Insights
Thought Leadership
April 21, 2023
NJDEP Adopts Environmental Justice Rules
On April 17, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) finalized its highly anticipated environmental justice (EJ) rules in the New Jersey Register. These regulations, which implement the EJ legislation that Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law in 2020, introduce new procedural and substantive requirements to which NJDEP and applicants for certain industrial facility permits must adhere with respect to various activities in historically overburdened communities. The eight types of facilities covered by the EJ rules are:
- major sources of air pollution (g., gas-fired power plants and cogeneration facilities);
- incinerators and resource recovery (aka "waste to energy") facilities;
- sewage treatment plants that process more than 50 million gallons of sewage per day;
- transfer stations and solid waste facilities;
- recycling facilities that receive at least 100 tons of recyclable material per day;
- scrap metal facilities;
- landfills; and
- medical waste incinerators, except those attendant to hospitals and universities.