New Jersey is not doing enough for our environment

Bukola Adeleye, Writer

New Jersey is known as the Garden State. However, there are serious underlying environmental problems in our community, ranging from the dirty water at our shores to unhealthy ground levels of ozone. With President Donald Trump now scrapping Environmental Protection Agency regulations, these problems, which directly affect our health, are likely to get worse.

 

Surprisingly, Jersey City has a beach in Liberty State Park. However,  the “beach” is so dirty and unkempt that it is commonly dubbed as a wasteland or dump. That area should be cleaned up and preserved, so that it can become a new home for all of the plant and animal life that used to live there. It can also become a public beach where tourists can play around and observe the wildlife with a strong set of rules against littering and poaching.

 

We cannot blame only ourselves for the dirty beach. Much of our water system is more than a century old and cannot handle the torrential downpours that New Jersey sometimes receives. This causes untreated sewage to spill onto the Jersey Shore, which results in some of our shores looking like they do now, dirty, polluted and filled with bacteria. The cost of actually fixing or upgrading these water systems is at least $8 billion, as reported by NorthJersey.com.

 

New Jersey has also never met the health requirements for ground-level ozone, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Ground-level ozone is air pollution filled with smoke and chemical fumes, which can irritate respiratory systems, reduce lung function, aggravate asthma and chronic lung disease or cause permanent damage to the lungs, according to the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education. This is very dangerous to people who are sensitive to the air, like asthmatics, children and senior citizens.

 

With Trump in the White House, New Jersey faces a growing issue with EPA regulations established by the Obama administration now being removed. Scrapping the regulations will increase reliance on fossil fuels and eliminate limits on potent greenhouse gases like methane, as reported by njspotlight.com.

 

Some efforts are being made to rid us of such problems. In New Jersey, solar-power became the largest source of energy as of 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. There are also major funders that are willing to help out with New Jersey’s environmental issues, not just cities working alone, according to njnonprofits.org and sustainable jersey.com.
We as a community can contribute to the efforts of these major funders by supporting projects like a Kickstarter campaign for the largest air purifier that turns polluted air into gemstones, created by Studio Roosegaarde, a team of designers and engineers. We can donate money to effective organizations that are protecting water and land, and try to save water and energy. We can also write to our representatives in Congress about Trump scrapping the EPA regulations and organize a community sweep to make  Jersey City cleaner. If the people act as a community in unity, we can make a great difference in New Jersey.