Jersey City – Clean Water Action joins its Electrify NJ partners and Mayor Fulop in drawing attention to electric vehicle options that could significantly reduce climate gases and related impacts– be they personal cars, trucks, buses, ride/car share options. The need to create the required charging station infrastructure, incentives to buy and commitment of transit and other dollars to advance electric vehicles in NJ could not be greater in the face of the climate crisis and as a path towards fast tracking the state’s 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.

Statement from Amy Goldsmith, Clean Water Action, State Director: “Everyone should enjoy the benefits of accelerating zero emission transit, trucks and personal vehicle use. The stakes couldn’t be higher than in low income and communities of color, like Jersey City and Newark, where its residents are disproportionately dependent on public transit-buses and rail-for transportation and disproportionately impacted by the cumulative impact of diesel and other forms of air pollution associated with Port Newark & Elizabeth, the largest port on the East Coast (3rd largest in the nation), where over 15,000 dirty diesel trucks go in and out of the port every day.

These ground level vehicular fumes are vacuumed up into our lungs causing lifelong health harms (heart attacks, cancer, strokes) to transit riders, workers and the community. Public transit done right – whether it’s a bus, rail, bike, ride or car share – can reduce our carbon footprint, ‘heat island effect’ (city temperatures hotter than suburbs), the number of children and elderly gasping for air from an asthma attack, ER visits and, more often than you think, premature death for those most vulnerable.”

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Since our founding during the campaign to pass the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972, Clean Water Action has worked to win strong health and environmental protections by bringing issue expertise, solution-oriented thinking and people power to the table. We will protect clean water in the face of attacks from a polluter friendly Administration and Congress. Clean Water Action has 150,000 members in NJ and nearly 1 million nationwide.  www.cleanwater.org/nj