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Read DEP’s “PRIVLEDGE (sic) AND CONFIDENTIAL” Management Report On Sparta Mt.

Scandalous incompetence and manipulation of the public

DEP says that NJ Audubon’s support “exceeded our expectations”

The Christie DEP recently proposed an incredibly unpopular plan to log the Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area (SMWMA), a magnificent 3,400 acre forested tract in the heart of the NJ Highlands Preservation Area. The land was purchased by Green Acres funds for permanent preservation.

Not surprisingly, that DEP plan immediately was met by strong public outrage and opposition, including objections by conservation groups and local governments and nearby Lake Homeowners’ associations, who all were blindsided by the DEP proposal.

One of the first big public expressions of this outrage and opposition occurred in Hardyston Township.

I filed OPRA public records requests for communications between DEP managers and NJ Audubon, who prepared the SMWMA logging plan.

The internal DEP email and management report I got back is an embarrassment.

And it raises serious issues about the “symbiotic” relationship between DEP and NJ Audubon.

It is incredibly revealing of how the Martin team thinks inside their bubble, how they circle the wagons, and how they engage in fact free spin.

Read this memo below and note how they characterize and dismiss criticism as “emotionally charged” and attack critics as manufacturing “illusions”.

This DEP “management report” illustrates just how technically incompetent, petty, and political the Martin management team is and how they rely on fact free PR tactics and desperately seek the political cover provided by NJ Audubon.

Is there one fact or even an attempt at a scientific analysis that you would expect in a Report to the DEP Commissioner in response to strong public criticism of a logging plan in a Highlands forest?

Believe me, I’ve written and read many memos and reports to the DEP Commissioner and this one is a new low. In fact, I’ve never read a memo to the Commissioner this transparently craven, political, and fact free, even from the DEP press office whose job it was to present the political arguments and media aspects of any public controversy.

These Martin people are pathetically incompetent and totally unprofessional – I’ve previously criticized DEP Assistant Commissioner Boornazian as an incompetent hack, but in this case his own words prove the point.

So, for your reading pleasure, in full, here is how the Bob Martin DEP Management Team responded to public opposition of hundreds of people in Hardyston township.

Note especially the symbiotic relationship between DEP and NJ Audubon and how manipulative DEP was in political deployment of NJ Audubon, a group that DEP just gave $500,000 of open space funds to for a conservation easement of about 70 acres of already preserved land (think about that, while townships across the state go begging of scarce open space money).

Also recall that NJ Audubon received $140,000 from a billionaire elite private hunting group to develop the logging plan, which was written by a private forester paid by NJ Audubon:

Where Have They Been As Christie Privatizes, Deregulates, Cuts Budgets, & Ignores Environmental Justice?

While I tried to convey the context and implications of the USGS dual sexed fish study, I’ve been laying low and waiting for someone to either explain the Flint catastrophe or opportunistically use it to call for reforms.

Rutgers professor and former DEP manager Dan Van Abs has risen to the occasion today in a NJ Spotlight Op-Ed:

• LET FLINT STRIKE SPARKS TO ADDRESS WATER-SUPPLY PROBLEMS IN NJ

First off, Mr. Van Abs should be applauded for making the effort to learn and share the lessons of Flint.

That effort contrasts with the stunning silence and abject failure of leadership by NJ DEP regulators, private water companies, water professionals, academics, and public officials in local, state and federal governments who are responsible for managing NJ’s drinking water.

But let’s not get carried away with praising Mr. Van Abs for what should be a moral responsibility and duty to speak out against gross injustice and wrongdoing.

Praise noted, let me now expand upon and point a finer point on some of these issues raised by Van Abs.

In comments on a Jan. 22., 2016 NJ Spotlight story, I noted:

The Christie DEP policy and response to drinking water issues is no different than the response of Flint Michigan.

There are striking parallels:
1) obsession with costs over public health
2) scientific and regulatory decisions made by incompetent, untrained, and inexperienced government officials
3) denial and downplaying of the problem
4) failure to seriously listen to the public
5) forcing what should be state decisions to the local level
6) politics and anti-government ideology infecting science and regulatory policy decisions

But, upon reflection, I left some big things off that list, like:

• privatization (like Gov. Christie’s Executive Order and legislative initiative, which were sold as a cost cutting option, and not to provide cleaner and safer water)
• anti-Democratic and racist State control (like we see in many poor and black NJ cities, including Newark, Camden and Atlantic City)
• austerity (like Gov. Christie’s veto of new revenue measures and cuts to state government)
• anti-regulatory ideology (like Gov. Christie’s Executive Orders $1 – #4).

