Sierra Club Mourns Passing of Congressman William J. Hughes

Former Congressman William “Bill” J. Hughes died Wednesday in his Ocean City home. He was 87 years old. Hughes represented the 2nd Congressional district, much of coastal South Jersey, from 1975 to 1995. During his tenure in Congress, Hughes was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, where he chaired the Subcommittee on Crime (1981–1990) and the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and Judicial Administration (1991–1994). Hughes also served on the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, which had jurisdiction over numerous issues of importance to his coastal district.

“Our hearts and sympathy go out to William Hughes’s family for their loss. He was a wonderful man and will be greatly missed. Bill was an environmental champion in Congress for two decades. He was a real leader for clean water, clean air, and the environment. He was the original sponsor of the Pinelands Protection Act which was originally passed to protect it from pipelines. He was a sponsor of the Health Waste Anti Dumping Act, the Dumping Ban Act of 1998, and the Marine Plastic Pollution Control Act. He was also a sponsor of the Safe Drinking Water Act and a champion of protecting our fisheries from overfishing and our marine environmental overall. The club worked with him very closely and endorsed him on every one of his elections. No Congressman has ever measured up to him in that district since,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “When you walk along the beaches of the Jersey Shore and see clean water or through the preserved areas of the Pinelands, that is William Hughes’s legacy, protecting our ocean and the Pinelands.”