"Most of the licensed site professionals are very, very good at what they do," she said.
Environmentalists like some elements of the administration's proposal, including allowing the DEP more authority to choose specific remedies and more requirements to notify the public about the sites and potential remedies.
But they argue that the central element of the proposal, the licensed site professionals, is a bad idea because the state should not be delegating its responsibility to protect the public.
"The state has a constitutional obligation to protect our safety, including ensuring that contaminated sites are remediated," said Mike Pisauro of the New Jersey Environmental Lobby. "It can't say, 'The job's too hard to protect our citizens, we want someone else to do it,' and pass the buck, but that's exactly what the state's doing here."
"We have seen time and time again consultants telling us the pollution is remediated and safe only to find out at great expense it's not," Pisauro added.
Adam Liebtag, a staff representative for Communications Workers of America Local 1034, which represents DEP employees, said the proposal would reduce DEP staff professionals to "checklist checkers" with little real authority.
"Morale is very low," Liebtag said of the DEP. "People feel like the administration is making decisions to privatize or outsource the very reasons that they became environmental professionals to begin with. Not having the resources or tools to do your job properly is disheartening enough, but when the department decides to just outsource it, that's a crushing blow to morale."
Contact staff writer Adrienne Lu at 609-989-8990 or alu@phillynews.com.
