WolfeNotes.com

Rethink Energy NJ is lying to and manipulating you for their own selfish reasons

At this point, anyone who applauds the Christie DEP has Zero credibility

For many months, I’ve ranted against the incompetence and mendacity of some of the “leaders” of the anti-pipeline activists.

Most all of that was targeted at the “Rethink Energy NJ” campaign, who are leading the charge against the PennEast pipeline.

My criticism has been premised on an assumption that the problems were primarily a function of incompetence or lack of experience or political misjudgments (as they say, legitimate differences over strategy and tactics, not goals and objectives).

At worst, I thought that perhaps they were greedy in trying to control the access to Foundation grants and wealthy donors, and were being opportunistically entrepreneurial in their greed.

But, I assumed that they really did want to stop the pipelines, but were just doing a very poor job of it.

Today, they’ve gone over the line into knowingly and actively causing harm – including hijacking other pipeline opponents and misleading people about basic political and regulatory reality.

I think the phrase “useful idiots” is apt.

Join the 6 other YouTube people and take a good hard look at what co-opted, mendacious, timidity looks like – watch.

The thought that the Christie DEP is a friend of the environment and willing to fight big gas corporations – and that they should be APPLAUDED – is BIZARRE.

That is an incompetent, incredibly naive, and warped interpretation of the recent DEP letter to FERC on holding a public hearing on wetlands permits.

A few historical facts are in order for Ms. Cronheim:

DEP is working with Transco to issue the Clean Water Act Section 401 WQC approval, and with zero pushback from activists or press coverage. Transco’s July 1, 2016 letter to FERC documented that:

Transco submitted its FWWIP application in July 2015 and continues to work with NJDEP to resolve outstanding issues.

Just in case some anti-pipeline people out there still believe that DEP is their friend, a few facts:

1. Governor Christie’s Energy Master Plan supports significant expansion of gas infrastructure – pipelines and power plants. DEP answers to the Governor.

2. The DEP and the BPU approved the SJG Pinelands Pipeline, the SRL pipeline, and all others that I am aware of. Although by law BPU is an independent regulatory commission, the BPU effectively reports to the Governor.

3. DEP would never contradict the Governor and a sister State Agency.

4. DEP Commissioner Bob Martin is a former corporate energy consultant who is very pro energy industry and pro-gas.

5. DEP Commissioner Martin takes the position – incorrectly – that FERC preempts DEP environmental permitting.

In recent testimony to the Legislature, Martin said:

They (FERC) are the overall controlling entity on it at the end of the day. They could over-ride anything we could even do from the State of New Jersey. […]

We can not fight that .. If we did reject a pipeline it would end up in court very quickly.

6. Martin’s incorrect view on preemption is echoed by Democratic lawmakers, including Assemblwoman Liz Muoio, who works closely with the PennEast activists.

At a recent legislative hearing, Muoio whined about NJ’s powerlessness:

… there is little we can do as a State to stop them [FERC].

How could Muoio, who works closely withPennEast opponents, possible have that false legal view?

Who is whispering those lies in her ears? (Answer: Dale Florio).

Who has failed to educate her – and fellow activists, the press, and the public – on the law of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act? (Answer: Rethink NJ, Cronheim and Company).

7. Lastly, DEP has been a rubber stamp and cheerleader for pipelines.

If you doubt that, just recall their performance before the Pinelands Commission in support, see:

• DEP Does a Cameo at Pinelands Pipeline Farce

The only way DEP does the right thing is in response to huge political pressure mounted by pipeline opponents.

That has not happened –

These are facts – yet Ms. Cronheim wants to APPLAUD this?

Desperate Town Officials commit a form of slow suicide by sewers and sprawl

WTF is the Honey Dipping Option?

Welcome to the Plumsted Plantation

A whole town is paying and being ruined by the “solution” to a literal cesspool

Age restricted, private gated community invades the rural landscape

“We’re putting the cart before the horse. We can’t afford this. How much it it (sewage plant) going to cost us? How are we going to pay for it? You can fire me if you like but you’re not getting my vote” ~~~ Robert Hardy, Board member (7/5/16)

Is there an adult in the room – or some government agency that still looks out for the public interest  – that can protect these people from this looming land use and financial disaster? From the misguided “leadership” of an entrenched political machine?

