2. The Legislature finds and declares that due to New Jersey’s industrial history, large areas in the State‘s urban and suburban areas formerly used for commercial and industrial purposes are underused or abandoned; that many of these properties, often referred to as brownfields, are contaminated with hazardous substances and pose a health risk to the nearby residents and a threat to the environment; and that these sites can be a blight to the neighborhood and a financial drain on a municipality because they have no productive use, and fail to generate property taxes and jobs. The Legislature further finds that often there are legal, financial, technical, and institutional impediments to the efficient and cost-effective cleanup of brownfield sites as well as all other contaminated sites wherever they may be. The Legislature finds and declares that the State needs to ensure that the public health and safety and the environment are protected from the risks posed by contaminated sites and that strict standards coupled with a risk based and flexible regulatory system will result in more cleanups and thus the elimination of the public’s exposure to these hazardous substances and the environmental degradation that contamination causes.

The Legislature therefore declares that strict remediation standards are necessary to protect public health and safety and the environment; that these standards should be adopted based upon the risk posed by discharged hazardous substances; that unrestricted remedies for contaminated sites are preferable and the State must adopt policies that encourage their use; that institutional and engineering controls should be allowed only when the public health risk and environmental protection standards are met; and that in order to encourage the cleanup of contaminated sites, there must be finality in the process, the provision of financial incentives, liability protection for innocent parties who clean up, cleanup procedures that are cost effective and regulatory action that is timely and efficient.

L.1997, c.278,s.2.