Land Use Change Top Environmental Threat To Garden State
The conversion of undeveloped land poses the top ecological and socioeconomic risk to New Jerseys environment and people, according to the final report of the New Jersey Comparative Risk Project. Indoor and outdoor pollution, and invasive species are the other major threats to New Jersey, known as the Garden State.
The report was funded by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was overseen by a 19 member steering committee. Daniel Rubenstein, professor and chair of Princeton Universitys Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and Sheryl Telford, business team manager for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., served as co-chairs of the steering committee.
Under their direction, 73 experts analyzed and ranked 88 chemical, physical and biological factors, called stressors, according to their relative impacts on human health, ecological quality and socioeconomic conditions.
The experts provided 178 detailed analyses of stressors from acid precipitation and benzene to West Nile Virus and zinc.
Physical alteration of habitat, a consequence of land use change, is one of the most compelling ecological problems in New Jersey, the panel found. They said that statewide, habitat loss and fragmentation are leading to species loss and permanent destruction within several ecosystems.
For example, the mountainous highlands of northwest New Jersey, an area which provides one-third of New Jersey’s drinking water, is being consumed by sprawl.
Invasive species pose a serious ecological threat to the states forests, waterways, wetlands and other natural ecosystems, according to the report.
“Invasive insect species accidentally or deliberately brought from foreign countries have the potential to destroy native forests while exotic plant species threaten biodiversity and affect the native food source for wildlife,” the report says.
Insects such as the Asian long-horned beetle and the hemlock woolly adelgid have the potential to destroy entire forest ecosystems. More than 90 percent of the states hemlock stands have suffered various degrees of defoliation, the panel found.
An invasive species, the zebra mussel, a thumbnail sized mollusk that has destroyed ecological communities in waterways in dozens of states, poses a significant ecological threat to the states freshwater ecosystems, the report warns.
The panel found that the greatest human health risks resulted from indoor pollution, such as secondhand tobacco smoke, lead, radon, indoor asthma inducers, indoor pesticide use, and carbon monoxide.
Children are among the most at risk populations in New Jersey because they are more susceptible to statewide exposure levels, the report says.
Outdoor air pollutants, including ground level ozone, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, also pose significant ecological and health risks despite progress in reducing outdoor air pollution, removing lead from gasoline and remediating brownfields sites, the study found.
Greater exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the Sun due to ozone depletion is highlighted as an ecological, socioeconomic and human health risk.
The historic use of chemicals and their persistence in soils and sediments is called another significant ecological threat.
Based on the New Jersey Comparative Risk Project findings, the steering committee recommended 19 actions. The DEP should collaborate with state and local planning officials to design and implement strengthened efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of land use change, they said.
The steering committee recommended that DEP and other state environmental managers should join the Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) to examine systematically indoor pollutions impacts and management options, and to take action against these problems. Officials from both agencies already have begun coordinating preparations for an action plan covering reduction of indoor pollution.
Releasing the results of the comparative risk project, Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Bradley Campbell said the report validates the priorities of Governor James McGreevey.
In his 2003 State of the State address, delivered in January, Governor McGreevey said, “We must find the will to stop development that costs more than it saves, takes more than it gives, and that diminishes our lives and degrades our surroundings. Every day in New Jersey we lose 50 acres to uncontrolled, thoughtless development – 50 acres every single day which we will never get back. It is time to draw the line and say no more to mindless sprawl.”
“Citizens are paying the price through depleted drinking water supplies, road congestion, polluted air and critical habitat loss,” Campbell said.
In his address, the governor pledged to give New Jersey towns “the legal firepower from our administration to fight developers when they need it.”
McGreevey set a goal of creating or upgrading 200 local parks, adding at least two state parks in the next three years, and planting 100,000 new trees across the Garden State.
Provided by theEnvironmental News Service.