To save what’s left of the rural character of this place?

To shield low and moderate income people from the pure greed of real estate financial speculators and builders?

To protect the environmentally sensitive Crosswicks Creek and its largely undisturbed historic riparian greenway? The Christie DEP already abandoned that responsibility.

It was a bizarre and sad night in Plumsted, as the Land Use Board approved, by a 7-3 vote, the General Development Plan (GDP) for “Greenbriar at Crosswicks”,  a 454 unit massive sprawl development on a farm adjacent to Crosswicks Creek.

The plan involves construction of a new 600,000 gallon per day sewage treatment plant that would discharge to the Creek.

Say goodbye to horse farms, agriculture, no traffic, and low taxes.

According to the applicant’s Fiscal Report, the project at full build out would generate 78,230 GPD of wastewater – leaving about 522,0000 GPD for the rest of the “Downtown Development Area” and new growth.

That’s way too much capacity – either homeowners and businesses will pay monstrous sewer bills or be forced to approve rampant growth and development to pay for it – literally a lose – lose proposition.

That same Fiscal Report also admits that there is not enough water to serve the development (but the problem is far worse that the developer admits, as we wrote).

While the developer’s Fiscal Report fails to even mention the most basic economic facts, according to the Redevelopment Agreement with the Township, the developer will pay $19,500 per approved housing unit – for a maximum of about $9 million.

How much does the new sewer plant cost? How much will that $9 million cover? Who pays the balance?

The Redeveloper’s agreement allocates virtually all of the economic risks to the community – it’s a lose lose proposition for them.

If the housing market booms, they will get over-run by development quicker and have to pay more and sooner to build and operate the new sewer system.

If the housing market slows or tanks, the taxpayers get stuck paying the debt service and operating costs of an unused new sewage treatment plant.

Remarkably, the Revelopment Agreement lets the developer Lennar walk if they don’t make expected profits and leave the local taxpayers holding the bag.

An “Uncontrolled circumstance” is defined to include this insanity – guaranteeing the developer’s profits:

Market conditions … the effect of which, as reasonably determined by the Redeveloper, would materially or adversely affect the Redevelopeer’s ability to market and sell units at such prices and in such quantities as would enable the Redeveloper to achieve the unit sales, cash flow, and/or return on equity assumptions set forth in the Redeveloper’s business plan as included in its application for the Financial Agreement.

The developer gets to walk if the economy or the profits are not there – But if Plumsted township is delayed or unable to build the sewage treatment plant (on time according to the developer’s schedule, or at all), then the developer gets to invoke – get this –  the “Honey Dipping Option”.

WTF is the “Honey Dipping Option”? Sounds like some perverse nightmare out of Kubrik or Kafka or Heller:

In the event of unforeseen delay in construction of the Sewer Improvements once the Redeveloper commences construction of the project … the Redeveloper shall continue construction of the project through the interim use of a honey dipping process (the “Honey Dipping Option”). Under the Honey Dipping Option, the Redeveloper shall construct temporary on-site storage facilities for the collection of sewage generated by the project, the Township shall cause the PMUA to periodically remove such sewage and cause same to be treated and disposed at an off-site location, and the costs of use of the Honey Dipping Option … shall be paid for by the PMUA through the standard annual user fees, to be paid by the individual homeowners.

Does anyone know how much this insanely reckless option might cost?!

Local officials have not told the residents that if their homes are located in the sewer service area, they are legally REQUIRED to hook up and pay sewer connection fees and user charges. They have said nothing about how much this would cost a homeowner, many of whom are on fixed and/or low income, now living with a free septic system.

How will these folks pay a $5,000 connection fee and $100/month sewer bill?