Since I wrote those comments, even more damning facts have emerged that make the situation worse than I had imagined at that time and go far beyond what Mr. Van Abs calls the “bad” scenario, i.e. “the total collapse of the regulatory system for Flint.”

Evidence has emerged that shows the Governor’s Office and state regulatory officials not only knew about the problem for many months and swept it under the rug, but that they intentionally failed to respond, while at the same time taking steps to protect State employees from drinking water risks.

[Update: 2/26/16 – The NY Times finally catches up with the story, see:

• Emails Show Michigan Aides Worried About Flint’s Water a Year Before Acting ~~ end update]

The selective protection of state employees reminded me of the Paulsboro toxic train derailment, when the DEP official would not send DEP emergency response staff into the accident scene due to high levels of toxic gas. Or of the armed State Park Police officer assigned to patrolling the lobby of the DEP building in Trenton.

They take care of their own.

I won’t go into details here, but note that Van Abs pulls his punches, which is troubling in two distinct ways: first, as a University professor, Van Abs enjoys the safe employment perch,  intellectual freedom, and responsibility of a truth telling institution, the Academy.

Second, Van Abs describes himself as a “former regulator”, a position from which he gained “inside” special knowledge that is not available to the public, which he has a duty to share.

While Van Abs correctly noted ethical and moral failures in Flint, as a former regulator he fails to out the skeletons he knows exist in NJ’s drinking water closets.

Bones from those closets most recently emerged in the release of the USGS study that found dual sexed fish, reporting on more delays at the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute, and DEP’s release of the Clean Water Act mandated Statewide Water Quality Report.

Water resource professionals in NJ know full well that the public has been drinking those same endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that poison the dual sexed fish the USGS found; that USGS has studied EDC’s since the late 1990’s; and that US EPA has done nothing to regulate to protect consumers from those harmful exposures to EDC in their drinking water.

Van Abs is not only silent on opening this can of worms, he actively perpetuates the problem, e.g. note that when he mentioned that Camden had secured an alternative water supply source to dwindling groundwater, he identified the supply as “surface water”.

The “surface water” in question was the Delaware River – a river that is probably not as polluted or corrosive as the Flint River, but a river nonetheless.

The Delaware is also a river that receives millions of gallons per day of wastewater discharge from sewage treatment plants that spew all sorts of EDC’s and other unregulated contaminants into the river. Those chemicals then pass through conventional drinking water treatment systems and go directly to the bodies of consumers, including the developing fetus’ of pregnant women.

The Delaware is not alone as a water supply source that is polluted by hundreds of unregulated chemicals and EDC’s: so too are the Passaic, Ramapo, and Raritan rivers.

Like Van Abs, I too am a “former regulator”, but in contrast, I’ve made numerous efforts to share inside knowledge and concerns about NJ’s drinking water, many summarized in this recent post.

That includes mention of the policies of Governor Christie, the political power of the pharmaceutical and chemical industries to derail regulation,  and the policy failures of the DEP and EPA.

But the flaws in Van Abs’ piece are more serious than technical obfuscations and failures to out the skeletons in the Gov.’s Office and DEP’s closets.

There is a smug and self serving CYA  operating in how Van Abs chooses to not disclose the fact that he and his Dodge Foundation funded flunkies have focused on NJ’s urban water issues since the outset of the Christie Administration.

Yet, despite this well endowed white bread effort, they have completely failed to focus on the issues brought to the fore in Flint Michigan, including: structural racism, poverty, environmental injustice, austerity, unregulated chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals, river water quality, wastewater treatment plants,  childhood lead exposure, lack of adequate treatment of drinking water, or a host of related urban water and public health issues.

They have mis-focused and ignored critical issues, and for self serving reasons or rank cowardice.

On top of those failures, they have failed to criticize or effectively oppose any of the Christie Administration’s systemic rollbacks of drinking water and clean water protections.

Instead, they had focussed on “combined sewer overflows”  and the costs and methods of financing infrastructure deficits and pet project, like oyster restoration, including advocating a gentrifying and racist urban redevelopment agenda as the means to finance the program.

All that failure is masked beneath the surface of Van Abs self serving missive on the lessons of Flint Michigan.

Let me close by repeating the frustration and disgust of my prior post on the USGS dual sexed fish study:

Finally, I must note that NJ environmental groups have largely abandoned this kind of traditional meat and potatoes work on clean water, DEP regulation, and facility permits, and public health risks from toxics.

