WolfeNotes.com

Comparison Of NJ’s EV Program With ALA Report Amounts To Journalistic Malpractice

Today’s NJ Spotlight story on a Report by the American Lung Association (ALA) is highly misleading and grossly exaggerates the benefits of NJ’s electric vehicle program.

The ALA Report modeled the economic, public health, air quality, and climate benefits of conversion of the transportation sector to 100% electric vehicles powered by 100% renewable energy. The “transportation sector” is defined narrowly as gasoline and diesel powered on road vehicles, with no consideration of pollution from aircraft, rail, and ships and off road vehicles.

Basically, NJ Spotlight Reporter Tom Johnson used the ALA Report to tout the benefits of NJ’s electric vehicle program.

But Mr. Johnson compared apples to oranges and in doing so grossly exaggerated the benefits of NJ’s EV program. Johnson wrote:

NJ pitches in with zero-emission vehicles

New Jersey is one state that has embraced that approach, adopting a comprehensive program to electrify light-duty vehicles under a law approved in 2004. What’s more, New Jersey should have more than 300,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025, as well as charging infrastructure around the state to ease range anxiety among drivers that their vehicles can be refueled. It also aims to have 100% of its electricity come from clean-energy sources by mid-century.

If such strategies are followed nationwide, the study found it could have a significant impact on public heath, as well as reducing air pollutants in a state widely recognized as a transportation corridor.

The “NJ pitches in” section follows the lead 4 paragraphs of the Spotlight story, which summarize the ALA Report. The ALA Report includes estimates of various benefits that would accrue to NJ. Clearly, the intent is to compare NJ’s EV program with the ALA Report. That is highly misleading.

First of all, NJ has not “embraced that approach“. The phrase “that approach” clearly means the ALA Report’s electrification transition.

There is a huge difference between the ALA “approach” as presented in the ALA Report and the NJ EV program. See below.

Second, the phrase “if such strategies are followed” is highly misleading. This is because the phrase is contained under the header “NJ pitches in” that describes NJ’e EV program and directly follows a paragraph about NJ’s EV program. Thus, the phrase clearly implies that the “strategies” are NJ’s strategies and that those strategies will produce the various benefits estimated in the ALA Report.

That is so false and misleading it amounts to journalistic malpractice. Tom Johnson is an experienced reporter who has a basic facility with data. He could not do this inadvertently, because he clearly knows the difference between the NJ EV program and the ALA Report’s assumptions.

Here’s why the story was so misleading  (and I’ll keep this short).

1. The ALA Report assumes that 100% of the on road vehicle fleet is converted to electric vehicles which are powered by non-carbon based energy (renewables).

The ALA Report methodology is found on page 17. Here is the core ALA assumption:

2. NJ’s EV program is not even close to the 100% fleet conversion to ZEV’s assumed by the ALA Report.

I won’t rehash all that here. For details of NJ’s EV program and the various benefits modeled in the ALA Report, see:

• Highly Touted “Transformative” Electric Vehicle Program Has Negligible – If ANY – Impact On Greenhouse Gas Emissions

NJ Spotlight’s story is again highly misleading. Spotlight reports that:

New Jersey should have more than 300,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025

Keep in mind that the context for this statement is the ALA Report, which assumed a 100% EV fleet (passenger cars, trucks, buses).

In contrast, NJ’s 300,000 EV vehicle goal (it’s actually 330,000) is less than 10% of of NJ’s current fleet of passenger vehicles, which is not even close to the 100% of the entire on road transportation fleet (car, trucks, buses) assumed in the ALA Report.

3. Environmental Justice Benefits

To their credit, NJ Spotlight mentions environmental justice:

The study follows up on an earlier report this year from the association that found nearly half of Americans are living with and breathing unhealthy air, a problem linked to the transportation sector, a leading contributor to both climate change and air pollution. More often than not, those impacts are likely to fall on counities with people of color.

But, in light of the grossly exaggerated benefits of NJ’e EV program, this again misleads NJ’s EJ communities.

