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Murphy DEP Embarrasses The Governor And Orchestrates A Demonstration Of Their Impotence And Mismanagement

DEP Abdication Inverts DEP’s Regulatory Role And Promotes Privatization

Losing Sight Of The Fundamentals

The NJ American Water Company, a private corporation, last week issued an Order to their customers mandating water conservation measures. Get that: a statewide mandatory Order.

The mandatory NJ American Order came one day after Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette failed to invoke DEP’s mandatory water conservation powers by issuing a voluntary “drought warning”.

Many NJ water resource experts chastised DEP for long delays in issuing that Order and had called on Governor Murphy to issue a drought emergency, which would authorize DEP to issue mandatory water conservation measures, among other things.

Obviously, a private corporation issuing a water conservation mandate shines a bright light on DEP’s timidity, delay, and reluctance to mandate water conservation.

It also embarrasses Gov. Murphy for his lack of leadership and failure to protect the State’s drinking water and natural resources.

Yet just days after being embarrassed and upstaged by NJ American’s mandatory Order, NJ DEP Commissioner LaTourette released a Public Service Announcement (PSA) with NJ American Water President:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Why is a private corporation usurping the Gov.’s and DEP’s role and powers and assuming the lead role in managing the public water supply?

Why is a private corporation acting quicker and more aggressively than the Governor and DEP?

And why, after being humiliated by NJ American Water, would DEP Commissioner LaTourette grovel before the President of NJ American Water?

Who is wearing the pants here? It seems pretty clear that NJ American Water is.

Let’s restate the fundamentals: (source: NJ DEP Order)

• The water resources of the State are held in trust by the State, not by a private corporation:

WHEREAS, the State of New Jersey holds all natural resources in trust for the benefit of its people, including all water resources within the boundaries of the State, which are comprised of springs, streams, and bodies of surface and groundwater, whether natural or artificial, as well as the ocean and its estuaries to the seaward limit of the State’s jurisdiction;

• The water resources of the State are owned, held in trust, and managed by the DEP in the public interest, not by a private corporation in the interests of profits:

WHEREAS, the State Commissioner of Environmental Protection serves as the Trustee of all natural resources of the State with a possessory interest to protect the same, and a fiduciary duty to the people of New Jersey to ensure their good care, including the aforementioned water resources, which are essential public assets critical to the health, safety, economic wellbeing, recreational and aesthetic enjoyment, and general welfare of all New Jersey residents;

• Under law, DEP is the lead entity in managing water resources and drought, not a private corporation:

WHEREAS, pursuant to the Water Supply Management Act, N.J.S.A. 58:1A-1 et seq., and the attendant Water Supply Allocation Rules, N.J.A.C. 7:19, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is responsible for ensuring that water resources are planned for and managed as a common resource to provide an adequate supply and quality of water for all New Jerseyans, and is obligated to seek to prevent and respond to water supply emergencies.

The Murphy administration is not only politically timid and slow in honoring its sacred Trust duties and reluctant to enforce the law to protect the public interest, public health, and natural resources.

The Governor and the DEP Commissioner are so blinded by anti-regulatory Neoliberal ideology – and fear of the political backlash against DEP “mandates” – that they abdicate these duties and responsibilities under law and effectively delegate them to a private corporation.

Then after being humiliated by that private corporation, they embrace a “partnership” role.

This is a sickening inversion of reality. Commissioner LaTourette is a eunuch: no balls and no spine.

President Roosevelt got it exactly right in his 1938 message to Congress:

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

Here’s today’s story pitch to a NJ Spotlight reporter:

Hi Michael – I’m a retired DEP policy planner (After Cornell grad school, I began at DEP in 1985, working on the 1984 HSWA to RCRA – 14 years), former Policy Director of Sierra Club (7 years) and Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (whistleblower group PEER – 10 years). I had a column at the Star Ledger(before they “fired” me for posting links to the European press reporting on the Abu Ghraib torture photos). I blog at www.wolfenotes.com and Substack https://bwolfe.substack.com/publish/home

I appreciate your work, but would like to suggest a few ideas and pitch stories within your Hazard NJ narrative. Each story is significant and has not been reported in NJ.

