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Booker Barking Up The Right Tree – Backs Green New Deal

August 13th, 2019 No comments

Will NJ Gov. Murphy’s DEP Listen?

Forestry, Justice, And Urban Jobs – Essential Features Of The Green New Deal

Last week (Aug. 3), I complained about the design of NJ DEP’s program to allocate about $10 million/year in Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) funds to “carbon sequestration” (a fancy term for storing carbon in trees). I wrote:

Instead of planting millions of trees to shade and cool NJ’s cities and providing funding and jobs to urban residents and community organizations – a real environmental justice program – DEP will give money to elite groups like NJ Audubon and NJ Conservation Foundation and Mike Catania’s Duke Foundation to log forests in the Highlands and Pinelands, while issuing press releases bragging that they are fighting climate change and promoting environmental justice (and DEP’s friend Tim Dillingham of American Littoral Society will get his piece of the action for sham coastal wetlands restoration too – DEP might even find some way to fund the Gov.’s Chief Cheerleader Ed Potasnak at NJLCV and The Keep It Greed Crew. Of course, the former DEP hacks now at Rutgers will likely get a piece of the RGGI patronage as well.)

It is truly sickening.

So I was pleased to read that – coincidentally – just 4 days later, NJ US Senator Booker made a strong statement in support of exactly the kind of program I was driving at that NJ DEP should allocate RGGI funding to:   (see NJ.Com)

Planting 15 billion trees. Bringing back the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps. Restoring wetlands.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on Wednesday proposed these measures as a way to combat climate change. The idea is to increase the amount of carbon emissions now absorbed by soil, forests and wetlands.

It is the latest of several detailed policy proposals he has issued during his run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a response to the Great Depression. This new version would hire low-income youth and those from indigenous communities and communities of color and teach them how to work in forestry and wetlands restoration.

I don’t support Booker politically, as a candidate.

And I don’t agree with all aspects of his proposal, which must be significantly strengthened, such as: 1) The proposed 2050 date needs to be accelerated by 25 years, 2) the program needs to be fully funded, preferably by fossil industry profits or assets (not sales), 3) the coastal wetlands program needs to be conditioned upon land use restrictions (no development in hazard zones) and accompanied by a funded and phased “strategic retreat” program, 4) there needs to be a specific number of jobs, $15/hour minimum wage, and job training guaranteed, and targeted to economically distressed areas (rural and urban) 5) there needs to be a rural component, not just an urban forestry program, 6) farmers need to be subject to mandatory requirements, not voluntary recommendations, 7) carbon offsets, carbon credits and carbon trading must not be part of the program, 8) the program can not be “justified” by promoting “forest health”, “young forests”, “sustainable forests” or “wildfire prevention” shams or provide funding to them, and 9) no corporate subsidies. Perhaps even more than 15 billion tress are necessary – I have no idea how Booker derived that number.

But his proposal is strongly in the right direction and warrants general support of all the national Democrats and the NJ DEP.

It is an important feature of the proposed Green New Deal and an essential component of a strategy to combat climate chaos.

In a twofer, the NJ.Com story then went on to slam Congressman Pallone, for blocking the Green New Deal:

“In FDR’s New Deal, the federal government planted billions of trees, provided conservation incentives to family farmers and ranchers, created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and electrified rural America,” said Booker, D-N.J.

“In order to address the urgent and existential threat posed by climate change, all of these approaches should be part of our broader strategy.”

Booker earlier endorsed the Green New Deal, an effort to curb the emissions contributing to climate change and creating new jobs in the process. But the effort championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is going nowhere in Congress due to the opposition of New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-6th Dist.

So glad that Pallone was called out.

The Green New Deal is the path forward.

Just like FDR pioneered his New Deal Programs as Governor of NY State – particularly the CCC forestry program – maybe NJ Gov. Murphy can get his DEP Commissioner and her  failed (thus far) climate programs on the same page.