Additionally, NJ’s EJ communities are impacted by huge air pollution from NJ ports (from airplanes, ships, and rail). These are significant pollution sources which are not even included in the ALA Report, a significant fact NJ Spotlight fails to report.

Worse, NJ Spotlight fails to note the larger context, i.e. the fact that an seriously flawed environmental justice bill is now on Gov. Murphy’s desk.

That EJ bill totally IGNORES exactly the impacts and benefits that are quantified in the ALA Report, i.e. the pending EJ bill ignores mobile source pollution, ignores greenhouse gas emissions. As I wrote:

• Greenhouse gas emissions are exempt. This ignores the climate emergency and the fact that EJ communities suffer disproportionately from climate impacts, especially from air pollution and extreme heat & urban heat island effects. This is an unforgivable missed opportunity to reduce GHG emissions as well at mitigate climate impacts in urban NJ.

4. HUGE Benefits Resulting From the Social Cost of Carbon Are Ignored

The ALA Report quantifies benefits that result from the Social Cost of Carbon.

These benefits are HUGE and EXCEED the health benefits: (from the ALA Report)

Yet, NJ Spotlight reports only the health benefits and ignores the larger benefits associated with “Social Cost of Carbon”. NJ Spotlight reported:

In New Jersey, the changeover could avoid $1.9 billion in health costs, 169 premature deaths and 2,306 asthma attacks, the study projected. Nationwide, the benefits of switching to a cleaner transportation sector could avoid 6,300 premature deaths, more than 93,000 asthma attacks and $72 billion in additional health care costs based on pollution reductions, according to the study.

Why would NJ Spotlight ignore the LARGER SCC benefits?

I have long criticized NJ Spotlight’s failure to cover the issues related to the Social Cost of Carbon (a news blackout that is just what the corporate polluters want because it hides a $2.3 BILLION annual subsidy).

Perhaps failures to mention the SCC could be because I previously exposed the fact that the NJ EV program would have negligible – if any – greenhouse gas emission reduction benefits.  It would be a real stretch to report on SCC benefits when NJ’s EV program has virtually no GHG emissions reductions.

And once again, we have an apples to oranges misleading presentation, because the NJ economic benefits that NJ Spotlight reports result come from the ALA Report and its assumptions, not the actual far smaller NJ EV program. The NJ program will not produce anywhere near the benefits the ALA Report projects.

A reader would conclude the opposite: i.e. that the NJ EV program mentioned favorably in the story produces these huge benefits, when they don’t.

Look, I support a strong EV program, but, if we’re going to really address the climate emergency, we need to begin with an honest assessment of reality.

All in all, NJ Spotlight is engaged in cheerleading and not journalism – in fact, this story is gross journalistic malpractice.

Petition for rulemaking is a long ignored tool to generate public pressure for reforms and hold DEP accountable

A Citizens Guide To Regulatory Power

A Tool To Reverse Trump Rollbacks

Now for something completely different, a brief note on some good news.

I just read a story in the old Bergen Record about a “petition for rule making” submitted to the DEP by animal rights and environmental groups seeking to block this year’s scheduled bear hunt, see:

• Critics have a new argument for why NJ bear hunt should be canceled: the pandemic

Unfortunately, the story again failed to report on the NJ Supreme Court’s decision that vests regulatory control of the bear hunt with DEP Commissioner McCabe, NOT the Fish & Game Council. That decision perfectly sets the stage for the DEP petition for rule making on the hunt.

Worse, the story was framed through the COVID lens, and missed the real “new argument” and “new wrinkle”:

The new wrinkle is the alleged danger posed by the coronavirus should the bow hunt, which is scheduled to begin on Oct. 12, be allowed to move forward. McCabe has 60 days to accept the Aug. 3 petition, reject it, or ask for more time to study the issue. 

The real “new wrinkle” is the filing of a petition for rulemaking, a virtually unknown but powerful mechanism provided under a little known but key NJ law known as the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).

The APA provides the public with a tool to force government agencies to consider public demands to adopt regulations to protect the public interest.

DEP must consider and substantively respond to the legal, scientific, and policy arguments made in the petition.

The DEP’s decision to deny a petition can then be appealed to the courts.

