The Trump administration’s proposal to cut funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will directly impact federal safeguards for clean water, air and natural resources in this state we’re in. The proposal would roll back decades of progress in protecting public health and environmental quality.
Here in New Jersey, we too are debating the impact of cuts to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection proposed by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration. And since New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection gets significant funding from the EPA, the impacts to New Jersey would be magnified.
Over the past two decades, staffing at the Department of Environmental Protection — an agency entrusted with safeguarding our state’s clean water and air, protecting wildlife and providing public recreation at parks and natural areas — has been sharply reduced year after year.
From a high of 4,000 employees in the 1990s, the New Jersey DEP operates with less than 2,700 today. The result is less capacity to carry out the agency’s many functions, from stopping polluters to protecting threatened and endangered species to keeping bathrooms open at our parks.
Gov. Christie’s proposed budget would cut DEP staffing even further.
The New Jersey League of Conservation Voters testified before the state Assembly that New Jersey is put at risk by the proposed funding cuts. “These reductions in capacity are dangerous and weaken the department’s ability to protect our natural resources, water and land,” according to Drew Tompkins, public policy coordinator for the League.
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