Meet NJ’s Toxic Top Twenty Corporate Polluters

They Still Don’t Have An App For That

No Biggie: It’s Only 1.6 BILLION Pounds Of Toxic Chemicals

BTW, what ever happened to that Senate bill (see S2739) that was supposed to close the major loopholes exposed by the Passaic City chemical fire?

The above list of corporate toxic polluters is from 2001 data from a DEP 2004 Report – you can find it in Rutgers archives or the State Library, see;

• Industrial Pollution Prevention In New Jersey – A Trend Analysis

Our friends Dupont and BASF, among many others, are exposed in that REPORT.

DEP doesn’t publish that Report – and many others – anymore, a huge problem I explained in detail in this post last year, see:

• They Don’t Have An App For That: Critical Environmental Information Buried In The Bowels Of the Bureaucracy

DEP claims that their website “DataMiner” software and the NJ Open Public Records Act (OPRA) law provide that same data to the public – but I challenge anyone to update the above 2001 data using DataMiner and OPRA – I guarantee that it will require expertise and take a very long time, and it is very unlikely that it can even be done, and certainly not by an average citizen. If you file an OPRA for this data, DEP will deny it and claim that they are not required by OPRA to “conduct research”. Similarly, in order to use DataMiner, you need to know what you’re looking for – a classic catch-22, because you can’t know what you’re looking for!

And even if it could be done, it is DEP’s job to do that. But, they now work for the polluters, not the public.

The Foundations stopped funding that work, so the environmental groups stopped doing it as well.

For decades before their current corporate and Foundation co-optation and absorption by the Green Mafia, Trenton based groups like NJ PIRG (now Environment NJ), NJ Environmental Federation (now Clean Water Action) and Sierra Club, would issue their own Annual Reports based on the DEP Report data and hold a State House press conference blasting the corporate polluters and demanding that DEP ratchet down on them.

The NJ Press Corps would all write stories, tailored to polluters in the region of their readership.

The obvious objectives of this exercise by DEP, environmental groups, and the media were to hold corporate polluters and DEP accountable and to educate the public about serious environmental problems and document DEP’s efforts to regulate polluters and protect public health and the environment.

But the corporate polluters strongly opposed all that – for obvious reasons – and they have used political power to stop DEP from issuing those Reports.

I recently wrote about the implications of these DEP Reports, in terms of how DEP actually uses the data in them, see:

• NJ Has Gone Backwards On Environmental Justice Over The Last 20 Years

Despite these Reports being mandated by NJ environmental laws, the NJ Legislature – beholden to the same corporate polluters that have captured DEP –  has not objected and forced DEP to issue those Reports.

As a result, the public is ill informed about serious threats to their health and environment. Hence, corporate polluters, captured DEP, and bought politicians all get a pass.

But we have not surrendered to the manipulation of Foundation money, to corporate pressure, to the co-optation and gaslighting by DEP, or to the phagocytosis of the Green Mafia, and we continue to do corporate accountability/DEP regulatory work and warn the public, e.g., see:

• 25 Years After Bhopal Chemical Disaster: NJ’s “Fatal Fifteen” Shows it Can Happen Here
• Murphy DEP Updates Air Pollution Cancer Risk Levels, Ignores Cumulative Impacts And Environmental Justice Considerations
• Murphy DEP Urged To Close Regulatory Loopholes On Climate Change, Risk Assessment and Hazardous Air Pollutants
• Murphy DEP Fails To Consider Climate Or Public Health Risks Of Multiple Toxic Air Emissions From Paulsboro Refinery
• As He Touts Climate & Environmental Justice Policies, NJ Gov. Murphy’s DEP Proposes Renewal of Newark Garbage Incinerator Air Permit
• 18 Years After Scathing Criticism By Federal Judge For Ignoring “Environmental InJustice”, NOTHING HAS CHANGED AT NJ DEP
• Murphy DEP Commissioner McCabe Uses Industry Dominated Clean Air Council To Divert From Major DEP Failures to Regulate Air Pollution
• DEP Guts Science on Cumulative Cancer Risks in Paterson NJ

Now, the only time environmental groups and the media even mention these DEP chemical regulatory programs is when they opportunistically get involved when a toxic train derails and forces evacuation of a City (Paulsboro), a chemical plant explodes (Knapp Technologies, Lodi), or there is a massive fire, like the recent near catastrophe in Passaic City.

BTW, what ever happened to that Senate bill (see S2739) that was supposed to fix the major loopholes exposed by the Passaic City chemical fire?

Just as we predicted, it went to Senator Sarlo’s Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee to die, see:

• Did Chemical Industry Lobbyists Kill The Passaic City Fire Loophole Legislation?

Someone should ask Senator Smith about that – and maybe shame NJ’s Green Mafia while they’re at it.

Happy New Year! 2023 should be a hoot.