Whether it’s truck traffic in and out of Port Newark or trash incineration in the Ironbound, the predominantly Black and brown residents of the state’s largest city are subjected to environmental injustice from multiple sources that sometimes slip past state law meant to stop them.

To counter the onslaught, Newark’s local lawmakers will take matters into their own hands on Wednesday, with the introduction of a city ordinance that would “prohibit any new or expanding fossil fuel facility, including fossil fuel power generation.”

A second, related ordinance would prohibit the “use of city funds” for those purposes.

Both measures are sponsored by City Council President C. Lawrence Crump, who was chosen to lead the council by fellow members after his predecessor, Lamonica McIver, was elected to Congress a year ago.

“It’s time to pick up the mantle,” Crump told NJ Advance Media.

Crump said he believed Newark would be New Jersey’s first municipality to ban power plants that burned fossil fuels.

The three main types of fossil fuels are coal, petroleum and natural gas. Among the three, only gas is used for power generation in New Jersey, accounting for about 49% of the state’s electricity. Nuclear energy generates 42% of the state’s power, and the rest is generated by renewable sources like wind and solar power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Coal burning plants still exist in other states, though New Jersey shut down its last two in 2022.

The pair of measures must be approved on first reading by a majority vote of the nine-member council at Thursday’s 6:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall, and then by a final vote following a public hearing at a later date.

The measures arise against the backdrop of a controversial plan by the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission to build a natural gas-burning backup power plant on the grounds of its sprawling wastewater treatment facility along Newark Bay at the eastern end of Wilson Avenue.

Crumb was careful to note that the proposed ban would not apply to the approved though not-yet-built PVSC backup power plant.

“The ordinance pushes for no new plants,” he said in a text.

The PVSC says the backup plant will help limit the kind of environmental damage caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, when raw or only partially treated wastewater from millions of commercial and residential customers was dumped into the bay after the storm surge knocked out power to the plant.

The PVSC voted to award a contract for the backup plant in October, after the state Department of Environmental Protection, under Gov. Phil Murphy, issued the PVSC a permit.

Opponents were outraged by both moves, insisting the backup plant was not needed, and branded Murphy a hypocrite for letting the DEP issue the permit after he had signed a state environmental justice law in 2020 intended to protect poor and minority victims from the damaging effects of overexposure to heavy industry’s byproducts.

The city and the Ironbound Community Corporation, or ICC, have filed separate but coordinated lawsuits in state Superior Court to block the plant, and a judge has issued a temporary stay on construction pending a final ruling.

That said, the PVSC issue is not what prompted Crump to introduce the local environmental justice measures. Instead, Crump said he was encouraged by Newark resident and environmental justice advocate Kim Gaddy, who heads the nonprofit South Ward Environmental Alliance.

The group and its affiliates, including the East Ward-based Ironbound Community Corporation, say carbon emissions from trucks carrying shipping containers out of Port Newark are to blame for elevated asthma rates among Newark children.

“One out of four children in the city of Newark has asthma, versus one out of 10 in Essex County’s surrounding towns,” said Gaddy, citing Rutgers School of Public Health figures from December 2024.

For years, the alliance, the ICC and other groups belonging to the Coalition for Healthy Ports have conducted an annual truck count documenting an increase in the number of tractor-trailers in and out of the port.

Leah Owens, a former lecturer at Rutgers University-Newark who has a PhD in urban systems, is the South Ward Alliance’s policy analyst.

Owens said concrete steps had been taken by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to reduce port-related emissions, including increasing ship-to-rail container operations and requiring ships to plug into land-based power outlets instead of using their engines to generate their own.

Without comparable local environmental justice laws anywhere else in the state, Owens and Crump acknowledged the city may be venturing into uncharted waters in terms of its authority to impose an outright ban on facilities normally regulated by state or federal agencies.

“It may very well be a conversation that needs to be had in terms of jurisdiction,” Owens said.

Newark Corporation Council Kenyatta Stewart deferred questions on the issue to the city council’s lawyer, Elmer Herrmann, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Regardless of the legal fine points, Owens welcomed the ordinances as local measures that could complement the broader effort to limit emissions that have unjustly sickened Newark children and adults.

“Unfortunately,” Owens said, “in the City of Newark, like other cities that are predominantly Black and brown and with people in poverty, we have been facing issues of environmental justice for a long time.”