Murphy DEP Buys Political Support And Silences Faux Green Critics With Grants

The New CCC: Collaboration, Cop-Optation, Corruption

DEP Virtually Abandons Regulatory Enforcement –  Entire Focus Now About Patronage

Gov. Murphy’s Corporate Tax Cuts Would Slash $36 million, More Than Today’s Grants

If the model fits, wear it. And this model fits exactly the flow of money in the DEP grants mentioned below. Source of money is polluters, to DEP, to conservation group intermediaries, to projects.

Phil Murphy spread a lot of money around New Jersey to buy the kind of political support required to become Gov. He spent $16.3 million of his own money in 2017.

Echoing that classic old commercial for EF Hutton, a Wall Street investment firm: He earned the Governor’s seat the old fashioned way: he bought it.

Now, his DEP is doing exactly the same thing with the Faux Green community:

• MURPHY ADMINISTRATION AWARDS $24.3 MILLION THROUGH ITS NATURAL CLIMATE SOLUTIONS GRANT PROGRAM

I’ll make just one point about the merits of these grants.

DEP claims that the grants will sequester “32,710 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO₂e) by 2050.” (that’s about $733 per ton sequestered while the RGGI carbon price is about $13 per ton emitted. That’s a valid point, because the source of funds for today’s DEP grants  are proceeds from the sale of RGGI allowances. It would be far more cost effective and equitable to simply ratchet down on the RGGI cap to make polluters pay, or to impose regulatory mandates on carbon emissions, or to invest in energy conservation in low income homes or simply stop logging NJ forests.)

But instead of cost considerations, let’s put that carbon sequestration data in climate context: 32,710 metric tons, over 28 years, is just 1,168 tons per year.

NJ emits about 100 million tons of greenhouse gases annually.

So, 28 years of sequestration from these otherwise worthy projects are just 0.001% of ANNUAL emissions.

That’s a JOKE and a CORRUPT PATRONAGE PROGRAM, not a climate program.

DEP supported logging projects in the Pinelands and the Highlands result in new emissions that are FAR more carbon than that and limit future carbon sequestration far more than that.

The same goes for hundreds of air pollution permits, pipeline approvals, and land use development approvals that DEP rubber stamps every year with absolutely no review of the climate impacts or carbon emissions.

And the corruption here is blatantly obvious, as only a handful of recent examples demonstrates by groups that were funded by DEP today (and would never bite/criticize the hand that feeds/grants them):

• Pinelands Preservation Alliance recently aggressively publicly supported a huge 1,400 acre DEP logging plan in the Pinelands. Weeks later, they received a $581,500 DEP grant.

• NJ Conservation Foundation also supported that Pinelands logging plan. NJCF also formed its own astro-turf climate organization, called Rethink NJ. That group has failed to criticize the Gov.’s multiple climate failures and refused to support the work of or join the State’s largest 120 member climate coalition (Empower NJ) who is calling on the Gov. to stop approving fossil infrastructure (Moratorium Mondays) and to act meet the goals of his own Executive Orders on climate. (or to take what I’ve recommended as real actions to put teeth in NJ’s climate laws). Instead, Rethink NJ focuses on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and fails to pressure DEP to use its regulatory authority to kill pipelines and other fossil infrastructure (power plants, compressor stations). Jay Watson of NJCF is a former DEP Assistant Commissioner, so he has revolving door appearance issues as well.

• American Littoral Society has been virtually silenced on issues they have taken a leadership role on:  they’ve done nothing to challenge the Murphy DEP’s failure to enforce (remember that TMDL bill?) the Clean Water Act to prevent the ecological collapse of and restore Barnegat Bay (this is doubly shameful, because Tim Dillingham, head of ALS, hails from the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where he knows that the US EPA is using a TMDL cleanup plan to restore the Bay); DEP’s failure to enact long delayed numeric water quality standards for nutrients;

“The science is available now” to fix Barnegat Bay by setting firm pollution limits, said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, on Sandy Hook. The Christie administration “has to make a decision to use it.” (Asbury Park Press (8/7/14)

As we recently wrote, Barnegat Bay has gone from crisis to crickets – and Dillingham is one of many crickets.

Dillingham also ignores DEP’s proposal of a gaping “variance” loophole in Clean Water Act standards regulations; failure to strengthen CAFRA and limit coastal sprawl development; and failure to reform NJ’s Blue Acres and Coastal Management programs to consider a policy of “strategic retreat” from climate driven coastal flooding, sea level rise and storm surge. ALS is AWOL and crickets on all that and more, all issues they’ve led on in the past. ALS has received millions from prior DEP grants.

• NJ Audubon Society, a founder of the Keep It Green coalition that was created to fund open space purchases said nothing to criticize Gov. Murphy’s proposed corporate tax cuts, which would slash $36 million from open space funding, perhaps NJA’s highest priority issue. They also benefit indirectly from today’s grants as founder of the Partnership for Delaware River and also have revolving door appearance issues because Eileen Murphy, NJA head lobbyist is a retired career former DEP manager.

I could cite many more examples.

And all these groups SUPPORT DEP LOGGING, which is the OPPOSITE OF CARBON SEQUESTRATION.

It’s disgusting.