The abandonment began long ago (see: Clean Water Anyone?) – no one showed up!

Environmental groups have been manipulated by Foundation grant money that has diverted them from these controversial issues and instead been funded to work on politically safe issues that don’ threaten powerful chemical and pharmaceutical industries and their friends in State government, like sustainability, the Delaware Watershed (Wm Penn and Dodge Foundations) and the Dodge Foundation funded “The Raritan Initiative”, which Rutgers has shamefully joined as well.

You simply do not see well informed and hard hitting critiques like this anymore – they have been defunded by the Foundations and abandoned by the environmental groups.

 

“The Siege of Miami” As Prelude

In the wake of another extreme weather event influenced by climate change, as NJ’s crackerjack investigative reporters are drilling down deep on critical issues like Gov. Christie’s Cape May mop comments and New Hampshire campaigning, one goes elsewhere for interesting reading.

The serendipity of the internet brought me to two wonderful New Yorker pieces to recommend to readers, particularly those shore dwellers short on information about sea level rise and climate change.

First up is a fine piece of writing by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Elizabeth Kolbert: The Siege of Miami

Read it very, very closely shore dwellers – and intrepid journalists too looking for story ideas.

You can be sure that the insurance, mortgage and real estate investors are reading it and making decisions accordingly, even if your local and state governments are not.

Miami is facing even more severe sea level rise issues than the NJ shore, but it’s only a question of rate – or when, not whether – NJ’s low lying coastal areas face these same issues. Inundation – soon – and retreat is the only option.

In fact, NJ’s back bay communities already are regularly experiencing high tide “nuisance flooding” and the same reverse flow of water from the bays back up the storm water infrastructure to the streets as Miami.

Also, similar to Florida, NJ is cursed by a Republican Governor who denies climate change.

While Gov. Christie has not banned the use of the term by his State Government employees like Florida Governor has, Christie has dismantled, defunded, deregulated, and/or outsourced all of NJ’s climate change programs that existed when he took office.

And Christie has failed to build sea level rise projections or extreme weather into his multi-billion dollar Sandy recovery scheme. How the federal government let him get away with that is scandalous.

The second good read also comes from The New Yorker – How Zika Virus Can Spread – a piece I particularly recommend to Bergen Record reporters and editorial board, who just wrote about the same issue but somehow managed to omit the linkage to climate change:

Viral epidemics like this one are not just the result of human encroachment on the jungles of Uganda, or of teams of travelling canoeists from the South Pacific, or even, simply, of globalization. Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that is largely responsible for transmitting pathogens such as Zika and dengue, thrives in the warm, humid, increasingly dense urban centers of Latin America, and climate change has been making these places warmer and wetter. According to a report by the World Health Organization, dengue infected people thirty times more frequently in 2013 than it did in the nineteen-sixties, making it the planet’s most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne virus. The International Panel on Climate Change recently projected that “the area of the planet that was climatically suitable for dengue would increase under most scenarios.”

In case it’s not obvious, the common threads between these two wonderful pieces of writing is climate change and the NJ press corps’ total failure to use a little imagination and address them.

To climate activists: maybe we can do field education and media events on full moon high tides at low lying shore areas?

Shoot me an email for good locations!

Activists Fiddle With FERC & NEPA – Rome Burns

Over 200 opponents of the other Pinelands pipeline – proposed by NJ Natural Gas and dubbed “The Southern Reliability Link”  – packed a standing room only crowd in Bordentown last night.

The Burlington County Times covered the event (read the whole story by David Levinsky, the lead correctly framed the issue), so I’ll be brief and expand on his lead:

BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP — State and federal regulators may be just weeks away from rendering decisions on a controversial natural gas pipeline and related compressor station proposed for northern Burlington County but opponents urged area residents to keep up the fight.

“They want to rubber stamp and push this through as quickly as possible, but you as citizens have rights,” Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said Wednesday during an information forum at the township community center. “They don’t have a right to just build this pipeline. There are regulatory processes they have to go through and the louder the public speaks out the better.”

The event was organized by Food and Water Watch and the Mayor of Bordentown Township, and included speakers from Sierra Club and Pinelands Preservation Alliance.

The spot on critical remarks by Mayor Jill Popko in the set up story for the event were what likely attracted the turnout of local, state and federal elected officials – Lesson: this is how you hold politicians accountable: (NJ.Com story]

She [Popko] also put out a call to county freeholders, state senators, Assemblymembers, U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Melendez and U.S. Reps. Chris Smith and Tom MacArthur in the hopes that they would be able to talk to and hear their constituents’ concerns.

