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Environment stands out as an Election Day issue
Originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 10/30/01
The environment is a clear factor in Anna Dombrowski's decision on who will get her vote for governor next Tuesday.
Her family spends a great deal of time hiking and biking near its Princeton home. Dombrowski's husband, a university professor, is asthmatic; her children are ages 12, 9 and 5.
"I just want to make sure they have a good environment to live in, and not be afraid to go out and breathe the air and drink the water," said Dombrowski, 40, who supports the federal and state Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and favors stringent enforcement by the next governor.
The two major-party gubernatorial candidates, Democrat James E. McGreevey and Republican Bret D. Schundler, take contrasting positions on protecting the environment in the most densely populated state.
In the campaign's final week, each is trying to sway independent and unaffiliated voters, such as Dombrowski, who make up more than half the electorate.
"In New Jersey, in particular, we have a very large number of independents, and the environment to them transcends party lines," said Curtis Fisher, executive director of the nonpartisan New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, an environmental and consumer watchdog organization. "People clearly always have the environment on their minds as one of the top issues in the state, along with education and auto insurance. It may not be No. 1, but they see it as a problem, one that needs attention and has to be addressed over the long term."
There is a lot to protect. New Jersey has 6,760 river and border river miles; 1,871 square miles of freshwater and coastal wetlands, bays and estuaries and freshwater lakes and ponds; and 127 miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline.
Fisher said that, based on membership surveys and outreach during the summer, the most important environmental concerns are clean water, clean air, sprawl and land-development patterns, toxic chemicals and hazardous-waste sites, and energy policies.
"It's an apple-pie issue in New Jersey," said David Rebovich, a political science professor at Rider University in Lawrenceville. "Jerseyans are not just being politically correct, but they recognize the importance of the environment for their personal quality of life, the state's economy, and the value of their homes."
McGreevey said the last eight years of Republican leadership in the state had brought "weaker environmental standards, unplanned development, and declining water quality and water shortages."
He has been particularly critical of budget cuts to the Department of Environmental Protection under former Gov. Christie Whitman, asserting that the department's enforcement capacity has been limited.
"The health of our people and our economy depend on the quality of our environment," McGreevey said in August when the New Jersey Sierra Club, a chapter of the national environmental organization, endorsed him. "But we haven't done enough to protect our natural resources. I'm determined to change that."
Schundler opposes new environmental regulations that he said would hurt business. He favors an incentive program. A fierce proponent of free markets and home rule, he believes that municipalities should set their own zoning and planning regulations.
He supports increased state funding for the Blue Acres program, which uses public dollars to purchase open space along the coast. He supports a statewide water-management study to provide towns in coastal areas with the information they need to control development within their borders and to limit construction in sensitive watershed areas.
"Bret Schundler does what he believes is right by establishing the balance that is in the general interest, and that is why he doesn't get a lot of interest groups' endorsements," Schundler said last weekend at an appearance in Marlton. "But I will be one of the stronger environmental governors we ever had."
While most of McGreevey's policy initiatives, such as curbing sprawl and reforming auto insurance, have been incremental, the Democrat appears to want to take an active role on the environment.
In several questionnaires from environmental groups, McGreevey said he would build on current laws, step up enforcement, and mobilize financial resources and increase incentives to protect public health.
McGreevey, who also has been endorsed by the New Jersey Environmental Federation, wants to give drinking-water supplies the same protections as trout streams, and to set stricter standards to reduce carcinogens, such as arsenic and radium, in drinking water within two years.
Schundler supports increasing enforcement of the state Safe Drinking Water Act. He said he would instruct the Department of Environmental Protection commissioner to identify waterways that are not in compliance and develop a detailed, cost-effective plan to ensure that the standards are met. When he was a state assemblyman, McGreevey authored the 1992 Pollution Prevention Act, which required companies to reduce hazardous emissions.
Under McGreevey, who is mayor of the Middlesex County township, Woodbridge entered a consent order to remove an illegal fill in the Woodbridge River. McGreevey issued a stop-work order on illegal development permitted by the DEP on a floodplain four years ago, and recently removed dredge spoil from a 37-acre lot and converted the lot into a park.
Schundler said that when he was mayor of Jersey City, he transferred the development rights of 1,200 acres of watershed property to be permanently preserved, called for the full removal of PCBs in the Hudson River, and implemented a public-private water utility that was recognized by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Schundler and two other mayors led the fight to overturn the state's garbage-incineration regulations. The New Jersey Environmental Federation had made the repeal of the laws a top priority in 1996 to help reduce air pollution.
Schundler said he opposed the regulations because they increased property taxes by forcing counties to subsidize garbage incinerators.
The regulations were eventually struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court for violating interstate commerce.
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