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The Record Gets It Half Right On Gov. Murphy’s Hypocrisy On Climate And Environment

August 12th, 2019 No comments

And they leave out a lot

Gov. Murphy has corrupt cheerleaders who are lying to the public about his record

[See End Note below]

The Bergen Record published a story today that attempts to hold Gov. Murphy accountable on his climate and environmental policy record (sorry the article is behind a paywall, see:

The Record got it half right  – and they left out a lot of what could have been even far harsher criticism.

I’ve been writing about all that from day one – exposing Gov. Murphy’s hypocrisy on climate and documenting Gov. Murphy and his DEP’s regulatory record – so I need to make a few clarifications of the Record’s reporting.

First of all, the article opens up with a highly misleading claim, praising Gov. Murphy for killing a proposed pipeline under Raritan Bay:

In June, Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration denied permits to a controversial pipeline that would send natural gas from New Jersey under Raritan Bay to New York City — a move that environmentalists said reaffirmed the governor’s goals to move the state away from fossil fuels.

But that’s a load of crap – 3 weeks before, NY Governor Cuomo already killed the pipeline – see the NY Times story:

So Gov. Murphy’s DEP denial of permits did nothing to kill the pipeline project – the project was already dead by Cuomo’s hand (and the basis for NJ DEP’s permit denials was very different legally and technically fro NY’s and did not establish any regulatory precedent to deny pending pipelines, like the Penn East seeking wetlands and water quality certification).

NJ environmentalists heaped false praise on the governor at the time. They continue to do so, blatantly lying to the public.

The Record now again misleads readers and repeats this false praise.

The fake Raritan pipeline denial is not inconsistent with Murphy DEP’s approval of permits for the stealth Delaware River LNG plant (and that LNG project is not nearly the first major new fossil project DEP issued permits to).

Second, while the Record correctly criticizes Murphy and DEP in this strong paragraph, the truth is even worse:

He has not fulfilled his promise to reopen the Office of Climate Change, which was shuttered by former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican. Murphy has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental funds to help balance the state budget. New Jersey is one of two coastal states without climate adaptation plans

And the administration has not set forth rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions or rolled back Christie-era regulations viewed as harmful to the environment.

At the Governor’s level, Gov. Murphy’s EO 63 repealed Christie Executive Orders 1-2, but it continued the cost benefit policy and added a whole bunch of even worse policies. I wrote about that here:

At the DEP bureaucratic level, technically, the Record got it wrong. The Gov. did “reopen the Office of Climate Change” – but, as I wrote, that did absolutely nothing but mislead the public, see:

As I noted in my post, DEP Commissioner McCabe’s response to legislature’s written questions specifically about the Office of Climate Change flat out contradicts Gov. Murphy’s spokesperson quoted in the Record article:

And the administration has done “far more” than just reopening the Office of Climate Change, she said, by naming a chief resilience officer and reorganizing the Climate & Flood Resilience Program, which “serves as a hub responsible for coordinating the climate change resilience and adaptation work ongoing in many programs across the DEP.”

Hit the link to my post above and read McCabe’s written responses to OLS. They contradict the Gov.’s Office spin.

More importantly, while the Record gets it exactly right here,

And the administration has not set forth rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions or rolled back Christie-era regulations viewed as harmful to the environment.

They fail to call out the NJ environmental groups that are flat out lying about this, like Tom Gilbert at Rethink NJ and cynical Ed Potosnak at NJ LCV (the lying sack of shit from the “Keep It Greed” campaign)

The Record got it exactly right – there have been no new rules and no new policies and no restoration of Christie DEP rollbacks. NONE. NADA. ZILCH.

Third, there has been no “progress” on the DEP regulatory front.

Gov. Murphy and DEP Commissioner McCabe have not been “chiseling away at the edges” of the Christie DEP’s policies:

“The rollbacks were so massive under Christie that you can’t just chisel away at the edges,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “You need a full reversal. We have seen progress on that front, but not fast enough

This is not a question of the pace of reforms or incremental versus comprehensive reforms. There are no reforms.