Because it is a formal regulatory process, it also can be used to request legislative oversight of DEP decisions.

Therefore, the regulatory petition process provides a mechanism and procedural opportunity to hold DEP accountable to facts, science, law, and public demands.

A rule making petition can also provide an excellent opportunity to educate the public, generate media, and organize public support for real change. That all can be used to generate political pressure on DEP.

Unfortunately, while the business community has filed many petitions for rule making to DEP, the environmental community has long ignored this important tool (see DEP’s rule petition webpage – note that the August 3, 2020 bear hunt petition has not even been posted yet!)

Under Commissioner McCabe, the DEP has virtually abdicated its regulatory responsibilities. That is a particularly egregious failure in light of 8 years of Christie DEP regulatory rollbacks, at least 100 Trump regulatory rollbacks, and the escalation of the climate emergency.

Therefore, the Murphy DEP should be barraged with petitions for rulemaking from the NJ environmental community on numerous issues, especially to get out in front of and frame the upcoming climate regulations DEP has named “PACT”.

A rule petition is a far more effective way to influence DEP than to sit around the table and get played in the DEP’s informal “Stakeholder processes”. That’s just where DEP wants you to be – safely in the room, instead of forcing their hand legally and out in the streets targeting DEP regulations for public protest demands.

I’ve been urging NJ environmental leaders to file these petitions for years, so now I’ll rehash that as a template for citizens.

In addition to reversing trump rollbacks (and forcing NJ Democrats to walk the walk) NJ State issues include not only climate and 401 WQC, but to restore protections for Category 1 buffers; repeal of all Christie DEP rollbacks; real consideration of EJ in permitting; strengthen risk assessment; expand the “state of the art” standards in Clean Air permits to address GHG emissions; regulate GHG emission in land use and all other DEP permits; block logging in forest management and “stewardship” (and put teeth and current science in the voluntary and ancient forestry wetlands BMP Manual); make BMP’s comply with water quality standards; restrict abuses of OPRA “deliberative privilege” secrecy loophole; prohibit the use of cost-benefit analysis, unless explicitly mandated by black letter law; and adopt and implement the precautionary principle (and many, many more).

I)  A Citizens Guide to Regulatory Power

Here is an example of a Petition for rulemaking I filed – note the legal requirements and format.

Another important and timely issue that should be the subject of a rule making petition is the Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certificate issue. It is the most powerful mechanism to kill pipelines and other fossil infrastructure and DEP is totally ignoring it.

In the 401 WQC context, the legal bases would be the federal Clean Water Act, the NJ Water Pollution Control Act, The NJ Water Quality Planning Act, the NJ Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act, the NJ Flood Hazard Control Act, DEP’s Organic Act (forgot the cite), and the NJ Administrative Procedure Act.

The primary regulatory bases would be the NJ Surface Water Quality Standards (NJAC 7:9B-1 et seq.), the WQMP planning rules (NJAC 7:15-1 et seq), the NJPDES rules (NJAC 7:14A-1 et seq), the stream encroachment rules, the Freshwater Wetlands rules – here’ a link to DEP rule page to provide proper citations.

The NJ state requirements are broader in scope than the federal Section 401 WQC – e.g. apply to more projects (e.g. intra-state non-federal projects) and more “regulated activity”, so be sure to make this clear.

II)  Content for a 401 WQC petition

Here’s what you need to petition DEP to do:

1. Withdraw current regulations applicable to pipeline and related fossil infrastructure construction, e.g.  Wetlands GP#2 and a FHA PBR #36. These DEP regulatory frameworks provide totally inadequate environmental assessment, DEP review processes, enforceable standards, public participation and environmental safeguards – while they ignore the 401 WQC powers and NJ Surface Water Quality Standards.

2. Promulgate comprehensive new 401 WQC regulations, which are integrated substantively with the upcoming Climate PACT regulations such that lifecycle GHG emissions are considered, including secondary and cumulative emissions and fugitive and/or unregulated emissions; enforceable requirements are established to limit emissions as necessary to achieve net zero or science based numeric statewide reductions; all emissions are subject to a 2-1 mitigation (or offset) requirement. These requirements must be incorporated into ALL DEP approvals for all regulated activities that emit (direct or indirect) GHGs.

