Cleaner environment creates good jobs

By Judith A. Enck

Protecting our environment creates jobs and makes our communities healthier places in which to live.

The Environmental Protection Agency has a great example of environmental job creation in the Camden area, where cleanup work at just one site put about 330 people to work last year.

The Welsbach Gas Mantle Superfund site consists of two former gas mantle manufacturing facilities contaminated by the radioactive substance thorium, which was used to make the mantles in gaslights glow brighter. Waste materials from the manufacturing process contained both thorium and radium, and there is evidence that the contaminated material was used as construction fill in areas throughout Camden and Gloucester City.

The EPA has done a great deal of work over the past several years at the Welsbach site and has been successful in reducing the risk to nearby communities. Cleanup has been done at both gas-mantle facilities, as well as many residential and recreational properties. Within a few months, we expect to complete work at a local baseball field in Gloucester City, making it possible to return this property to the city for community use. In 2010, EPA spent about $27 million on this site, with about $13 million going to pay for labor.

Clearly, this process has been good for the communities affected by the contamination, but it has also had a positive impact on the local economy.

More than 90 percent of the people filling the 330 jobs at the Welsbach site came from the local area. Their employment was good for their families and for the local economy. Employed workers had salaries to spend in area restaurants and businesses, providing an additional economic boost. Environmental cleanups, of course, range in size and scope, but job creation is replicated at every site. Last year, long-term Superfund site cleanups created about 1,500 jobs in New Jersey alone.

To create more of these kinds of jobs now, President Obama has sent Congress the American Jobs Act. It will put construction workers back to work, expand job opportunities for low-income youth and adults in cities such as Camden, create innovative job-training programs, and encourage employers to bring on unemployed workers.

So, if someone tells you that you have to choose between the environment and the economy, ask him to drive by the nearest Superfund site during a workday. They'll see people engaged in productive work that protects people's health, is good for the environment, and is good for the economy.