And I love to live so pleasantly
Live this life of luxury
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
In the summertime
In the summertime. Sunny Afternoon, The Kinks
Reminded me somewhat of the Delaware Watergap. But river flow much higher and water temperature much cooler.
For BLM details on this place, see this.
NJ environmental groups have their heads up their asses – again
So busy providing cover for Gov. Murphy they’re blind to corporate power
Perhaps folks missed a critical point that was buried in all the platitudes, but just yesterday, a broad coalition, which includes NJ environmental groups – Jersey Water Works – was given an Op-Ed platform at NJ Spotlight, see:
That Op-Ed opportunistically and cynically used COVID as a new found justification for their longstanding Foundation and corporate funded self serving project that seeks investments in clean water infrastructure.
That COVID opportunism alone is bad enough, but buried in all the platitudes, was a shameless attempt to obtain a publicly funded bailout of lost corporate revenues and profits.
Adding insult to injury, that shameless corporate bailout proposal was wrapped into a program purporting to benefit low income people:
The recommendations would first ensure that everyone can access water by extending the suspension of water shutoffs until 120 days after the end of the declared health emergency, waiving late fees, reconnecting service, and helping low-income water users pay arrears after the shutoff moratorium ends.
Note that JWW wants those “arrears” paid. They are not letting poor people off the hook.
And here’s the way those “arrears” would be paid, including a bailout of ALL the revenue and profits water companies lost during the COVID shut down, under the guise of a “relief program”:
The recommendations also proposed a relief program for water and wastewater utilities. State leaders could use a portion of available state and federal COVID-19 relief funds to offset water and wastewater utilities’ lost operating revenues.
Did you get that?
Let me repeat: private water companies, acting through a broad “collaborative” which includes NJ environmental groups, are using a public health crisis as justification for a “relief program” that would guarantee their revenues and profits would not be reduced as a result of the COVID emergency shutdown.
Did the environmental groups that are members of the Jersey Water Works coalition sign off on that corporate “relief program”?
This corporate bailout proposal – a recommendation to Gov. Murphy – seems to have generated no pushback.
I say this because just one day after this Op-Ed ran, NJ Spotlight today reports that Gov. Murphy has abandoned his commitment to provide $80 million for lead line replacement, see:
After they signed off on the JWW coalition’s corporate bailout request, NJ Future had no problem with this:
“The short-term outlooks pretty bleak,’’ conceded Gary Brune, policy manager at New Jersey Future, an organization that has been in the forefront of having the state better manage its issues with water infrastructure. “Obviously, the lead proposals haven’t gone anywhere.’’
After they signed off on the JWW coalition’s corporate bailout request, Environment NJ had no problem with this:
“The budget crunch is painful and it’s going to hurt everybody,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “Everything has changed. It does feel like lead isn’t on anyone’s radar screen.’’
Clean Water Action is a member of the JWW collaborative. Their consultant Dave Pringle had no problem with this:
“It’s really a tough situation,’’ said Dave Pringle, a consultant for Clean Water Action. “We clearly don’t have the money for the things that need to be funded.’’
WTF are these people thinking?
They make no demands for progressive ways to finance budget deficits caused by the COVID emergency – like special one time tax increases on the wealthy and corporations – or progressive ways to allocate any necessary austerity measures – like cuts to police and prisons and corporate subsidies – yet they swallow, with no resistance, cuts to public health programs targeted at poor and black people while they endorse a private water corporation bailout under the guise of a “relief program”.
What world do they live in?
The Language of an Elite PhD and Professional Planner Is Instructive
Conservationist calls her colleagues “bought” and DEP program “propaganda”
On June 3, I got an unsolicited email from someone I didn’t know.
The email complimented me and asked a series of detailed good questions on my May 19 post about the NESE pipeline. The author wrote:
Your analysis of the big picture policy implications for New Jersey should induce panic in our environmental community.
I think your analysis also presents an organizing opportunity specific to bolstering state’s powers under the CWA. I’m not sure what this should look like, which is why I’m writing you. […]
With gratitude to you for your analysis, and for sticking your neck out.Heather
Heather’s email stated she was a PhD, a professional planner, and head of the Lower Raritan Watershed Group. She was obviously familiar with my blog posts, if not all my work.