This is probably the best illustration of the Murphy DEP failure to reform the status quo:

As I’ve written numerous times, Gov. Murphy and DEP Commissioner McCabe have not only not reversed any Christie DEP regulatory rollback – the C1 buffer rule had already been vetoed by the legislature – they have embraced many Christie DEP anti-environmental pro-business policies, see:

Worse, instead of restoring protections for exceptional C1 stream buffers, the Murphy DEP has actually rolled back existing protections, see:

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Even the Trump FEMA called out the Murphy DEP for rollbacks to critical stormwater and flooding protections, see:

Finally, there are many important environmental policy issues the Record simply ignored or lacked pace to write about  – and they falsely praised a fatally flawed RGGI – stuff like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And the DEP is still bungling so the new NRD lawsuits and PFAS Spill Act Directive are destined to fail, see:

I could go on – interested readers should word search many prior posts – but I think you get my drift.

And finally, I hope folks will begin to realize that Gov. Murphy has a bunch of corrupt “green” cheerleaders who are flat out lying to the public about his record.

When will news reports make this point clear?

[End Note: As the Record story noted, to the Gov.’ credit, there is one regulation that the Murphy DEP did in fact strengthen protections, i.e. the upgrading of some 749 exceptional water quality stream miles to “Category One waters”.

However, even that proposal was over-sold, because the prohibition on disturbance of C1 buffers was reduced from 300 to 150 by Gov. Christie’s DEP. I explain all that in this post:

end]

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NJ Conservation Groups Helped The Right Hijack The Lake Hopatcong Toxic Algae Bloom Issue

August 7th, 2019 No comments

“Rain Tax” Reframes A Traditional Land Use & Water Quality Issue

Algae Blooms Are Exacerbated By Climate Chaos

Conservation groups provide cover for Gov. Murphy & DEP 

The NY Times finally weighed in on the Lake Hopatcong toxic algae bloom crisis on Monday, and amazingly they somehow managed to allow insane paranoid right wing anti-government Republicans to try to reframe the debate as about a “rain tax”, see:

And some Republican politicians have even accused state agencies of ginning up the threat as a scare tactic to promote what they call a “rain tax.”

Environment and planning advocates say that is an incorrect description of a potential solution: stormwater utilities. The utilities exist in 1,716 localities in 40 states and will be an option for New Jersey municipalities starting next month under a law signed by the Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy.

(Is that you again death tax Frank Luntz?)

Part of the reason that these crazies have been allowed to hijack the debate lies in how the NJ conservation groups responded and narrowly and self interestedly framed the “solution” to the problem, while ignoring DEP’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act and restrict land use to protect water quality.

At the outset, we predicted that NJ conservation groups would focus exclusively on stormwater utilities and infrastructure, while ignoring talking about climate change and traditional land use and water quality policy and DEP regulation and DEP’s numerous failures.

The conservation groups ignored DEP planning and regulatory tools and framed the solution to the issue this way narrowly – and they did so for corrupt & political reasons (not based on science and law):

  • a) they had worked on the weak stormwater utility bill – it is merely enabling and requires local County Freeholders to adopt it – and wanted to blow their own horn, while effectively praising Democrats and the Governor for doing virtually nothing;
  • b) they wanted to let their friends Gov. Murphy and DEP Commissioner McCabe off the hook for blatant failures to enforce the Clean Water Act and adopt protective regulations (including failing to restore Gov. Christie DEP rollbacks);
  • c) like virtually all Republicans and many corporate Democrats, they are anti-regulatory and don’t know about or like to talk about regulatory policy tools or climate change; and
  • they are all funded by the same corporate oriented Foundations and rely on the same corporate communication consultants and lobbyists.

Painfully aware that all this was happening, over a month ago, we warned folks and laid out a real agenda:

Before we get the lame attempts at suggesting weak “reforms” (e.g. stormwater utilities) from the usual lame suspects (e.g. Highlands Coalition), we thought we’d lay out a serious reform package.

So, here’s a short to do list for DEP to respond to the current crisis and prevent or reduce the likelihood of future disasters:

We pulled no punches and named names:

The algae bloom is caused by a combination of climate change, excessive nutrient & sediment pollution loads, and failed DEP regulatory policies.