Local officials have also not told the community that, because the TOWN will issue bonds, that taxpayers could wind up on the hook if the plant is built and the developer and sewer users do not provide sufficient revenue to pay the debt service and operating costs of the plant.

Local officials have told the community that the developer is picking up the tab, so the community has been misled, to put it mildly. They think they are getting something for nothing.

That’s the same dishonesty and irresponsible attitude that created the problem by letting illegal 19th century cesspools violate public health and sanitation laws, instead of requiring the owner to pay to cleanup their mess.

Now the whole town is paying and being ruined by the “solution” to this literal cesspool.

Last night no one would answer my repeated questions posed to the developer about how much the sewer plant and collection system would cost to build and operate; what share of these costs were borne by the developer; and how much a typical homeowner or local business would pay in connection fees, user costs and tax increases.

No one would answer questions about basic facts.

Board member Robert Hardy was the only one with the common sense and courage to speak out in opposition to the scheme.

His remark about “you can fire me if you like” illustrates the ugly side of intimidation in a small Ocean County Republican machine town. The Plumsted Plantation.

The town’s attorney, who consistently offered questionable legal advice, is Assemblyman McGuckin (R-10).

The former Mayor and Business administrator and Board member is fellow Assemblyman and Master Puppeteer, Dancer (R-12), who put this scheme together.

The town’s engineer is a retired fellow working on contract whose name escapes me – he raised few questions, consistently argued the developer’s case, and his ideas were so backward that he could have been exhumed from a local cemetery.

The town has no local newspaper and no news coverage.

As residents complained last night, the “anchor” attractions in the “historic” “downtown district” are CVS and Subway.

Putting the finishing touches on the destruction of the Town, of course we have WaWa:

The Town’s health officer – if they have one – failed to enforce basic sanitary laws for decades, and as a result, there are several illegal 19the Century cesspools and septic tanks discharging raw sewage to the streets and Crosswicks Creek.

It really is a perfect story of pitiful political and economic conditions.

Now, it will get worse, as an age restricted, private gated community invades their rural landscape.

One man spoke and expressed it perfectly:

I thought Colliers Mills WMA formed a boundary for the invasion of retirement housing disease.”

 Who will save these folks from themselves and greedy developers and speculators?

In what may be a record in rapid response, the State Ethics Commission responded to our July 1, 2016 request for an ethics review of the role of a corporate scientist on the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute (DWQI).  (see:

• State Ethics Commission Asked To Review Appointment of Chemical Industry Rep To Drinking Water Panel and Limit His Role

We are seeking, at a minimum, clear ethical standards, public disclosure, and recusal requirements.

Our request noted that DEP is required to adopt and enforce an Ethics policy that complies with State Ethics law – and we also noted more restrictive science oriented ethics standards for members of DEP’s Science Advisory Board (SAB).

The Ethics Commission referred the matter to DEP and requested that they conduct a review.

In an email to me earlier today, the Commission wrote:

Mr. Wolfe:

The Commission received your request below.  In response, the Commission has requested that the Ethics Liaison Officer for the Department of Environmental Protection review the circumstances you described to ensure that any necessary recusals are put in place and that any other necessary steps are taken to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of any conflicts.  Thank you.

I am very pleasantly surprised by the Commission’s rapid and appropriate response.

The issue now shifts to the DEP.

Last I recall, DEP’s Ethics Officer was a longtime career DEP lawyer named Cathy Tormey. I’ve worked with Ms. Tormey and found her a dedicated professional and public servant.

However, given the high profile of this issue (e.g. an appointee of the NJ Senate President with a high powered corporate background, and the DWQI and PFOA and Dupont issues), I fear that the ethics review will be done at a higher level by a political DEP employee – or elsewhere, perhaps in the Governor or AG’s Office.

Full disclosure: I had one previous personal involvement with the DEP Ethics Officer as a DEP employee and a local School Board member in North Hanover. In that case, I was forced to read a public statement during a public hearing of the School Board stating that I was required to recuse from any discussion, deliberations, or voting on any issue involving the DEP.

