Green Jersey

Paper: N.J. shouldn’t have missed emissions deadline

The Courier-Post has an editorial today that criticizes the Corzine administration for missing the first major deadline of the Global Warming Response Act. The act, signed by Corzine last summer, calls for the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. How? That was to be worked out by the Department of Environmental Protection by last Monday. By then, the DEP and other relevant state agencies were to have prepared a report that recommends the legislative and regulatory actions needed to achieve the 2020 reduction.

DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura told the Asbury Park Press last week that June 30 was a “target date” and the delay happened because information is still being gathered, meetings with stakeholders are continuing and the report is still being developed. She told the Courier-Post the delay occurred for mostly procedural reasons. The delay was first noted by the group N.J. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

From the editorial:

The DEP, like so many agencies and officials in Trenton, just don’t see it. Things like this are why people are frustrated and cynical about our government. Anything meaningful gets delayed. It gets bogged down in procedure and government red tape and malaise. Government officials think nothing of it. To them, it’s just acceptable as the way things work.

It’s not right. Cutting polluting emissions from cars and trucks is a noble goal, one that should be a priority for a state that has significant air quality issues and sits square in the middle of the congested, industrial Northeast. There’s no excuse for the DEP missing a deadline when it had an entire year to come up with a plan of action. The DEP and the governor need to get on this immediately. This plan should be the DEP’s top priority this month. It should be finished as soon as possible.

The DEP told N.J. PEER the plan would be ready by mid- to late August, according to the Courier-Post and Bergen Record.

The state’s separate-but-related Energy Master Plan is currently in draft form and under review.

Read more about the deadline delay here and here.