3. New WQC regulations must include mandatory requirements for at least the following:

a) a water quality analysis – with a compliance demonstration (i.e. project may not “cause or contribute” to a violation, including temporary violations, of any SWQS.

The water quality analysis must require demonstration of compliance with NJ DEP’s Surface Water Quality Standards (NJAC 7:9B-1 et seq.), including “antidegradation policy and implementation procedures”, including anti degradation review, application and enforcement of numeric and narrative standards, and a required demonstration by the applicant that all existing and designated uses are protected.

b) This would include a “reasonable potential” analysis of the project’s “potential” to “cause or contribute” to an “excedence of a surface water quality standard”, including from accidents, and point and non-point sources of pollution.

As per the DEP’s NJPDES rules, this would require a DEP approved QA/QC plan and at least 4 quarters of statistically representative data on the current biological, physical and chemical water quality characteristic of impacted waters, including, among other  things, existing water quality, stream flows, temperature, pH, all water quality parameters in the SWQS, and an inventory of current existing uses, especially macro-invertebrate species that are vulnerable to pipeline construction impacts and things like the blowouts and mud deposition we’ve seen repeatedly.

You might want to suggest that the prior DEP method for reviewing disturbance in a C1 buffer could serve as a template for some of the biological and water quality characterization and that current NJPDES “antidegradation policy and implementation procedures” and “reasonable  potential” analysis should be considered as well.

The same requirements must be established for demonstrating compliance with the NJ DEP groundwater quality standards.

Obviously, you need to lay this all out – might want to look at NY DEC pipeline 401 WQC denies for technical details.

Let’s get this party started!

There is sufficient information teed up to get petitions filed soon.

Members of NJ environmental groups should contact their leaders and professional staff and demand that they get off their asses on this.

[End Note: I just got a great email question from a dedicated citizen activist:

Being fairly new to this , why don’t the enviro groups use this more?

Here’s my reply:

It’s perceived as too aggressive. It puts DEP on the spot and forces them to make a decision. It embarrasses the Commissioner and the Gov. Many ENGO folks don’t want to do any of that or bite the hand that [grant] feeds them. They would rather “work with DEP” and play the “Stakeholder” games.

Plus, most of them know absolutely nothing about regulations – or are too lazy to work on them. Not sexy. Too much like work.

NJ Spotlight once again puts lipstick on a pig

DEP minimizing the scope of the problem & abdicating regulatory responsibility

Right now, I’m up in wonderful “green” Vermont. I spent the last 2 nights in Breadloaf Wilderness.

I’m here because I left Burlington in disgust after learning that Lake Champlain has a toxic algae bloom – they call it a cyanobacteria bloom here, but the politically framed excuses in Vermont were the same as those in NJ: i.e. after being warned NOT to allow my dog to swim, I asked an official what was going on. I was told that record low lake levels and warm water were the problem (thus implying a “natural” uncontrollable cause and omitting the man made causes of excessive nutrient loads from over-development, lax regulation, and catastrophic climate warming).

With that bad taste still in my mouth, I opened my email this morning to find another misleading NJ Spotlight story about NJ’s HAB problem.

According to NJ Spotlight, the story was based on a DEP  “online news conference on the status of the problem”.

Why does the press always react to the DEP spin?

Why not just do some real investigative journalism, report the facts, and examine the actual effectiveness of DEP programs and regulations that are designed to prevent the problem?

After reading the DEP’s promotion of “green infrastructure” (a slogan from their flawed stormwater regulations), this DEP spin really set me off:

Last summer, more than 30 lakes were affected by the blooms, and the number is about the same so far this year, DEP officials said.

There are 16 confirmed blooms so far this year, slightly more than the 12 that were confirmed by the same point of 2019.

I have written several times, emailed NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle multiple times, and have been trying to get the word out that DEP rolled back last year’s warning & lake closure threshold of 20,000 cells/ml to 80,000 this year.

Once again, Spotlight failed to report that.