DEP lacks adequate regulations governing land use, development, stormwater, water quality, septic systems, agriculture, and forestry.

Worse, DEP lacks any strategy, comprehensive plan, or enforceable regulations to address climate change, that we know will impact water resources (i.e. DEP rules mandating greenhouse gas emissions reductions or methods to adapt to climate change).

The Christie DEP not only denied climate change, but actually rolled back DEP regulations that were designed to protect water quality, including Highlands septic density, stormwater management, flood hazard, and stream buffer protections.

After the Legislature vetoed the Christie DEP septic density rollback, the Murphy DEP effectively revoked that already invalidated rule, but has yet to address other significant Christie DEP rollbacks.

Of course the greedy green weenies wanted no part of any debate about DEP regulating forestry and agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Foundations don’t pay for that kind of stuff and their corporate Boards, funders, and elite members don’t support it either. They want politically safe, market oriented, individual, voluntary, local, private property sensitive no tax increase,, and largely symbolic gestures. Nothing with any regulatory teeth that could cost corporations and the wealthy real money or stifle their economic development plans.

For a perfect example of validation of my prediction, along comes an Op-Ed by Michele Byers of NJ Conservation Foundation, see:

Note how Byers’ Op-Ed is exclusively focused on what individuals can do – not what government can do. That is right wing framing. It is no accident. It is ideological warfare.

Byers’ Op-Ed undermines a prior far stronger Op-Ed by Jeff Tittel of Sierra Club.

Byers is following the same cynical green cover playbook of a prior NJCF Op-Ed that also undercut Tittel on holding the Murphy administration accountable on climate change.

Byers desperately wants to change the subject and divert attention away from controversial real solutions.

And Byers is willing to throw Lake Hopatcong and water quality under the bus to avoid criticizing the Gov. in hopes that he will respond to NJCF’s real priority, which is keeping the Penn East pipeline out of their elite backyards in Hunterdon County.

That’s the weeny way – we call it what it is – Fake Solutions and sabotage

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Public Lands Management – NJ DEP Is Actually WORSE Than Trump Department of Interior, BLM and Forest Service

August 3rd, 2019 No comments

Perversely, after years of denial, DEP will now use climate change to promote more logging under the RGGI carbon sequestration program

Public shut out of public lands decisions

Screen Shot 2019-08-03 at 11.31.44 AM

I’ve been out west for almost 3 years now, spending the majority of that time dispersed camping and hiking in dozens of our splendid national forests and on BLM lands.

Right now, I’m in Lolo National Forest on the Montana Idaho border. Incredible beauty, healthy forests, and rugged landscape (way too rugged for this old fart!).

The local environmental news right now is a strong public outcry over recent Trump BLM “Resource Management Plans” for western Montana. (hit the links to the 2 volume EIS for the “Missoula Draft RMP”. Comments can be submitted electronically from this page. The public comment period closes On August 15, so please be sure to comment).

For my NJ friends, a quick scan of the “preferred alternative” in volume 1 of the BLM EIS turned up this gem, which explicity confirms what I suspect NJ DEP foresters are about to do.  Note how BLM explicitly confirms exactly what I’ve said the foresters in NJ plan to do (i.e.explicitly linking “forest products” and logging with “restoration”: (emphases mine)

“This (preferred) alternative would produce the greatest quantities of forest products from vegetation restoration activities of all alternatives.” (ES, page 3)

The recent infusion of about $10 million/year in RGGI funds for carbon “sequestration” will greatly expand this current DEP forestry/public lands abuse, leading to more logging to create “young forests” to sequester carbon.

That writing is already on the wall.  (HEADS UP: DEP is seeking public comments and will hold a meeting on RGGI, so don’t miss it! But that is a meeting limited to discussion of allocation of RGGI money, not public lands management or climate change. The public doesn’t get to weigh in on those critical policy issues.)