1. Unreported drought related stories

a) Low river and stream flows significantly increase concentrations of chemicals in the rivers. These river flows are far less than the dilution DEP assumes when they issue wastewater discharge permits to sewage treatment plants and industrial dischargers (known as the “7Q 10 flow”).There are very few chemical specific limits in the wastewater discharge permits (see “whole effluent toxicity”). These same rivers are used for drinking water supply. Not all chemicals are removed from the wastewater discharges and the drinking water treatment systems do not remove all chemicals in the source water from the river. These chemicals pass through the treatment process and are present in your tap water. DEP has documented over 500 chemicals present in NJ drinking water, almost all with unknown health risks. Almost all of these chemicals are unregulated (“emergent contaminants”). In fact, PFOA, PFNA, PFAS “forever chemicals” were “emergent contaminants” until they became regulated recently. It takes time consuming and expensive rigorous data collection, studies, risk assessments, and administrative procedures to set just 1 chemical drinking water “Maximum Contaminant Level” (MCL). This takes years. It is not feasible to establish 500 MCL’s.

DEP recognized these threats 20 years ago. In concert with the Drinking Water Quality Institute, DEP issued a “White Paper” that recommended a “treatment based approach”, whereby instead of individual chemical specific risk assessments and MCL’s, they would mandate activated granular carbon treatment at drinking water treatment facilities that relied on certain susceptible source waters.

DEP abandoned that effort – the drought greatly magnifies these risks.

b) The Flint Michigan drinking water crisis was caused by changing the source water for the drinking water system. As a result, different water chemistry leached lead from distribution system pipes.

In the recently adopted DEP Water Supply Plan, DEP admits that NJ experienced very similar problems in 2016 – 2017 that were created by DEP Orders that mandated water purveyors transfer water from one system to the other (see page 204 – 205 of Chapter 7). The current DEP “drought warning” Order again authorizes DEP to mandate water transfers, but it appears that the underlying water chemistry and physical scouring of contaminants in the pipes remain, just like in Flint.(see paragraph #7, page 3)

2. Unreported toxic waste sites and toxic hazards

There has been extensive coverage of Superfund sites in NJ, but none that report that there are 10 Times more RCRA “Corrective Action” sites that pose equal or even higher risks to human health and the environment.

3. Unreported risks of chemical facilities

a) There are huge chemical hazards in NJ regulated by DEP under NJ’s “Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act” (TCPA, enacted in response to the disaster in Bhopal, India). I can’t recall any NJ media coverage of TCPA in over a decade.

b) There are hundreds of chemical manufacturing and storage facilities regulated by DEP under NJ’s “Right To Know” law. We only read about them after disasters, like the recent Passaic fire (and what ever happened to the Murphy Executive Order and proposed legislation to address those risks?)

[Update: I forgot that this issue was covered extensively in a Bergen Record multi-part series Hazards Next Door which included an interactive map with hazardous sites, the chemicals stored there and the health risks: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2023/01/10/nj-chemical-plant-fires-put-danger-to-homes-in-the-spotlight/69748848007/ ~~~ end update].

c) There was a railroad derailment of chemicals that forced evacuation of Paulsboro NJ. It occurred long before the nationally prominent East Palestine disaster. Yet the NTSB investigation Report of Pauslboro was never covered, particularly the massive flaws in DEP prevention, preparation and response – ALL of which were repeated in East Palestine.

4. What ever happened to the stories about the risks of endocrine disruptors?

Google “dual sexed fish found in NJ rivers” – USGS has done a LOT of work

5. Hazardous Air Pollutants – local emissions sources, health risks and DEP regulation under the Clean Air Act

The NJ press used to report on these risks, including EPA Cancer Risk maps that showed excess cancer risks in NJ. I haven’t seen a story on these risks in years.

6. Do the DEP’s “Environmental Justice” regulations and the “Stressor Guidance” document apply to and regulate public health risks from #3- #5?

(the answer if NO, for several reasons. Primarily, existing pollution emissions allowed under current permits are effectively exempt from the EJ law, which only applies to NEW or EXPANDED emissions. There are several other reasons.)

I’ve pitched over a dozen stories here – award winning stuff.

If you think that’s over the top, I pitched many of the stories and was an expert source for the Bergen Record’s award winning expose “Open For Business” series which won a national journalism award for “A New Genre of Environmental Reporting”  the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

[End Note: The many press reports on “forever chemicals” not only displaces coverage and diverts attention and media reporting on more significant risks.