“If they’re not going to come out and take the time to hear what they have to say and hear their concerns, I think that speaks volumes,” Popko said of the legislators. “I know that our Congressional and Senate representatives hear plenty from their lobbyists, but maybe it’s time to hear from their constituents.”

The set up was perfect and the organizing was very well done and the turnout was fantastic.

But the challenge for the pipeline opponents is to channel the energy of all the local opponents and focus it on a specific demand from a political target with the legal/regulatory power to kill the pipeline.

Unfortunately, the opponents again failed to rise to that challenge and – to use a disgusting hunting metaphor – continue a shotgun (birdshot) approach that focuses on FEMA, NEPA, local governments, and private property rights – instead of the slug shot needed to kill this project.

I’ve been writing about these issues for months to try to influence the strategy and focus of pipeline opponents and activists, so let me try not to repeat that and make this as simple as possible.

The pipeline project is opposed for a myriad of good reasons that motivate residents, empower activists and support good public policy. But not all of them are equal in weight or equivalent in priority in terms of their ability to frame an effective message and support a campaign to kill the project.

Strategic judgments, focus, and discipline are required (just ask the Koch Brothers, whose strategy is exposed in this incredible paper).

The pipeline is regulated by a multitude of complex federal and state laws – again, not all are as enforceable and thus as effective in their ability to block the pipeline.

There essentially are four agencies that theoretically have regulatory power that could block the pipeline – but each agency has its own track record in review of pipelines, it’s own legal and policy framework and its own political accountability. Not all are equal in power and in the likelihood of saying NO – in a politically and legally defensible way – to a pipeline:

1) the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

2) the NJ Board of Public Utilities (BPU)

3) the NJ Pinelands Commission

4) the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)

So, let’s compress what I see are the key factors in selecting an agency target and legal/regulatory strategy that can support a winning message and mobilize activists:

a) strength of legal and regulatory framework;

b) agency policy priorities;

c) agency institutional history, culture, and track record on pipelines;

d) ability to hold the agency politically and legally accountable; and

e) ability to translate into action: spur public opposition and mobilize activism.

And now lets reach some strategic conclusions, based on these factors

Of course, if this were a rigorous analysis, I would explain and document each factor and assign weighted points and come up with a quantitative recommendation.

But, this is WolfeNotes (not a policy journal) and after 30 years of waging these kinds of battles and campaigns, let me just cut to the chase.

One thing is for sure – if I were to apply these factors to rank and select targets, a strategic focus on FERC and NEPA would come in dead last.

FERC operates under an incredibly pro-gas industry law written by the gas industry. The Courts have upheld that policy bias. Their professional staff training is biased towards extraction and FERC’s institutional values and culture are completely captured by the gas industry. FERC is ostensibly an independent regulatory agency that is relatively insulted from political intervention by Congress or the President and thus difficult to hold accountable. They are a complex, insular, and far away Washington DC beltway bureaucracy that is not open, transparent and activist friendly and frankly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about public opposition.

Not surprisingly, FERC has never said NO and rejected a proposed pipeline (at least that’s I’m aware of).

I would put NJ BPU in a similar category and low target priority ranking as FERC, but with slightly more favorable political accountability ratings because they operate under more favorable laws that could benefit the public interest, they implement a Energy Master Plan that could support sound policy decisions, and although supposed to be independent, they are essentially accountable to the Governor and an arm of his administration.

So, why on earth would pipeline opponents spend so much, time, energy, resources, and the enthusiasm of residents and activists on FERC? FERC is a total waste of time and resources.

Another thing is for sure – if I were to apply these factors to select a statute & regulatory framework, a target on National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) would come in dead last also.

NEPA is what the lawyers call a “procedural statute” that is “not dispositive”. It is all about process and can not determine outcomes. NEPA is technocratic and complex and an EIS motivates only those absorbed by the technical and policy arguments and is hardly activist friendly. NEPA is administered by a far away low visibility DC Executive Branch bureaucracy that no one other than Al Gore types ever heard of (the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)) that is only weakly accountable to the Congress, the federal Courts and the President. In fact, Obama issued an Executive Order to “streamline” energy infrastructure NEPA reviews and Congress just enacted that EO into law (Obama signed the bill).