But, by reporting DEP’s comparison of last year’s data to this year, Spotlight has gone even further and actively misled readers.

It is not valid to compare last year’s HAB episodes with this year’s episodes because DEP changed the threshold!

On top of that, once again, NJ Spotlight gave DEP a pass on massive planning and regulatory failures – serious failures that should be the focus of a critical story and not some after the fact response by Jeff Tittel to DEP’s spin.

I fired off this email to Mr. Hurdle:

Jon – it is not valid to compare and report the number of lakes this year with last year, because DEP changed the thresholds!

When will you report that critical fact?

Because the threshold is much higher (80,000 cells/ml this year compared to 20,000 cells/ml last year), the actual number of lakes impacted and the risks to public health (and pets) is MUCH BIGGER AND BRODER THAN DEP IS REPORTING.

Again, if DEP ever raised the ground level ozone standards and the number of bad air days were reported as the same as last year, that would not pass the straight face test and would be widely denounced.

Similarly, the DEP has adopted very weak and totally ineffective “Total Maximum Daily Loads” (TMDLs) for lake nutrients. Those TMDLs are the legal and regulatory mechanism (science based and quantitative and thus enforceable) under the Clean Water Act to address this problem.

Worse, DEP has actually rolled back specific regulations that were designed to prevent and reduce nutrient loads, including Highlands, Category One buffers, WQMP (septic maintenance), stormwater management, wetlands, and stream encroachment.

There are also huge gaps in current DEP regulations regarding land use, septics, non-point pollution, water quality standards for nutrients, and climate change (hydrology).

WHY IS NONE OF THAT REPORTED and instead, DEP IS GIVEN A PLATFORM TO SPIN ALL THIS AT A PRESS CONFERENCE?

Wolfe

Op-Ed Praises DEP Rule That Ignored Climate Change and Rolled Back Protections

Repackages the builders arguments in current political slogans

A quick note today on an egregiously false and misleading Op-Ed published today by NJ Spotlight, that cynically parades under “green”, climate and environmental justice slogans, see:

• Climate Change is an Equity Issue; Green Infrastructure Can Help on the Water Front

NJ Spotlight provided a platform to another basically corporate voice that opportunistically appears and jumps on the climate and “justice” issues. (while they have ignored this very recent worthless DEP coastal (CAFRA), wetlands, and steam encroachment rule proposal currently open for public comment. More to follow on that literally substantively empty rule proposal in a future post).

While doing so, the author merely repackaged longstanding developer criticisms of the failure of DEP’s regulations to address existing development. But the builders’ use that serious flaw not as a way to improve water quality and reduce flooding, but as a means of avoiding regulation of new development by claiming that they are unfairly bearing a regulatory burden for problems caused by other pollution sources. Here’s that argument, right up front in the subtitle: (emphasis mine)

Newly adopted [DEP stormwater] rules are good, but we must dramatically improve stormwater management on previously developed sites

The primary problem is that the Op-Ed is cynically Orwellian and riddled with falsehoods and spin.

First of all, while the author highlights the climate issue and claims an “equity” mantle, the author praises a DEP stormwater regulation that completely ignored climate change and environmental justice, rolled back existing water quality & flood protections, and codified the Christie DEP’s anti-environmental and anti-regulatory pro-economic development policies. For the details on that, see:

• After 12 Months In Office, Murphy DEP Proposes First Regulation, And It Is Awful

Let’s repeat that: the author highlights the urgency of the climate crisis and environmental justice, but then praised DEP rules that completely ignored climate and justice issues!

The Murphy DEP stormwater rule was so bad, it was blasted by FEMA, see:

• FEMA FLAYS MURPHY DEP STORMWATER PROPOSAL

FEMA flagged many significant and fatal flaws (described as “significant deficiencies“) in the DEP proposal. FEMA wrote: (emphasis mine)

 To highlight, FEMA finds that the abandonment of the nonstructural stormwater management in design and the absence of restrictions in the increase in runoff volume post-development to be significant deficiencies. FEMA is also concerned that the proposed rule does not consider future conditions of increasingly intense precipitation that is expected with climate change. The use of the term Green Infrastructure will not offset the proposed changes to the nonstructural stormwater management strategies and the multiple missed opportunities to reduce riverine and urban flooding impacts.

