On Nov 7th, a question will be on the Ballot asking that funds awarded to the State for Environmental Settlements be dedicated to Environment Improvements rather than used for general revenue purposes. The Conservancy strongly supports this concept and encourages everyone to vote YES on this Ballot Question.
Post Script from:
https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-election-2017-jersey-pollution-exxon-settlement.html
New Jersey is likely on the cusp of receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from companies settling pollution lawsuits. The largest of those is a proposed $225 million settlement with ExxonMobil for pollution near two refineries in the northern part of the state. Sunoco, BP and Shell have also settled with the state for pollution near gas stations. Together, those settlements could bring in another $165 million.
The state’s voters decided by a 2-1 margin Tuesday that the bulk of that money — and all future pollution payouts — will be spent on environmental projects, not on general state operations.
Environmentalists successfully pushed a constitutional amendment that will now require the legal payouts to go toward projects like building parks, removing dams or adding bike trails. If voters had rejected the amendment, all but $50 million would have gone into the state’s main checking account to pay for things like health insurance, prisons or schools.
Ed Potosnak, executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, one of the groups behind the ballot measure, says it will effectively create a “lockbox” for environmental uses.
“The administration [of outgoing Gov. Chris Christie] has been raiding those funds and diverting them away from polluted communities, away from environmental restoration projects that enhance the neighborhoods, that help restore the habitats, that [allow for] recreational usage of waterways available to residents,” he says. “Instead, that money has gone to general funds to make up for budget shortfalls and bad fiscal decisions.”
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Meanwhile, environmental groups are still contesting the 2015 Exxon settlement, which falls far short of the $8.9 billion in damages that the state had originally sought. Environmentalists charged that Christie’s office pushed for the deal for political reasons. Although the Christie administration has settled many large natural resource damage cases from previous administrations, it has not launched any of its own.