This article was reported by NJ State House News Service, a nonprofit publishing partner of NJ Spotlight News.
A “polluters pay” proposal that would make fossil fuel companies fund environmental cleanups passed on a 10-4 vote following a heated Assembly committee hearing.
The bill, A3735, would require oil, coal and natural gas companies to help pay for New Jersey’s response to climate change impacts. The legislation would establish a $50 billion fund to prevent and resolve climate-related disasters, and would create a body to oversee and monitor the money.
The fund would support areas including flood mitigation, infrastructure improvements, public health initiatives and extreme heat protections.
“It’s our communities that end up paying the cost for the long run, through the air we suck in, or the water we drink,” Assemblyman Balvir Singh (D-Burlington), a sponsor of the bill, told reporters on Tuesday. The fund would foster climate security for generations, he said.
A Democrat from Essex County, Assembly member Carmen Theresa Morales, said: “Doing nothing is not free. We’re already paying the price.”
The measure would move financial responsibility to the companies from the state and its taxpayers.
“When a small child makes a mess, as a parent, or – in my case – an uncle, we make them clean up that mess,” said Matt Smith, the regional organizer of Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates on environmental issues. “That’s not punishment. That’s responsible parenting.”
The hearing exposed a sharp divide between environmental activists, who argued in favor of the bill, and business groups, refinery operators and local operators who warned that the bill could increase costs and threaten jobs.
“Shame on you. Shame,” Assemblyman Jay Webber, (R-Morris), told the activists. The bill “takes money and directs it to special-interest groups that you like, you control and you want to benefit. We had a witness here who said the best thing about this is that 51% of the proceeds go to people we like — communities of color and other people.”
That, Webber said, is “a cash grab.”
“And it hurts everybody in the state,” he said, “including the people you claim to be helping, who have pension funds and retirement accounts invested in these companies and need them to succeed in order to have a secure retirement.”
The committee’s vote cleared a path for a full Assembly vote. An identical measure passed the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and is pending before the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.
