Lessons from the New Jersey Comparative Risk Project

Abstract

Experience is a great teacher, and learning from someone else’s experience can make the lessons much less painful. This chapter shares lessons learned from the recently completed New Jersey Comparative Risk Project (NJCRP). It briefly describes the project and offers a preliminary evaluation of its adequacy, value, effectiveness, and legitimacy. The main purpose of this broadly scoped project was to inform a state regulatory agency’s strategic decisions. The project involved a large number of technical experts from a variety of fields, plus public officials, high-profile stakeholders, and members of the general public over a four-year period. It gathered and organized a vast amount of useful information, but found that there was still an inadequate scientific basis for a precise single ranking of environmental threats. The NJCRP instead developed policy findings using a humbler approach that involved less aggregation. Highlighted environmental threats for New Jersey included land use change, indoor environmental problems, a set of traditionally regulated pollutants, and invasive exotic species.