Without any background research on who Heather was, I substantively responded in good faith to her email – including at least 3 more of her replies that followed up with more questions – with detailed replies to what I thought were good and honest questions.
My replies were blunt, making it abundantly clear of my ideology and my loathing for NJ conservation groups and environmental leaders as either sold out corporate whores, incompetent, and worse.
This email dialogue included links to several of my prior posts, such that Heather – who approached me unsolicited – could clearly understand my “approach”, my past, and where I was coming from. In fact, I shared brutally honest personal assessments and very personal information with her.
So, to put it mildly, I was shocked to receive a response by Heather to my email complaining about the fact I learned that billionaire Peter Kellogg had more than doubled his financial support of NJ Audubon.
Heather’s reply to me provided detailed information and her personal assessments of Kellogg and DEP’s “conservation leadership program”.
Not surprisingly, after I’ve called out that corruption, Heather now wants her views and comments withdrawn. She does not want to be known as the source for my critical post.
Heather just emailed me to request that her words be deleted from my post:
While this is all true, I do sustain “hope” in the Chris Hedge’s sense of “holding out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others.” (thanks for the suggestion that I track this down, btw). I do maintain ties with these people and am in fact working to advance an urban habitat connectivity agenda with some of them, an agenda that is consistent with the LRWP’s commitment to Environmental Justice/Social Justice. I have hope that on an individual level some of them will eventually hold up a torch at the state level for what is right.
[…] As I was the most outspoken of the group on these things, the quote will no doubt be traced directly back to me if you could find your way to deleting my entire quotation I would appreciate that even more
thanks.
hf
Sorry Ms. Heather, it doesn’t work that way. As I replied:
My policy is to correct fact errors when I am made aware of them. Accordingly, I revised the attendees as you note below.
But sorry, if folks don’t ask – before providing it – that information is provided to me in confidence or off the record, then I don’t retract factually accurate materials that do not name individuals or represent ad hominem attacks.
Live and learn, I guess.
I also should have told her she obviously KNEW that I was including our emails in my posts, because I specifically included emails in the text of my June 3 post. After that June 3 post – which obviously revealed the I was including our email conversation in posts – Heather continued to send me emails – without any request for confidentiality or off the record status.
Not surprisingly, my reply really pissed Heather off!
It’s not surprising that Heather is embarrassed by her participation in this corruption. And for sharing her honest opinions with me. But that’s not my fault.
[update: I understand Heather’s plight – she called the DEP/Kellogg “leadership” program “propaganda” and said he colleagues were “bought”. Heather wrote (you can go back and read the complete text in my prior post):
Our cohort was wined and dined. And not just on propaganda. Kellog knows how to treat folks right. It’s delightful up there….Almost to a person the folks in my cohort are timid, and/or were already bought before participation in the program.
~~~ end update]
Ms. Heather, an elite PhD “conservationist” – trained by DEP in all forms of psychological manipulation and a licensed professional planner to boot – didn’t mince words in her reply to me.
Heather wrote:
Live and learn? More like hack journalism and basic asshole “principles” on your part.
At no point during our exchanges did you indicate that you might use my words in your material.
Basic personal and professional courtesy would include communicating, even as a tagline on your emails, that any communication w/ you is fair game for your material.
Some of us are trying to build a New Jersey environmental community on collaboration, mutual cooperation, transparency. You are a negative rebel. Screw you, Wolfe.
Did you get that? Heather touts her support of “transparency”. But at the same time she wants to keep the DEP program and her involvement in it secret. That’s classic hypocrisy.
“Asshole? “Screw you”? How nice. How professional.
And how can Heather seek “collaboration” and “mutual cooperation” with corrupt colleagues she called “bought”?
So much for what Heather seeks as “transparency”.
Thank you, lovely Ms. Heather! [BTW, I never said I was, nor do I pretend to be a “journalist”.]
I would never toast a real source (i.e. a government whistleblower) who actually took a career risk in providing information to me in confidence.
But a well fed “conservationist” who attends DEP billionaire funded soirees and calls her DEP program “propaganda” and her colleagues “bought”?
No problem!
Hahahahahahaha!
Take your hypocritical “collaboration, mutual cooperation, transparency” and shove it!.