That ethics review also was incredibly rapid – after I raised a firestorm by publicly disclosing lead contamination in drinking water fountains in elementary schools on McGuire Air Force base, I had the Ethics Order on my desk when I arrived to work at DEP the next day!!

One would think a chemical industry hired gun deliberating on the science behind drinking water standards would be a far more serious ethics issue than what I was Ordered to recuse from.

We believe that the chemical industry appointee should simply resign.

Regardless, the issue is subject to OPRA and DEP must make some kind of decision on the matter.

We are watching and will keep you posted.

EPA protecting Dupont from public scrutiny

Jim O’Neill of the Bergen Record has an important story today about the risks of bankruptcy by Dupont spinoff, Chemours, see:

• Funds for $50M Pompton Lake cleanup may be at risk

But O’Neill managed to miss a critical issue and in doing so he gave the US EPA a huge pass.

We reached out to O’Neill through our friends, the good folks of Pompton Lakes at CCPL, so we’re confident O’Neill was aware of the concerns, yet somehow chose to ignore them.

US EPA has legal power and had at least two specific recent opportunities to use its regulatory authority to reduce or mitigate the risks of a Chemours bankruptcy.

Despite huge known risks – and an EPA Inspector General’s investigation – EPA failed to use that authority – not once, but twice.

This is borderline reckless bureaucratic negligence in this case, especially because EPA’s failure to enforce RCRA financial assurance requirements has been a known and longstanding nation-wide problem for a decade (see this 2005 critical EPA Inspector General’s Report).

First of all, EPA could have imposed special conditions on Dupont’s “Financial Assurance” requirements under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

In a January 21, 2015 letter to EPA Region 2 Administrator Enck, we urged EPA to take action to address these risks, see: EPA Conducting National Review of Dupont Chemours Spinoff

January 21, 2015

Ms. Judith Enck

Administrator,Region 2

Re:  DuPont Spin-off (The Chemours Company) – Pompton Lakes DuPont Works Site.  RCRA Financial Assurance

Dear Ms. Enck:

We are writing to you on behalf of the concerned Pompton Lakes residents that are critically worried about our future here in Pompton Lakes.  We have some specific questions in regard to the recent DuPont spin-off request to the US Securities and Exchange Commission which will affect the Pompton Lakes DuPont Works site here in Pompton Lakes under  I.E. DuPont De Nemours and Co.  We are sure you are familiar with the recent news and the various articles that have appeared in a variety of news outlets.  Here is the US Securities and Exchange Commission application for your information. http://investors.dupont.com/files/Chemours/Chemours-Form-10-12-18-2014.pdf.

Our questions are as follows:

1.  What is the dollar amount for the DuPont RCRA financial assurance for the Pompton Lakes DuPont Works site?  Can you provide us with that information?

2.   What specific instrument is DuPont RCRA financial assurance?  Is this instrument guaranteed by DuPont (not The Chemours Company but DuPont specifically)?

3.   Is this instrument liquid?

4.  Will EPA require DuPont (not The Chemours Company) to put money aside in an escrow account for the projected cost of the cleanup?

5. Will EPA ramp up existing DuPont RCRA financial assurance to address risks from The Chemours Company?

6.  Can this spin-off be stopped and if so, who has the authority to take such an action?

Since the above concerns are on the forefront for the residents as they are worried about their future, please respond as soon as possible.

The cleanup obligations at the Pompton Lakes site legally are imposed on Dupont and now Chemours spinoff by the EPA RCRA PERMIT.

EPA RCRA permits are governed by EPA RCRA regulations.

EPA RCRA regulations require that the polluter (Dupont) provide financial assurance for the cleanup, to assure that money is available to cleanup the site completely, including monitoring for a 30 year period after cleanup.

Given all the credible financial and legal criticisms about the potential for bankruptcy abuse of the Chemours spinoff, EPA should have overseen Dupont-Chemours with HEIGHTENED scrutiny and put SPECIAL CONDITIONS in the approval of new RCRA financial assurance.

But they did nothing.