Flat out lying about all that, the NJ Spotlight Op-Ed author claims – falsely – that the DEP’s “green infrastructure” rules are “good” and are “required“. The author wrote: (emphasis mine)

The rule amendments adopted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection earlier this year, which take effect next March, require the use of green infrastructure to manage stormwater from new developments.

That false claim directly contradicts FEMA’s accurate criticism that the DEP’s green infrastructure regulatory provisions are NOT mandatory and they replace more stringent and more effective requirements. FEMA wrote:

(Note: a “BMP” is not a mandatory numeric standard. DEP relies on BMP’s and presumes that they satisfy water quality standards, without any science, data, or site specific evidence to support that presumption. There is a similar problem with the volume of water.)

The author then again falsely claims that “standards for water quality” remain “unchanged”:

To be clear, however, the Phase One amendments, also known as the green infrastructure rule, may not move the needle much on water quality or flood control because (a) the underlying standards for water quality, groundwater recharge and quantity control are unchanged and (b) the rules do not apply fully to redevelopment.

That is a false statement. The DEP stormwater rule eliminated water quality standards in the prior stormwater rules, including for nutrients and suspended/dissolved solids, the primary non-point source pollutants (also the primary causes of Harmful Algae Blooms that are closing NJ lakes to recreational use).

[Update: DEP proposed a variance loophole too: (@p. 39)

Here is FEMA’s criticism of the fact that DEP’s “green infrastructure” rules are NOT mandatory as the Op-Ed author claims and the fact that DEP eliminated of prior standards for water quality:

The author mentions the upcoming DEP climate PACT rules, but, among many other things, fails to mention the critical issue of the “design storm” (see my quote from a prior NJ Spotlight story)

What ever happened to the DEP policy to begin to regulate based on the 500 year storm event to address climate change, see:

• STATE WANTS SEWER PLANTS TO PLAN FOR 500-YEAR STORMS

“It’s extremely significant,’’ said Bill Wolfe, director of the New Jersey chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who first reported the changes on his blog, wolfenotes.com. “It will make a difference.’’

Is DEP Commissioner McCabe even aware of this? If so, why did she sign off on such a clearly deficient – and technically inconsistent – rule proposal?

Finally, the author – after these and other factual errors, spin and lies – highlights that:

success depends on credible voices

Not mentioned in the Spotlight authors Op-Ed bio blurb is the fact that she has zero technical credibility with respect to DEP regulations (legal or scientific).

I Googled the author’s background. The author has no scientific, technical or regulatory training (but a BA in English), she is a local politician, and was a staffer to corporate and developer dominated faux environmental groups, including Sustainable NJ and NJ Future.

Here’s a note I sent in frustration to NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle (Tom Johnson has blocked me):

Jon – no coverage of this recent DEP rule proposal enabled today’s Spotlight Op-Ed to mislead people.

Prior NJ Spotlight coverage of the DEP’s stormwater rule included FEMA’s harsh criticism of a severely flawed DEP rule the the Op-Ed author praises. Shouldn’t readers know that?

Spotlight readers should also know that the author, who stressed the need for “credible voices”, has no technical, scientific, or regulatory background, but instead a BA in English and local political experience. Who is her current employer?

Spotlight needs to do much better.

Wolfe

[Updates below]

Today’s NJ Spotlight story on the efforts of “non-profit” groups to construct rain gardens as a tool to reduce Harmful Algae Blooms – which also “reported” on DEP’s new Harmful Algae Bloom (HAB) “warning” system – was worse than traditional corporate greenwashing.

It is worse than traditional corporate greenwashing because, in this case, the anti-regulatory lies, the failure to base recommendations on science, and the political manipulation came from groups that the public considers to be credible and motivated by “green” objectives, and reported in a media outlet that purports to be “progressive” and dedicated to environmental coverage. (a reader just dubbed this “pay-to-play propaganda” – h/t JT).