DEP has accepted dubious scientific claims that wood products “store” carbon – thereby minimizing the carbon released by logging – and the correct but misleading claim that “young forest” sequester carbon at a higher rate than mature forest – thereby exaggerating the sequestration of logged “young forests. Even prior to the RGGI sequestration program, DEP foresters disparaged mature forests as “single age class” forests that need to be logged to improve “diversity”, “forest health” and “resilience” and to “reduce wildfire risk” and insects/diseases (caused or made worse by climate change)- this of course is exactly what the Trump folks are doing (but without highlighting the role of climate change or without an idiot like Trump talking about raking and “cleaning up the forest floor”).

In contrast to the torrent of slogans and pseudo-science DEP spouts to justify logging under various pretexts – which now include carbon sequestration – you’ll find zero specific policy and program commitments, allocation of RGGI funds, and technical standards establishing an “afforestation” program and an “urban forestry” program.

Instead of planting millions of trees to shade and cool NJ’s cities and providing funding and jobs to urban residents and community organizations – a real environmental justice program – DEP will give money to elite groups like NJ Audubon and NJ Conservation Foundation and Mike Catania’s Duke Foundation to log forests in the Highlands and Pinelands, while issuing press releases bragging that they are fighting climate change and promoting environmental justice (and DEP’s friend Tim Dillingham of American Littoral Society will get his piece of the action for sham coastal wetlands restoration too – DEP might even find some way to fund the Gov.’s Chief Cheerleader Ed Potasnak at NJLCV and The Keep It Greed Crew. Of course, the former DEP hacks now at Rutgers will likely get a piece of the RGGI patronage as well.

It is truly sickening.

Shifting gears, somewhat, today’s post was prompted by a superb Counterpunch article by George Wuethner, that explains just how radical the Trump BLM plans are.

Wuethner puts these technocratic BLM RMP decisions in context and explains the implications – I urge you to read the whole thing, see:

An outspoken advocate for selling off our public lands, William Perry Pendley became the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management  (BLM), which oversees management of 250 million acres of public lands across the country.

Pendley is the former president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a property-rights group that regularly sues the Department of the Interior on behalf of companies that want to mine and drill on public lands.

Also, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt appointed Karen Budd-Falen for the role of Assistant Secretary for the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Parks. Budd-Falen is one of the family lawyers for the infamous Bundy Family which commandeered the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and still grazes their cattle illegally on BLM lands in Nevada.

Least we do not forget, Berhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil industry, has also directed the BLM to revise its land-use plans to eliminate protective land categories like Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, while significantly increasing the leasing of public lands to the Oil and Gas industry. The recently released BLM draft management plan for the North Central District Office in Lewistown reflects these changes in emphasis.

For today, I want to make brief bulleted points about the relevance and contrast of the Trump rollbacks for my NJ friends who are fighting very similar NJ DEP abuses.

While the NJ DEP is not led by a former head of a property rights group and the managers of DEP Division of Forestry and Fish & Game are not former oil industry lawyers or lobbyists, there are strong similarities in public management policies between the Trump administration and the NJ DEP.

Trump’s DOI, BLM and US Forest Service are seeking to:

  • restrict public involvement in public lands management decisions;
  • narrow the scope and depth of environmental reviews under NEPA
  • increase extractive uses of public lands, particularly logging
  • using pretexts and slogans like “sustainability”,”resilience” and wildfire risk reduction
  • privatizing public lands management
  • deregulating public lands management
  • ignoring – or exploiting – the role of climate change in public lands management

It is no secret that the Trump administration is implementing these policy rollbacks to promote extractive uses via an across the board assault, using bureaucratic design, personnel, budgets, regulatory, policy and local, regional and national management plan changes.

Now let’s compare each of those above bulleted practices and objectives of the Trump administration’s policies to those legally mandated and implemented in NJ by DEP.

1. While Trump is rolling back and reducing the ability of the public to participate formally in public lands management decisions, NJ DEP has NO formal process for public participation in public lands management decisions and is not accountable to the public’s expressed concerns. The DEP may engage in a “Forest Action Plan”, ad hoc meetings and local briefings and “stakeholder” processes – which are usually triggered after strong public controversy – these are not formal and are not mandatory statewide processes.