Secondly, EPA had a more recent opportunity to reduce the risks of bankruptcy when EPA legally approved the transfer of the RCRA permit from Dupont to the spinoff Chemours. EPA did this very quietly in a May 20, 2016 letter to Chemours’ corporate counsel. (no link – PDF available upon request).

But if you read the conditions EPA imposed in the Attachment to the approval of the permit transfer, instead of heightened scrutiny and imposing special conditions to prevent abuse, EPA did exactly the OPPOSITE.

EPA LOWERED the level of scrutiny by specifying a lax threshold for monitoring and enforcement.

EPA noted that Chemours would need to be “seriously or repeatedly deficient” in complying with permit requirements before taking enforcement action.

Chemours should be closely monitored and on an EPA early warning list with a hair trigger – much the same way that financial regulators oversee banks in jeopardy of failure. They have a red line or  “watch” list, to closely monitor a bank that might be insolvent and intervene immediately to protect investors and the public taxpayer who insures those deposits via FDIC.

In addition, EPA again allowed Dupont to satisfy the MINIMUM public participation requirements – in this case, NONE –  a long standing abuse that goes back to all the “minor permit modifications” that kept the vapor intrusion issue under the public radar screen.

EPA “minor permit modifications” do NOT trigger public notice, comment and hearings. EPA approved the Chemours financial assurance and the RCRA permit transfer from Dupont to Chemours with no public participation!

We have email from Barry Tornick, former EPA RCRA Program manager and head of the Dupont cleanup for EPA, intentionally using “minor permit modification” procedures to avoid public scrutiny of the original cleanup plan.

The Bergen Record’s readers deserve to know all this.

If Chemours declares bankruptcy and there is no money to cleanup the entire Pompton Lakes site, don’t just blame corporate greed –

EPA would be partially responsible also for failure to prevent the problem and trying to keep it all under the public radar. Their lax oversight practically invites it.

[End Note: My former boss Brad Campbell covered EPA’s ass – he has dirty hands at that site and should not have been a source in this story. I refer to the sweetheart NRD settlement he negotiated with Dupont, which not only provided no compensation to Pompton lakes, it left them with contaminated land. Mr. O’Neill knows this, having written that story, see:

• Dupont deal gave state more tainted soil

Bill Wolfe of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility’s New Jersey chapter agreed. “DuPont got a sweetheart deal and DEP didn’t do their homework,” Wolfe said. “The deal must be renegotiated and DuPont forced to pay fair compensation, especially to Pompton Lakes residents who have suffered for decades.”

“innumerable streams for delight” and “the most noble rivers of the world”

(Hudson River – view from Tarrytown NY, looking north toward Haverstraw Bay)

My working class family was not of an intellectual or patriotic bent – when it came to July 4, we celebrated my Grandfather “Pop’s” birthday with a cookout, horseshoes, and beer.

I too reject the patriotic flag waving, but do like to dabble in history, so on this 4th, of the best known founding documents, i.e. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Federalist Papers, we are reading and provide an except of the latter.

Conventional “Independence Day” wisdom celebrates the political ideals of democracy, freedom and independence, but at the outset, Federalist Paper #2 boasts how these foundations are intimately and organically related to – almost dependent upon or a product of – the natural world.

But today, almost ignored is the essential role of the natural world in the founding of the Republic.

Few seem to know that the Federalist Papers project was conceived by Alexander Hamilton while sailing in a sloop down the Hudson River from Albany to New York City, where he wrote Federalist #1 and decided to recruit John Jay and James Madison in the project, writing under the collective pseudonym “Publius”.

These natural roots of the Republic deserve special attention right now, as our economic and political systems neglect and attack the natural world as just another commodity to exploit and exhaust until collapse, as Karl Polanyi warned in “The Great Transformation”.

Grounding his first substantive argument for what Hamilton called “the advantages of Union” in his introductory Federalist #1, John Jay  (as Publius) wrote in Federalist #2:

It has often given me pleasure to observe, that Independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide spreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

Take delight in what’s left – but lament that largely lost legacy as you celebrate today.