I’ve written many times about DEP’s numerous and longstanding regulatory failures that have resulted in continuing declines in the ecological health and water quality of NJ’s lakes (and rivers and streams and bays and ocean and groundwater), particularly, the recent rollback of the scientific thresholds for HAB’s that trigger closure of lakes to recreation uses (swimming, etc), see:

• Murphy DEP Rolled Back Toxic Harmful Algae Bloom (HAB) Standards by 400%

Shortly after DEP announced it, I provided this HAB analysis to NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle and responded to one of his questions about it (he asked only who former Star Ledger outdoors reporter Fred Aun was and nothing on the substance).

So, I was stunned – but not surprised – by his failure to report the DEP rollback, while creating exactly the opposite impression with this spin and gibberish:

Their efforts complement those of the Department of Environmental Protection which has a new system for warning the public whether lakes are safe for bathing, and which is offering grants to local groups to build rain gardens. Earlier this summer, officials unveiled a color-coded warning system containing five rising stages of hazard from the blooms. Even at the lowest level, when harmful blooms are suspected, people, pets and livestock are advised not to ingest the water in that lake; at the highest level, which has not applied so far this summer, people are instructed to avoid “primary contact” such as swimming.

According to the DEP’s new interactive map on the blooms, seven lakes had algae levels at the “Advisory” level — at which swimming beaches are closed — as of July 6. Another 12 lakes had received the “Alert” designation, under which beaches remain open but harmful blooms are confirmed.

In 2019, more than 30 lakes were closed at different times because of an outbreak of harmful blooms that formed in response to warm water temperatures resulting from climate change, polluted runoff from impervious surfaces in the watersheds, and leaking septic systems in some places.

Let me break this down to elucidate why that reporting is so wrong.

First, Hurdle fails to put the rain garden “green infrastructure” non-profit program in context. Specifically he fails to report the fact that DEP recently rolled back the Statewide stormwater regulations, a move that was blasted by FEMA and State floodplain managers, specifically because, among other things, DEP rolled back prior numeric water quality standards that applied to nutrient runoff, eliminated the prior “non-structural” stormwater management requirements, and failed to make the new non-structural “green infrastructure” (including rain gardens) mandatory.

So, for non-profits to come along now – driven by DEP grant funding – and ignore all that, while touting rain gardens, is corrupt.

For Hurdle to just casually tack on the fact that DEP is funding these groups, without providing the context or explaining the significance, misleads readers and is journalistic malpractice.

But it actually gets worse.

Second, Hurdle fails to report that the DEP’s “advisory level” that triggered the 7 lake closures this year (2020) is 80,000 cells per ml.

Same problem with the 12 lakes in 2020 that

“received the “Alert” designation, under which beaches remain open but harmful blooms are confirmed.”

What this means is that people are swimming at unsafe levels – up to 80,000 cells/ml – that DEP thresholds closed beaches last year (20,000).

This “sample confirmation” inaction and delay multiple step process under DEP’s new “tiered” “warning” system reminds me of when DEP failed to warn parents and allowed a daycare center (the infamous Kiddie Kollege) to remain open for over 14 weeks until they conducted confirmatory indoor air sampling, despite knowing that it was located in a former mercury thermometer factory and that DEP inspectors were warned to wear gas masks before entering the building!

If you think I exaggerate, read the NY Times story that I blew the whistle on:

• Memo Shows Agency Knew of Danger in Child Care Building

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection knew in 1994 that a building that later housed a Gloucester County day care center was so dangerous that state inspectors were instructed to use respirators when entering the building, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times yesterday. …

The internal memo, dated Oct. 12, 1994, said “Level C at a minimum is required for entry into the building,” meaning respirators were required, said Bill Wolfe, a former department employee who is the director of New Jersey Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group that provided a copy of the memo.

I guess DEP lives matter! (someone needs to ask DEP Commissioner McCabe is she would let her grandkids swim at levels Upton 80,000 cells/ml, while DEP conducted confirmatory sampling).

[Full disclosure: I was forced out of DEP as a whistleblower back in 1994, when I exposed a DEP coverup of high levels of mercury in freshwater fish and refusal to publicly release the science, to act to regulate mercury sources, to warn the public, and to issue public health fish consumption advisories. So, as the Wall Streeters like to say, I’ve got “skin in the game”.]

