NJ Regulators Lose Key Bay Dredging Slime “Piggyback” Permit
- Through its tourism and fishing industry, Barnegat Bay generates billions of dollars.
- New authorization is required for the state to continue operating its expanding dump.
For the purpose of cleaning up a profitable coastal recreation zone, environmental and transportation officials in the state of New Jersey were prohibited from dumping their dredging muck in a containment area that a state court determined was operating under a permit that was invalid and no longer valid.
The Superior Court Appellate Division ruled on Friday that the state cleanup efforts for Barnegat Bay, which are the brackish waters inland from the state’s famed 18-mile Long Beach Island, are not permitted to store dredging trash in a storage facility that was initially permitted in 1983 for private owners with the exception of the facility.
Following the purchase of the property by the state twenty years later, environmental regulators committed a violation of the law when they permitted transportation officials to “piggyback” off of the site’s previous permission.