New Jersey Comparative Risk Project Home Page

What Is this Project?

This is a project sponsored by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and carried out with assistance from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Funding comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other sources. The project will compare New Jersey's environmental problems to one another in order to guide strategic planning by state government and to foster public discussion on environmental issues. The Steering Committee Charter details the guiding principles of the project.

Goals

Find answers to these questions: (1) How do different environmental issues compare to each other in their impacts on human health, ecological quality, and socio-economic conditions in New Jersey ? (2) What is an effective way to systematically compare how well various strategies deal with an environmental issue? (3) What are the gaps in existing knowledge that need to be filled to fully answer the first two questions?
Use the best available scientific information and diverse perspectives on environmental issues to inform answers to the three questions above
Ensure that those answers will be taken into account in revising the next stages of two major New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) initiatives: its Strategic Plan and its Performance Partnership Agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Build a state-wide consensus about which environmental issues have the worst undesirable impacts that (1) need remedying, and (2) have not yet been addressed by current public- or private-sector solutions

How This Project is Organized

A 15-25 member Steering Committee, composed of diverse representatives of environmentalist, business, academic, civic, and other perspectives, has produced a list of key environmental issues; specified how to assess these issues’ impacts on health, ecological quality, and socio-economic conditions, and how to assess the effectiveness of environmental strategies; and rank issues according to their unaddressed impacts. The NJCRP Operating Rules provide procedural standards for the Steering Committee.
Experts from within and outside NJDEP have formed three groups (one each on health, ecological quality, and socio-economic conditions) to estimate environmental issues’ impacts, and a fourth group will apply the draft strategy-assessment criteria to one or more pilot issues; all groups are using the best available science consistent with a broad, statewide and timely analysis.
Broader public advice on the environmental issue list, impact assessment criteria, issue ranking, and other matters is being obtained through such means as focus groups, town meetings around New Jersey, and public opinion surveys; short briefings on issue impacts are periodically prepared for the general public and the press.
A project team (comprising NJDEP staff from the Division of Science and Research, and staff from Rutgers University) oversees the project and provides support (e.g., meeting facilitation; report drafting; fund-raising).

How You Can Participate

Check back to this web site once a month
Get our newsletter
Interact with members of the Project’s steering committee
Become a member of an impact assessment group
Take part in a project focus group or town meeting or survey

Timing

The Steering Committee began the project in Fall 1998, completed its deliberations in Spring 2002, and published its report in Summer 2003.

Sources for More Information

We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Please send them to the Project Team members below.

Martin Rosen, Division of Science, Research & Technology, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
Clinton Andrews, Department of Urban Planning & Policy Development, Rutgers University

Note that this is not an official NJDEP web page.This page maintained by Clinton Andrews. Last updated on July 29, 2003.