Hurdles then compares the 7 closed so far this year with 30 lakes closed last year (2019), but fails to report that last year, DEP issued these warnings and lakes were closed when levels exceeded 20,000 cells per ml.

So, he not only failed to report a HUGE rollback in the HAB thresholds – from 20,000 to 80,000, a four fold increase – but creates the impression that the HAB problem is being alleviated (i.e. reduction of 30 HAB closures last year to just 7 so far this year).

Of course, if DEP increases the HAB threshold from 20,000 to 80,000, then the number of closures will be smaller!

If DEP ever tried to do this with the air quality ozone standard that triggers bad air day warnings – explicitly to increase the number and make air quality seem to be improving –  they would be pilloried by environmental and public health groups and the media.

Question: Why are the non-profits not criticizing this egregious DEP rollback?

Answer: BECAUSE DEP IS FUNDING THEM. PERIOD.

Disgusted, I fired off this note:

Jon – your story today is a perfect example of why many NJ “green” groups are so misguided and downright dangerous.

They promote ineffective, feel good, individual, site specific “solutions”, that provide cover for DEP statewide failure to implement and enforce regulatory programs, all while receiving funds from Foundations with a policy (ideological) agenda and DEP. This not only provides cover for failure, it diverts media, resources, and citizen activism from real State solutions to failed individual non-threatening “solutions” (like the Clean Water Act’s TMDL & Clean Lakes Programs, and numerous other regulatory tools and programs DEP has than actually work (but impose costs on corporations, towns, homeowners, and limit growth).

I’m curious how you could report about DEP’s new “color coded” system (rehash of Bush political manipulation of terror warnings) without reporting the fact that DEP rolled back the threshold (standard) to warn and trigger lake closures by 400% – particularly after I told you specifically about it and provided 3rd party traditional journalism reporting on it (Fred Aun story). For documentation of that again, see:

Murphy DEP Rolled Back Toxic Harmful Algae Bloom (HAB) Standards by 400%

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2020/06/murphy-dep-rolled-back-toxic-harmful-algae-bloom-hab-standards-by-400/

BTW, Mr. Souza and coastal groups have been milking DEP grants for Deal Lake restoration for over 15 years. Take a look at Souza’s work, submitted to DEP back in 2008

https://www.state.nj.us/dep/wms/bears/docs/DealLakeWatershedPlan.pdf

It’s all about consultants getting funded and green groups getting Foundation and DEP grants.

Meanwhile, water quality and ecological health continue to decline and go unreported.

Wolfe

[Update #1: Green ghouls.

I am so disgusted by the total frauds that parade around NJ as “environmental groups”.

At  a time when climate catastrophe and increasing nutrient pollution loads are destroying the ecological health of NJ’s waters, and a deadly public health epidemic is raging, these bastards only care about funding their organizations.

Here’s the latest creepy and corrupt BS from the Highlands Coalition – just give them money when you die:

Naming the New Jersey Highlands Coalition as the beneficiary of an account is a simple way to give and doesn’t cost you any money. As part of your estate planning, you can name a charity as the beneficiary of any of the following accounts

[Update #2 – NJ spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle didn’t only ignore my analysis and the prior report by Fred Aun.

He ignored other news coverage and an Op-ed that addressed what NJ Spotlight and their fake green sources intentionally suppressed.

His flawed reporting was no accident – powerful forces want to keep the facts and science from the public, because, just like closing the economy to slow the spread of COVID – science requires that we reduce economic activity.

First, as NJ TV mis-reported, here is the NJ DEP’s Chief of Staff openly revealing DEP’s abdication – with no explanation of what this means, by a NJ TV news reporter:

“So at that first level and that middle level you can take a swim if that’s your choice, you can boat. Be aware though that there could be a risk,” LaTourette said.

Second, here is Jeff Tittel of Sierra Club’s Op-Ed, which exposes the DEP fraud, see:

• NJ must take action on algae blooms in lakes, protect the public

end update.]