970 of N.J.'s waterways are polluted, state admits Information quietly revealed at session with low attendance
BY TOM BALDWIN GANNETT STATE BUREAU
TRENTON -- They issued no press release. They didn't post it on the public notice board.
But on Thursday, on three days'notice, the state conducted a "public information session" to reveal that 970 bodies of water are polluted in one way or another.
At that 3:30 p.m. session, about 17 people attended in a conference room that could seat more than 100. This, said environmental activists, is how the state Department of Environmental Protection tries to slip bad news past the public's radars.
"They are trying to hide the data that our water quality is going down," said Jeff Tittel, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club.
"I have no idea why he would be saying that," said Leslie McGeorge, administrator of the DEP's water monitoring and standards program.
McGeorge said water quality has not gone down, and that the state is using new methods that set the pollution bar higher.
"It's representing about the same," McGeorge said, adding that some of the waters identified were polluted in just one category.
Every two years, the federal Environmental Protection Agency requires states to assay their water quality in what's known as the "impaired waters list." Governments and regulators at several levels use the assay to administer growth and remediation.
McGeorge put the best face on it. Activists howled.
"It is a measure of these water bodies that we are saying are impaired for some use,"McGeorge said, adding that the report "is not a final list."
Bill Wolfe, a former DEP employee who now is director of the state chapter of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said, "Given how bad this news is, no wonder the state tried to low-ball this report."
"The quality of state waters is getting worse each year while the state sits on its thumbs," Wolfe said.
Tittel said the report shows that water quality in the northern counties is degrading in a westward march as development moves out in concentric circles from Middlesex, Essex and Hudson counties.
He said the report shows the reverse is true in South Jersey, where waters degrade in an easterly flow from the Philadelphia area toward the Pine Barrens and produce acreage that give the state its Garden State nickname.
McGeorge said she couldn't respond to that, and said the study is more a snapshot and not a trend. Virtually every body of water in the state suffers some sort of failure, be it for pollutants, lack of oxygen or for other reasons.
"There are very few bodies of water that meet that high bar. We set a very, very high bar,"McGeorge said.
To view the report: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/wmm/sgwqt/wat/integratedlist/integratedlist2006.html