2. While the Trump folks are reducing the applicability, scope, and depth of environmental reviews under NEPA, NJ DEP has NO formal environmental review process for public lands management.

NJ residents don’t even get the chance to attend a public hearing to complain and submit comments on an environmental impact statement, because they are not required nor held by NJ DEP.

3. While Trump agencies are openly and transparently increasing extractive uses – particularly logging – in contrast, the DEP also is promoting logging, but DEP prefers to stealth these destructive practices under slogans, spin and pretexts. Just look at the Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area “Forest Management Plan” for an example – there are several others.

4. While Trump DOI, BLM and USFS are increasingly privatizing and outsourcing public lands management – including a radical new initiative to transfer ownership of public lands – the NJ DEP is far more subtle, working through surrogates like NJ Audubon (a controversial and embarrassing front group for not only Trump himself, but another Wall Street billionaire) and forestry associations to accomplish many of the same things.

5. While Trump agencies seek to reduce the applicability, scope and substantive requirements of regulations and otherwise deregulate forest management practices, the NJ DEP does not regulate forestry (forest management plans are exempt from DEP regulation and subject to a voluntary and informal “Best Management Practices” (BMP) guideline).

6. While Trump agencies deny, downplay and/or exploit the role of climate change in forest management, the NJ DEP completely ignores the role of climate change (a blatant form of climate denial).

Perversely, after years of effective denial, DEP will now use climate change to promote more logging under the RGGI sequestration program (and expanded wildfire prevention logging and “prescribed burns”).

So, while the Trump administration’s public lands policies are horrific, keep in mind that they are scaling back a well developed and elaborate historical management framework. The larger edifice, while full of holes, at least exists on paper and can be challenged in court.

In contrast, the NJ DEP has nothing – nada – squat.

On that basis, I conclude that NJ DEP is actually worse than the Trump abomination.

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Toxic Lakes And Institutional Racism

July 26th, 2019 No comments

NJ State Parks and Open Space Programs Recall The Racist Practices of Robert Moses

[Updates below – McCabe Op-Ed response]

My good friend and former colleague Jeff Tittel has a brilliant Op-Ed running in today’s Bergen Record – read the whole thing:

Tittel connects the dots between toxic algae blooms that have closed major NJ recreational lakes, regulatory failures at the NJ DEP, and disinvestment in State parks.

I want to discuss briefly Tittel’s key conclusion:

Under Gov. Christie Whitman the focus of Green Acres went from parks and people to buying open space like farms and forests. As part of that change, she cut DEP’s parks staff from 1,000 to 400, where it still remains. I believe that was part of their plan because they didn’t want more people from urban areas coming out to recreate in wealthy suburban and rural areas. Those policies continue. …

Too many legislators with houses on Long Beach Island aren’t worried about swimming areas in North Jersey. Too many environmental groups cater to the country-club set, not parks and people.

Ouch!! (Is Senator Bob Smith, Chairman of the Environment Committee, the only legislator with a house on LBI? I don’t think so!).

[Update: In an email, Tittel adds:

Whitman also eliminated summer time bus service to our state parks from urban areas – Paterson to shepards pond – Perth Amboy to spruce run also eliminated the Warwick bus summer stop at Ringwood state park. ~~~ end update

I’ve written about how NJ’s “Green Acres” program is biased towards protecting the backyards of the wealthy elites, serving many of the same exclusionary and racist objectives as primitive private “restrictive covenants” and public municipal zoning struck down by NJ Courts, (and the US Supreme Court, , see Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948); )see:

I’ve also written about how open space advocates, such as the Keep It Green Coalition (KIG), are funded by those same wealthy elites and Foundations, who are dues paying members and serve on the Boards of Directors and set policy that biases open space efforts, see:

KIG not only biases the open space program in favor of wealthy elites and against urban, poor and minority neighborhoods, but they stole public funds that were constitutionally dedicated to State parks and shifted them to acquisition of lands in the backyards of their elite Boards, members, and funders, see:

As Tittel notes, that has resulted in disinvestment in State parks – and lack of an urban parks program.

