for school sites," said
Steven Fischbach, a lawyer who works with the Center for Health,
Environment and Justice, or CHEP, based in Falls Church, Va.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051206/NEWS03/512060387/1007

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 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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