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DEP STATEMENT ON ST.
LAWRENCE CASE
We hope the court will recognize that our
department was very responsive to the needs of the community
when developing the terms for the St. Lawrence permit. We
limited the hours of delivery and the number of truckloads,
and specified the trucks must be kept covered and clean.
Moreover, we did air monitoring and made sure that federal
air quality standards would not be violated as a result
of any air emissions either from the facility or the trucks.
The public also needs to know that New
Jersey is a leader in environmental equity and is committed
to incorporating environmental equity concerns into our
decision making. We've called upon several equity advocates
to help us institutionalize equity concerns in our permitting
process, and as a result we're leading the nation in this
field. The court can dissect this case and hopefully will
find we've been very proactive, but if you look at DEP's
body of actions on this entire subject, there's no question
that New Jersey is ahead of the curve on this issue.
Furthermore, our commitment to the City
of Camden is clear. We've advanced the city's quality of
life through our Green Acres program and our Brownfields
program, assisting with waterfront developments and site
clean-ups, infrastructure improvements, Clean Communities
funding and other initiatives, and we intend to continue
these supportive efforts, and we're working with the DRPA
and the Administration on this issue.
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