It Happened in NJ: Earth Day and the Short History of Environmentalism in Garden State

By Peter Zablocki

April 22, 2023, will be the fiftythird time the American people will celebrate Earth Day. The original celebration kicked off a decade of environmentalism which led to the creation of the Environment Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Surface Mining Control, and Endangered Species Act, among many others. A moment in time when factories could no longer blow black smoke into the blue skies or dump toxic waste into local rivers, at least without facing legal repercussions. Perhaps no other state has come as far in improving its environmental blueprint as the Garden State – once known as the nation’s landfill capital. And upon closer analysis, no area has embodied the spirit of the 1970s Environmental Movement that followed the first Earth Day more so than one of the state’s great natural wonders, the Meadowlands.

The first Earth Day, which saw 20 million Americans take to the streets in pro-environment demonstrations, showed the nation and government that there was passionate and deep support for environmental issues. The people of New Jersey have continued pushing that agenda ever since. Had it not been for specific environmental groups and agencies in the decades that followed, our state would look

LIC. #19HC00364200 much different today. The Port Authority raised millions of dollars in the early 1950s to buy up Morris County’s Great Swamp area to build a massive airport the size of Newark International Airport. The idea was struck down by a grassroots movement that pressured the state to turn the space into the Great Swamp National Refuge instead. Since then, two hundred forty species have been identified in the area, and thirtynine mammal species, some considered endangered – a much different sight than thousands of airplanes flying overhead and traffic jams polluting local neighborhoods.

When the state planners and real estate developers thought up 250,000 new housing units in New Jersey’s Pinelands in the 1960s, the then Governor imposed a moratorium on building development by introducing and pushing the Pinelands Protection Act through the state’s legislature. Yet, the Garden State’s biggest success story is the Meadowlands – a vast area of unfilled marshes and, at one time, the tri-state’s most extensive dumping ground. Someone once described it as a “swampy, mosquitoinfested jungle, where rusting auto bodies, demolition rubble, industrial oil slicks, and cattails merge in an unholy union.”

As per a past North Jersey article, a 1969 study by the health department found that continued on page 12