A Shameful Episode
Beyond Regulatory Capture – A Billionaire Buys Bureaucrats & Conservationists
DEP Program Logo – Note that financial support from Hudson Farms is not disclosed as a sponsor
At a time when many NJ residents can’t rub 2 nickels together, are worrying about paying rent and basic living expenses, the planet is burning, and local community activists are demanding an end to DEP logging of State forested lands in the Highlands Preservation Area, the NJ DEP created, organized, and sponsored two week long luxury junkets – called a “Conservation leadership program“- for 15 DEP managers and their “conservation community” friends and political supporters who just so happen to be promoting joint DEP logging projects (just more of the “Elite Charade”).
“Conservation” organizations who attended these soirees include NJ Audubon, a group who is working with DEP on the controversial Sparta Mountain WMA and other Highlands logging projects. Not surprisingly, elites from the Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited were involved, but sadly, NJ Conservation Foundation also jumped on board this disgusting gravy train.
Adding insult to injury, I learned of theses junkets after being disgusted by an outrageously false, darkly cynical, and opportunistic promotional letter from NJ Audubon CEO Eric Stiles, who actually had the balls to claim some kind of leadership in the black lives matter movement. Stiles recently wrote (full letter provided upon request):
Dear Members and Supporters,
New Jersey Audubon cannot be silent in addressing the incidents of racial injustice that have roiled our country in recent weeks which include the tragic death of George Floyd and an act of discrimination against Christian Cooper, a Board Member of New York City Audubon, in Central Park. New Jersey Audubon extends our hearts and action to the families and communities that have been victimized and marginalized for far too long. New Jersey Audubon stands with you and always will.
Right. Are you fucking kidding me? NJ Audubon as champion of racial justice????
The billionaire funded DEP “conservation leadership” program was the brainchild of and created by DEP. It was funded by Wall Street billionaire Peter Kellogg, owner of an elite hunting compound in Sussex County known as Hudson Farms.
Regular readers here may recall that I blasted Kellogg and Hudson Farms for providing a $140,000 grant to NJ Audubon to prepare the controversial logging plan for Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area, see:
I’ve since learned that billionaire Kellogg’s Hudson Farms Foundation funding of NJ Audubon has more than doubled, to over $330,000.
One of the DEP soirees was held at Kellogg’s private Hudson Farms.
And of course PSE&G – who seeks to reap millions of dollars in profits by leveraging regulatory influence with DEP programs – including the DEP’s PACT climate regulations, carbon sequestration, and various mitigation programs now under development by DEP- couldn’t keep their grubby corporate hands out of and sponsored these junkets.
Several DEP manager attended the two weeklong junkets (several of whom are directly involved in the Sparta Mountain dispute). They include:
How much did this cost State government to send 15 professionals for 2 weeks? Were these people paid while on these week long Wall Street funded and corporate PSE&G sponsored influence peddling junkets?
How much worse can it get?
Here is how one of the “conservation leaders” from NJ who attended both events – who obviously is feeling guilty after I asked about it – described the junkets:
in January I spent a week at Hudson Farms, on Kellog’s dime, as part of the New Jersey Conservation Leadership Program inaugural cohort (see info attached). The program was the brainchild of Dave Golden w/ NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife. It also included a week at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV last October. Our cohort was wined and dined. And not just on propaganda. Kellog knows how to treat folks right. It’s delightful up there. Please don’t judge! I did not realize who was bankrolling the program when I applied.
The training itself, adaptive management work, is really quite useful. The rest of the experience was an eye opener, and depressing. Almost to a person the folks in my cohort are timid, and/or were already bought before participation in the program.
Here is the “program overview”. Note that the “tuition” is $4,850 for the weeklong event.
Here is the “purpose” – and note that logging is not included as a cause of fragmentation or “pressure” from “anthropogenic influences”:
Wildlife and natural habitats in New Jersey are under increasing pressure from expanding development, sea-level rise, habitat fragmentation caused by high road density, and other anthropogenic influences. When technical fixes alone cannot alleviate threats to conservation, adaptive problem solving becomes a key component to finding solutions. In a state like New Jersey, it is especially important to understand the complexities of the human element in conservation planning, management, and success.
Complexities of the “Human element? You mean complexities like the folks in Sparta NJ who are disgusted by DEP and billionaire Kellogg funded NJ Audubon logging of Highlands forests?
