New Jersey lawmakers score low on the environment

Environmental rollbacks over the last year are spurring a New Jersey environmental group to look closely at legislators’ votes.

An environmental group is giving New Jersey lawmakers poor marks for their voting records.

Environment New Jersey rates lawmakers on votes to protect the state’s natural resources every two years.  The average score in both the Senate and Assembly dropped to 55 percent, down 20 percentage points from its previous ranking.

The group’s Field Director, Dennis O’Malley, says environmental protections have been under attack more often lately.

“There were rollbacks on both open space and water quality and those rollbacks didn’t just happen,” he says. “There was a lot of organized support from the development community that was saying let’s move ahead in a time of economic recession and relax environmental protections.”

O’Malley says his group will be focusing now on how lawmakers will vote on measures to reduce storm water pollution along the shore and Barnegat Bay.