NJ’s open space and parks program priorities are a more sophisticated version of a very old form of anti-urbanism and institutional racism.

There are lots of ways elites keep out the riff-raff – institutional and structural, e.g. public investments, private covenants, disinvestment, “redlining”, zoning and land use restrictions, and even pure neglect that leads to toxic algae blooms.

NJ’s policies Tittel criticizes, i.e. those to prevent “more people from urban areas coming out to recreate in wealthy suburban and rural areas” – remind me of those practiced by Robert Moses.

Many people are aware of why Moses designed the bridge heights on the Long Island parkways: (How Low Did He Go?)

This summer, as New Yorkers head out to Long Island’s beach towns and parks on the Southern State Parkway, they’ll pass beneath a series of overpass bridges made infamous in Robert A. Caro’s monumental 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker.

In one of the book’s most memorable passages, Caro reveals that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses from the city away from Jones Beach—buses presumably filled with the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans Moses despised. The story was told to Caro by Sidney M. Shapiro, a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission.

As Marta Gutman notes, Robert Caro also wrote about Moses and segregation in public swimming pools:

The man’s (Moses) passion for extending New Deal benefits to New Yorkers of color was less clear. Moses had no qualms about manipulating public policy to imprint his values, including antidemocratic ones, on liberal reform programs. In 1938 he eviscerated an amendment to the New York State Constitution that Martha Biondi has shown would have allowed the state government to battle racial discrimination in the private sector.13 Robert Caro underscores other ugly outcomes of Moses’s public work, ascribing them to the commissioner’s personal antipathy for people of color. This assessment leads to the serious charge that Moses not only tolerated race prejudice in the WPA swimming pools, but deliberately segregated them. Caro targets pools in Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem and Colonial (now Jackie Robinson) Park in Central Harlem, arguing the former was sited in a white and the latter in a black neighborhood, so each would be racially segregated. At Jefferson Park Pool, Caro asserts that decisions were taken about design and staffing to assure that only white people swam there.14

(see: Race, Place, and Play – Robert Moses and the WPA Swimming Pools in New York City – by Marta Gutman, The City College of New York)

Gutman tells a more nuanced and complex story than Caro:

Moses was a racial conservative, but the sweeping charges do not hold up under close scrutiny of the physical city and evidence uncovered since the publication of my research in Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transfor- mation of New York. In this article, I argue that framing the discussion of race in terms of individual prejudice has dis- tracted attention from the more powerful political, spatial, and structural dynamics of racism, forces of which Moses was fully aware, and the actions some New Yorkers took to counteract them. As Biondi has argued, emphasizing per- sonal prejudice obscures the relationship of the man to the trajectory of reform liberalism in American politics. Biondi insists liberalism was rendered tragic by compromise with racial segregation—tainted by its appearance during the Jim Crow era and the ensuing unholy alliance forged during the New Deal between southern segregationists and northern politicians. The result, public policy deeply ingrained with the effects of race prejudice, proved devastating for blacks and cities.15 However, the outcome was not set in stone in New York during the 1930s. After a race riot exploded in Harlem in 1935, Moses constructed a stellar modern facility for public recreation in Central Harlem that challenged the unequal treatment of black and white Americans, widespread during the New Deal.16

Tittel’s arguments – in light of the New Deal era history Robert Caro and Gutman write about – are particularly relevant as the discussion of the Green New Deal emerges in the current context of Black Lives Matter and a focus on institutional racism.

[Update: 7/27/19 – DEP gets hammered in a Tittel Bergen Record Op-Ed for neglect and elitism. How do they respond?

The next day, they lift the advisory on a tiny portion of lake Hopatcong that is accessible to the public only by boat!

Indian Harbor, which is only accessible by boat, is near beaches that will not be accessible due to continued high bacteria levels, including 24,750 at Pebble Beach, 24,500 at Sand Harbor and 26,750 as Bass Rock Beach.

Talk about tone deaf political malpractice! How do you double down on the kind of charges Tittel made?  Just what does it take to get fired?

