[CPEO-BIF] New Jersey schools

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

New Jersey Program Bought Polluted Lands for Low-income Schools
In what critics consider one of the more blatant examples of 
environmental racism, a fund supposedly intended to give a leg up to 
impoverished pupils of color was used to put them at risk while favoring 
private developers.

by Megan Tady
New Standard News
October 23, 2006

Residents in Gloucester City, New Jersey normally would have welcomed 
the state-funded construction of a new middle school. Instead, LaRae 
DiCamillo found herself fighting it.

The school was slated to be built on a Superfund site - highly 
contaminated land scheduled for cleanup by the federal government - and 
DiCamillo, the parent of a second grader, was outraged.

"I've begged [the government], 'Please don't do this to our kids,'" 
DiCamillo said.

But the toxic land purchased for Gloucester City's middle school may not 
be an anomaly.

Evidence suggests that the state government, as part of a major 
public-works project to build and renovate schools in low-income 
communities and communities of color, had purchased contaminated land 
for school construction in several districts.

...

For the entire article, see
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3800

--
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
http://www.cpeo.org

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