In addition to asking foundations and conservation organizations for donations, the public is asked to make an investment in Sterling Forest. The dividends are cleaner air, cleaner water and more open space. In Ocean County, the incidence of childhood cancer is significantly higher than the rest of the United States. Legislation has been introduced to continue this study.
Plans call for the development of a computer simulated model to track water flow.
This, combined with contaminant data for the Superfund site near the cancer cluster will better determine whether it was water contamination that has led to this cancer cluster. In the January Sierra Activist we discussed the failure of the NJ Assembly to move legislation to phase out the use of diesel buses by NJ Transit and promote the use of alternate fuels. A-1714 was voted out of the Science and Environment Committee. The Whitman administration has bowed to pressure and withdrawn proposed rule changes having the effect of weakening wetlands protection. Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of Interior, has signed a Record of Decision authorizing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce at least 3 pairs of endangered Mexican gray wolves into the Gila Headwaters Ecosystem of southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona.