In an effort to reduce toxic discharges into our waterways by combating illegal pollution, New Jersey passed the Clean Water Enforcement Act of 1990. This act requires that minimum fines be imposed on all illegal polluters. Since the passage of this act, New Jersey has moved to 41 st in the nation for illegal dumping. This is great progress seeing that New Jersey was ranked 16 th in 1995 and 36 th in 1997. Unfortunately, the decrease in illegal dumping is overshadowed by an increase in the amount of legal discharges of toxic and other chemical pollutants into New Jersey s waters.
New Jersey is currently the largest discharger of reproductive toxins in the nation.
In 1997 New Jersey polluters discharged three times the amount of reproductive toxins as New York which is second in the nation for toxins that have been linked to birth defects and infertility. New Jersey ranks seventh in the nation for carcinogens dumped into waterways. In 1996 the DEP introduced a 1,500 page regulatory proposal which if adopted would have allowed millions of gallons of more pollution into New Jersey's waterways. Following massive public outcry against the proposal, the Whitman administration announced that it would not adopt the key rollback section of the proposal and initiated a stakeholder process with the goal of creating a clean water program that will protect us and our natural resources into the 21 st Century. Drafts of clean water standards from the stakeholder process contain unacceptable weakening of existing water quality protections.