And Commissioner McCabe is not only tone deaf. She is a coward – her statement runs away from the DEP advisory, dodging “blame” for effectively closing the lake to recreation:

An advisory is not a ban or an order for lake closure. An advisory is a form of guidance. No one would be ticketed or removed from the water if they choose to swim or engage in watersports when an advisory is issued. An advisory is meant to provide the public with information to help people make choices for themselves.

Not only is this statement cowardly, but it sends the wrong message to the public, virtually inviting people into the water.

Finally, it abdicates DEP’s responsibility to protect public health by relying on an ideological stance: i.e. “people make choices for themselves”. 

Some risks are too great to allow individual choice to govern decision-making. In such cases, Government must step up and assume responsibility.  

McCabe is a coward – she fears Mulshine’s attack on “Nanny State” grounds.

Finally, DEP’s statement misleads the public about DEP’s overall lake management program – science and regulatory oversight. DEP brags about how wonderful they are::

From Lake to Lab: New Jersey’s Advanced Process for Monitoring Harmful Algal Blooms

New Jersey has one of the most advanced monitoring processes and protective standards to reduce the risk to public health. DEP’s aggressive monitoring program on Lake Hopatcong includes daily monitoring and detailed scientific analysis of several water quality parameters related to harmful algal blooms.

But that statement documents ONLY DEP’s EMERGENCY REACTION to the HAB.

It says NOTHING about prevention, routine water quality monitoring and assessment, program staffing and funding, and the adequacy of DEP’s regulatory actions (i.e. Lake TMDL for nutrients).

It says NOTHING about solutions, e.g. mandatory septic pumpouts, investments in infrastructure upgrades, stricter regulations, etc

DEP has failed miserably on those matters. ~~~ end update]

[Update #2 – 7/29/19 – DEP Commissioner McCabe wrote an Op-Ed in today’s NJ.com.

It’s almost as if she read my prior posts and update above and confirmed my criticism.

First of all, McCabe blamed “mother nature” (which is a blatant form of denial of climate change and DEP regulatory responsibilities)

DEP will lift the advisories, as soon as the testing indicates that bacteria cell counts are trending reliably below the health advisory level. Unfortunately, control of those conditions at this point is in the hands of Mother Nature, who has not been kind lately as we have experienced heavy rains and elevated heat levels.

Second, it finally outlining solutions to the problem, she ignores DEP’s regulatory responsibilities and enforcement powers, instead pointing the finger at local governments and individuals:

In the long-term, we know the steps we must take to prevent future algal blooms. Algal blooms are fed by nutrients, most notably phosphorus, from septic tanks, surface runoff, and stormwater that flows into the lakes, either directly or through the lakes’ many feeder streams. Nutrients in lawn fertilizers and animal droppings readily flow into the lake when it rains.

The solutions are not necessarily difficult or expensive. Much can be accomplished through simple methods – residents in the watershed should routinely clean out septic systems, communities should sweep streets and clean stormwater catch basins ahead of the summer season. Property owners can reduce or forego fertilizer application, and install green infrastructure.

Has McCabe even read the DEP’s TMDL for Lake Hopatcong? Does she know it says THIS:

“eutrophic lakes & aquatic life impairments are ranked as Low Priority in the 2002 Integrated List of Waterbodies because they are not directly related to human health issues” @ p.9

Is she aware of DEP’s voluntary provisions of the Water Quality Management Planning rules (NJAC 7:15-1 et seq) – that apply to septics, septic districts and pump-outs?

Does McCabe know of DEP powers to reduce nutrients under numerous regulations, including stormwater, stream encroachment, freshwater wetlands, water quality standards, septic design, and Highlands Act?

Does McCsbe know that the DEP’s Wetlands Strategy is weak? (wetlands cycle and store nutrients)

Is she aware of significant gaps and loopholes in DEP regulations, such as forestry management BMP’s?

Has McCabe read DEP’s Nutrient Management Strategy?

How could McCabe IGNORE ALL THAT? Awful Op-Ed.

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