Date : Fri, 9 Sep 2016 17:26:22 -0400
DEP Tire Audit Shows Budgets Have Consequences
A recent audit by the Office of Legislative Services of the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Tire Recycling Program has shown that stealing money from the DEP budget has consequences. They found that scrap tires have reemerged on previously remediated sites along with new sites. It is important to collect scrap tires because they can become breeding grounds for mosquitos, leading to outbreaks of illnesses such as West Nile Virus and Zika Virus.
“New Jersey has a serious problem with tire dumps around the state. The Legislature passed a bill in 2004 to raise funds to get rid of these scrap tires but since then, they the money has been diverted to other purposes. This means that the tires that create environmental and health issues are not being cleaned up or recycled. Now that there’s no money for enforcement and we’re seeing the same problems as we did back then pop up. We pay a fee on tires that is supposed to go to recycling efforts like this program. Instead this money is being raided and the DEP cannot do their job collecting scrap tires. There are consequences to these budget raids and this is only one of them,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “This isn’t the only program that’s been hurt by raids. They’ve taken money from the Clean Energy Fund and from recycling grants. They’ve taken it from programs to clean-up brownfields and close landfills. These program raids have consequences to the environment and public health. In this case, this is a program is treadbare and has gone flat.”
The 2004 law put a $1.50 tax on new tires. This raised $2.3 million a year that was supposed to go towards cleaning up 3.2 million scrap tires around the state. That money is constantly being raided for the budget. For example, $9.2 million alone was taken for snow removal by the DOT. Now that the program no longer receives the money these problems are resurfacing. During this audit, 18 of the 26 inspected sites were out of compliance and required additional clean-ups and 11 new sites were identified. This audit identified 11 new tire dumps on top of the 18 other sites that are also noncompliant. They found somewhere between 350,000 and 550,000 tires at these sites. One site alone had 40,000 tires when it was only designated to have 5,000.
“It’s clear that balancing the books on other departments undercuts important programs and that’s why we end up with problems like this one. We pass legislation to fix a problem but when the money is stolen, we end up back where we started with the same problem all over again. These funds were supposed to be used to get rid of these dangerous tires in our communities. They contain lead and heavy metals that leach into the groundwater. If these tire piles caught on fire, the toxic chemicals are released into the air and water, causing an environmental calamity. This audit shows us that by raiding funds from the DEP, it hurts important programs like this one that helps protect New Jersey’s public health, safety, and environment,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “The Christie Administration has been giving the public a Snow Job. Someone might end up with West Nile Virus because they took this money to plow roads instead.”
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Jamie Zaccaria Administrative Assistant New Jersey Sierra Club office: (609) 656-7612 https://www.facebook.com/NJSierraClub * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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Received on 2016-09-09 14:26:22