As the New Jersey Supreme Court recently noted in Malanga v. Township of West Orange, municipalities can sell or improve upon public property in a number of ways.¹ However, a redevelopment designation appears to be the best way for a municipality to maintain the greatest degree of control over the future of a given parcel, in terms of retaining ownership, choosing a developer and deciding the use to which the parcel will be put. Without such a designation, in order to facilitate non-publicly funded development of city-owned property, a city would have to auction property off to the highest bidder at an open public auction, a risky process over which the city could easily lose control.² Furthermore, though a municipality can impose conditions on the sale and restrictions on the use of property sold at auction,³ it cannot convey property for nominal consideration without a redevelopment designation, unless the property is conveyed to a very narrow set of noncommercial entities.⁴
Read MoreThis analysis investigates the available legal remedies for residents of Newark’s Ironbound and similarly positioned communities that could be used to halt or possibly reverse the concentrating of pollution sources in their neighborhoods. After reviewing the myriad health harms concentrated in minority urban neighborhoods and the history of Environmental Justice (EJ) litigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, this best-in-class student paper argues for alternative advocacy strategies. Through a combination of policy changes and the use of hybridized legal schemes typically unassociated with environmental law, the Ironbound may yet find relief from the asthma epidemic which has so far been unaddressed. These strategies include i) Empowering the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, ii) Seeking State & Local Protection, iii) Claims under The Takings Clause and iv) Blending Environmental Justice and Disability Law.
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