DMUAdmin

President Bush is trying to make us sick. What other conclusion can we reach regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent relaxation of the clean air rule known as New Source Review? The revised regulation now makes it easier, and cheaper, for hundreds of old coal-fired power plants to upgrade without first installing previously required equipment to limit pollution.

There’s been a great deal of buzz over the new rule from the usual players on both sides of the pollution debate. The Midwestern power plants lobbied long and hard for the new rules to exempt them from antipollution requirements–something which they regarded as detrimental to their bottom line. Environmental and public health groups that fought for the Clean Air Act’s passage in 1970 and its enforcement ever since are predictably beside themselves with frustration–seeing three decades of work take a backseat to Big Business once again within a matter of days.

It is difficult to explain the type of bond that can develop between grandparent and grandchild when grandparents play an active role in the lives of their children’s children. It is nearly impossible to put into words this connection that is unlike any other for the individuals involved, and yet many grandparents and grandchildren have experienced this profound connection.

The grandparent/grandchild relationship is profound, in part, because it forms the connection between past and present– serving as a fundamental link between the history and future of a family. This link is especially critical when a parent is deceased, as in the case recently considered by the State Supreme Court.

On June 30, the New Jersey State Senate and Assembly unanimously passed legislation to create the Office of the Child Advocate within the State Department of Law and Public Safety. The legislature’s action was a significant move toward enacting the measure I introduced nearly two years ago. This measure would institute an independent watchdog to represent the interests of our State’s most vulnerable children–those under the care of the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS). The legislation now awaits the Governor’s signature.

The tragic death of 7-year-old Faheem Williams shocked the entire nation, as did numerous other incidents involving children under DYFS supervision which were reported in the wake of young Faheem’s death. Department of Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn Harris announced in February that 123 children have died in New Jersey in the past five years–a rate of nearly 25 children per year. Of the 123 deaths, two-thirds of the children were from families under DYFS supervision or with closed DYFS cases. These statistics have clearly exposed the failings of New Jersey’s child protection system.

In Governor McGreevey’s State of the State Address, he recognized one of the key problems affecting the lives of many New Jerseyans: excessive sprawl. According to the Governor, the state loses 50 acres of land a day to uncontrolled development. That is a loss in land that New Jersey’s citizens cannot afford.

As a representative of one of the most developed areas in the State, I can attest to the problems of overdevelopment firsthand. All one has to do is travel on Route 17 near the intersection of Route 4 in Paramus at rush hour on any given weekday to see what sprawl can do. That person would see unending lines of cars at a complete standstill. These roadways cannot handle the number of commuters brought into the area as a result of sprawl.