“He really was the only governor we’ve ever had who was a true environmentalist, not only in his heart, but in the actions he did,” said former Sierra Club president Jeff Tittel of former Gov. Jim Florio, who died Sunday. Tittel and others praised Florio for a legacy of environmental activism that spanned a lifetime.
Florio came of age during an era of awakening about industrial pollution in the United States, As a congressman from Camden, he wrote landmark legislation —the Superfund law that made polluters pay for cleaning up hazardous waste — and dedicated his political career to protecting natural resources like New Jersey’s Pinelands. “When you drive around New Jersey and you see a toxic site being cleaned up, when you see the pristine waters in the Highlands, when you see the beautiful Pinelands, when you see beaches that are clean and water that’s pure — that’s Jim Florio’s legacy,” Tittel.