Historically, even NEPA victories -including those on project segmentation and failure to consider cumulative and secondary impacts – rarely have stopped a project and merely can inject delay and slow a project down. As I’ve noted, in the current economic climate of depressed energy prices and slack demand, delay actually benefits the gas industry.

So, why on earth would pipeline opponents spend so much, time, energy, resources, and the enthusiasm of laymen residents and activists on NEPA?

Arguments against a focus on private property rights and local Resolutions are even stronger than the arguments against a focus on FERC and NEPA, so I won’t spend any time on them here, but merely note that again we see pipeline activist emphasizing these ineffective arguments.

However, if I were to apply these factors, by far the number one target would be the Pinelands Commission.

The Pinelands Commission operates under an extremely strong federal and state legal framework. The pro-environmental policy priorities are expressed in an enforceable Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP). The staff are excellent professionals. The Commission has a history and culture that respects and protects the Pines. The Commissioners are local, accessible, operate in an open and transparent fashion, are are highly accountable. They are not captured by the gas industry. There is strong public, political, and media support for the protection of the Pinelands.

For all these reasons – and more – the Commission would have been an ideal and exclusive target.

But, under direction of Gov. Christie,  Executive Director Wittenberg hijacked the Commission and unilaterally issued an approval of the pipeline known as a “Certificate of Filing”.

Pipeline opponents have been slow to adjust and move on from this reality – a lawsuit is the only thing that can respond to the Pinelands issues. They need to retarget. Or plan a direct action campaign of non-violent civil disobedience.

A distant second on the list would be the DEP.

But the DEP has plenty of legal and regulatory power to kill the pipeline. There is a DIRECT political accountability between DEP, environmental laws, and the Governor (that’s why successful activists in NY are targeting Gov. Cuomo so aggressively and effectively).

DEP’s history is not that good and the current leadership is in the process of dismantling the agency and destroying its culture. But the middle managers and professionals are for the most part reasonably balanced. There is strong public support for the environment that DEP manages – particularly clean water – and there is favorable media. There is plenty of good legal precedent and the Courts are willing to enforce it. The legislature is a problem, but, overall, DEP is moderately politically accountable, far more so that FERC, CEQ or BPU.

So why are pipeline activists not focused on Governor Christie and DEP’s regulatory powers – particularly under the Clean Water Act – and demanding that Christie direct DEP to kill the pipeline?

That failure is a continuing mystery and deep frustration.

So while we contemplate wind farms and solar arrays, we remain married to an antiquated infrastructure that lets us do what we have done for centuries: extracting energy by burning carbon.  ~~~ Newsweek

Although people are being sickened and forced to evacuate their homes, obviously, the climate impacts of the California gas blowout in what is now a ghost town known as Porter Ranch are the most significant.

The gas leak from this one site is equivalent to 25% of California’s total daily greenhouse gas emissions!

But the root cause of the gas blowout is the same as the failure that allowed a developer to build a new community adjacent to a massive gas storage facility.

You see, we don’t need any of that Socialistic government land use planning and job killing Red Tape regulations.

The so called “free market” rules – and corporate profits and private property rights trump any notion of the public interest, the recommendations of planners and scientists, and environmental concerns – by a long shot and every single time.

We’re certain that the good people of Seneca Lake NY understand all that.

Newsweek nails it: in the gas industry’s own terms:

Supply and demand and corporate profits have ruled since the Reagan era dismantling began.

We are reaping the whirlwind.

And we did have a fit of schadenfreude, noting the involvement of Toll Brothers developers.

Toll Brothers, the upscale developer that has built much of the land here, promises potential residents they will “relax within open, natural spaces and live within a true community”.

Until very recently, you would have had to do a considerable amount of Internet sleuthing to discover that Porter Ranch, home to 30,000 people, is not exactly the pristine, quasi-rural paradise promised by its developers and boosters. The hills that frame its Instagram-ready backdrop also cradle the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, a parcel of 3,600 acres in which the Southern California Gas Company has turned 115 defunct oil wells into an underground warehouse that can hold 80 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

In NJ, environmental laws and regulations not only allow they promote and subsidize new housing development on landfills and toxic “brownfields”, even Superfund sites.

We don’t have any old oil and gas storage sites to build on, but we do allow development on old coal gasification sites.

And we allow gas pipelines to be built through Karst formations, highly prone to subsidence and sinkhole collapse.

How much worse can it get?

[PS – a well casing failed – all well casings fail over time. There are 400 underground gas storage facilities and hundreds of thousands of gas wells. We’re fracked.