And look at how these elite, selfish, self promotional bastards view themselves in stating their “Vision”:
Elevate conservation in New Jersey by building extraordinary leadership throughout our conservation community. By providing our employees with adaptive leadership skills from a high-trust, shared learning experience, we will develop a network of highly effective professionals capable of magnify our individual or organizational outputs into exceptional collective accomplishments
Do they really believe their bullshit? That they are “extraordinary leaders” producing “exceptional collective accomplishments”? Delusional.
Heads should roll for this kind of Orwellian and manipulative bullshit that seeks to co-opt conservation groups and other professionals.
I want to know if the DEP attendees were paid and collected their DEP paycheck for these vacation weeks.
Can someone file OPRA requests for their time sheets they filed for the two weeks of these events and find out?
This needs to be widely shamed.
PSE&G Seeks DEP Waiver Of Environmental Regulations For Energy Infrastructure
NJ Gov. Murphy Used The Same COVID Pretext As Trump
Two important NJ based observations that you’re not likely to get in NJ media.
Yesterday, President Trump issued another Executive Order that attacks and rolls back key environmental regulatory protections.
Of course, this Order is being blasted by environmental groups and widely correctly reported by national media as another radical Trump outrage on public health and the environment.
This most recent Trump attack is targeted at the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the Clean Water Act (CWA). It cynically uses the COVID crisis to justify “emergency” exemptions and waivers, which is obviously an Orwellian pretext.
Here is the NEPA language – very smiler language is used for ESA and CWA rollbacks:
(b) To facilitate the Nation’s economic recovery, the heads of all agencies are directed to use, to the fullest extent possible and consistent with applicable law, emergency procedures, statutory exemptions, categorical exclusions, analyses that have already been completed, and concise and focused analyses, consistent with NEPA, CEQ’s NEPA regulations, and agencies’ NEPA procedures.
The scope of the Trump Order is broader than specifically attacking these 3 core environmental laws.
It broadly seeks to waive virtually all regulatory requirements. Section 9 directs that the “heads of all agencies”:
shall review all statutes, regulations, and guidance documents that may provide for emergency or expedited treatment (including waivers, exemptions, or other streamlining) with regard to agency actions pertinent to infrastructure, energy, environmental, or natural resources matters;
But what you won’t read or hear from NJ media – or from NJ environmental groups who cheerlead for Gov. Murphy and generally defer to PSEG money and power – are two things:
1) NJ Gov. Murphy has used the same cynical COVID pretext as Trump to suspend NJ DEP enforcement of environmental regulations, something that has not been reported by the NJ press corps, see:
2) NJ’s hometown corporate utility PSE&G – frequently portrayed in media as environmentally friendly and progressive on public policy and regulatory issues – is seeking the exactly same regulatory rollbacks by the NJ DEP as President Trump just enacted.
The NJ DEP is currently developing regulations to address climate change (here is DEP’s PACT website – more to follow on that).
PSE&G has weighed into the DEP PACT regulatory process to request regulatory relief for what they call “public interest”.
PSE&G hypocritically likes to portray themselves publicly as pro-environment and a responsible corporation, but behind the scenes they are as rabidly anti-environmental regulation as the most polluting chemical industry.
“Particular attention should be focused on the potential to include a Public Interest Provision that would give NJDEP the ability to expedite approvals and provide certain exceptions for projects that support the broader goals of the Administration’s Climate Adaptation and Clean Energy goals. Energy infrastructure and offshore wind development onshore are examples of the types of projects that should be included.
To further this process and provide a foundation for the discussions in future meetings, PSEG proposes the follow language for consideration by the Department for inclusion as necessary, in the regulations under review.
“New Jersey is implementing a range of policies that will lead to infrastructure projects that would otherwise be subject to restrictions under these regulations. Based on a determination of public benefit/ societal need, in alignment with the policies put forth in the EMP, RGGI regulation and the provisions of the GWRA, the Department shall retain the flexibility to approve these projects and/or limit regulatory requirements.”
Will the Murphy DEP fold and accommodate PSEG profits?
Will PSEG be held accountable by NJ environmental groups and media for their Trump like attack on environmental laws?
We’ll keep you posted, but we’re not holding our breath.