It creates the false impression that the risks posed by unregulated chemicals are being well managed by aggressive government regulation. It also creates the false impression that risks from individual chemicals like “forever chemicals” are anomalies, were unknown discoveries by government, are unique, and are being addressed by government regulators.

In fact, exactly the OPPOSITE is true: the risks are not from individual chemicals, but from hundreds of chemicals. These risks are not unique, individual, or unknown by government scientists. The risks are pervasive and the regulatory system is flawed and government regulators are too captured by powerful corporate interests to protect public health. ~~~ end note]

My apologies for the site being down for the last few days. It was due to technical issues I have no understanding of and relied on others to resolve.

My service provider updated their database and required that I update the WordPress I was operating.

The updated version of WordPress created a conflict with my existing WordPress format.

The problem stemmed from a 15 year old plug in for “themes”, which formats the site.

So, that tech problem required a new theme, and here we are.

The banner image in a scene of the Hudson River from my home town Tarrytown, NY:

View On The Hudson Looking Across The Tappen Zee Towards Hook Mountain, 1866 (Albert Bierstadt)

Here is the same scene from a photo I shot:

Gov. Murphy Punts On Drought – DEP Drought “Warning” Too Little And Too Late

While People Urged To Shorten Showers, Water Companies Get A Pass On Millions Of Gallons Per Day In Leaky Pipes

Yesterday, DEP Commissioner LaTourette finally issued a “drought warning” (Administrative Order), which allows DEP to Order drinking water systems to better manage water supplies and ask consumers to conduct voluntary water conservation.

That DEP Order should have been issued months ago, given extremely dry conditions, lack of rainfall, climate science, e.g. climate induced higher temperatures and atmospheric weather drivers (gulf stream), and forecasted dry weather.

Prior and worsening current drought conditions warrant a “drought emergency” declaration by the Governor. That declaration would give DEP additional powers to manage water demand, including mandatory conservation and other restrictions. Billions of gallons of water would have been saved had the Governor acted sooner, when he should have, based on science and precaution.

Restrictions on water use are not politically popular, and require political leadership. A suburban state like NJ has lots of wealthy people who like to water the lawns of their McMansions, top off their pools, wash their cars, power wash their driveways, “water rake leaves”, and play golf on green fairways.

Water intensive business and industry have a lot at stake as well economically in maintaining current water uses – and avoiding any DEP regulatory limits on both their water use and their pollution discharges (see below examples).

Governor Murphy has failed that test of leadership and again delayed issuance of a drought emergency.

Today, while I don’t want to be alarmist,  I want to highlight important issues exacerbated and raised by the drought and DEP’s Administrative Order that are getting zero media attention.

1) From sewer plant discharge to your drinking water intake: “Viagara Falls”

One of the best kept secrets about NJ’s drinking water system, rarely reported by the press or mentioned by DEP, is the fact during a drought, from 75 – to 95% of the water flowing and taken from NJ’s major rivers to supply drinking water systems is wastewater discharges from industrial facilities and sewage treatment plants. That accounts for 475 million gallons per day of drinking water in the Passaic Basin alone. For the facts and receipts on that, see:

• NJ’s Little Known But Massive Wastewater Recycling Water Supply Project

As the rainfall stops, the flows of the rivers decline. There is far less water in the river to dilute the wastewater discharges. When setting the pollution limits on the wastewater discharges for sewage treatment plants and industrial facilities, the NJ DEP has embraced a policy that “the solution to pollution is dilution”. DEP assumes a minimum flow in the river for dilution of pollutants, and limits pollution discharges based on that dilution. These pollution discharge limits are assumed to meet water quality standards and protect public health and the environment.

But river flows under drought conditions are far lower than DEP based pollution discharge limits on.

Keep in mind that the wastewater discharges are loaded with toxic chemicals like pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors and that the drinking water treatment systems do NOT remove 100% of these chemicals so that they pass through to your tap – and hundreds of these chemicals are not even regulated and have unknown adverse health effects. (does anyone even remember those stories about dual sexed fish found in NJ’s rivers?) 

Big Pharma and the Chemistry Council must be pleased that those stories have fallen off the radar. I wonder why?

My friend and former colleague Jeff Tittel, a wizard of the sound bite, dubbed this problem “Viagara Falls” (for the Passaic River flows over the Falls).

These health risks are being suppressed. Note that the DEP press release and the NJ American press release and the news coverage does not mention these issues. I raised them in my testimony to DEP on Tuesday.

