In a move that will be remembered as one of the most cynical betrayals of environmental justice in recent New Jersey history, the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners voted—6 to 2—to greenlight a fourth fossil-fuel power plant in Newark’s Ironbound.
That’s right. Not one. Not two. Not three. Four massive, pollutant-spewing monuments to bureaucratic inertia and systemic disregard for human life now stake their claim in a neighborhood already choking on the smog of indifference.
The location? 600 Wilson Avenue, ground zero for another layer of chemical insult in a working-class, immigrant-rich community that has endured a century of industrial degradation and come to the table—time and again—with science, solutions, and pleas for air their children can breathe…