But if you closely read the DEP Order – which few will and fewer still will understand – these issues are buried in technocratic language: (emphasis mine):

6. These modified reservoir releases and passing flows shall remain in place until otherwise revised by any future order or directive. The Director of the DEP Division of Water Supply and Geoscience (Director) and/or her designee(s) shall coordinate with water providers to assess the potential for water quality degradation associated with any reductions or transfers of water hereby ordered.

You can be sure that those “assessments of the potential for water quality degradation” will be kept secret and never disclosed by DEP or reported by the press.

Tomorrow, we present additional significant under reported issues in Part 2 – here’s bullets of the topics as a teaser:

2) NJ Could Be Replicating The Flint Michigan Water Crisis By Transferring Water From One System To Another

3) There Are Massive Leaks In NJ’s Antiquated Water Distribution System – DEP is failing to mandate corrective action (while they ask you to take shorter showers)

4) The fish and critters are suffering and dying

They’re All Now “Shocked” By Trump’s EPA Appointment And Rollback Agenda

NJ Attorney General’s “Challenge” Is Too Little And Far Too Late

Social Media Posts Are Lame And A Fake “Resistance”

NJ Spotlight tells us today that NJ Attorney General Platkin has joined the “Trump Watch” “resistance”:

• Platkin joins Democratic AGs in resistance to Trump

And that “reporting” of the “Trump resistance” is based on the AG’s “social media posts”.

Excuse my French, but, are you fucking kidding me?!

AG Platkin, Governor Murphy, and DEP Commissioner LaTourette have done absolutely NOTHING to inform the public about the threats of Trump’s policy agenda, as laid out in detail in 900+ pages in Trump’s Project 2025 Report, which was issued as a Trump Transition Plan almost 2 YEARS ago.

They have done virtually NOTHING to expose Trump’s Project 2025 rollback agenda on climate and environmental protections.

Instead, they spent months issuing dozens of self promotional and highly partisan press releases praising the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act projects in NJ.

Environmental groups could have issued Reports and held press conferences to educate and inform the public about the threats of Project 2025. Instead, they did nothing but cheerlead for Governor Murphy and DEP Commissioner LaTourette.

The DEP could have issued technical Reports about the content on the environmental policy recommendations in Project 2025. Instead, they did nothing at all.

NJ Democratic Legislators could have held hearings to solicit critical testimony on Project 2025 and its threats to NJ’s environment. But they did nothing.

NJ media could have written stories that exposed the contents of Project 2025. They too did nothing.

I specifically warned all these people about the threats of Project 2025 almost 18 MONTHS ago.

I wrote letters to DEP Commissioner LaTourette, Senate environmental leaders, environmental groups and media.

On July 28, 2023, I wrote:

Dear Commissioner LaTourette:

I write to give you a heads up and urge you to read the Heritage Foundation’s recent initiative called “Project 2025”. It is explicitly designed to “dismantle the administrative State”. FULL REPORT HERE:

Chapter 13 provides a radical agenda to dismantle EPA and virtually all regulatory, science, and climate programs – read it here:

https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-13.pdf

I strongly urge you to get out in front of and do everything within your power to derail this freight train. This includes a strong public defense and expansion of regulatory programs, which is something both you and Gov. Murphy consistently either fail to defend or overtly run away from (“we’re not mandating ….” et al).

I followed that letter up with several specific analyses of the contents of Project 2025 and the radical Trump agenda, see:

• The Right Wing’s New Long Game Plan – “Project 2025”

• Trump Is Now Marketing “Project 2025” – Promises $110 Billion Deregulation & Tax Break Deal To Big Oil And Gas

• What “Project 2025” Would Do To US EPA, Climate, And Environmental Protection Programs

• Trump’s Project 2025 Attack On The Department Of Interior Might Be Worse Than EPA Dismantling

• NJ Conservationists Embrace The Policies Of Trump’s Project 2025

• Trump Campaign Tries To Walk Away From Project 2025

• Trump Dismantled Environmental Protections and Hired The Swamp – Project 2025 Would Finish The Job

I don’t know if its incompetence, cowardice, or corruption – or perhaps all three – but these lame bastards should be ashamed of themselves.

The fact that they are now attempting to be forming a “Trump resistance” literally makes me sick to my stomach.