WolfeNotes.com

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
~~~ George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)

[Update #2: 4/12/10 – NY Times editorial: “First, They Get Rid of the Law Clinics”

[Update: 4/11/10 – NJ press wakes up: Bergen Record covers the attack on Rutgers Law Clinic ~~~ end updates]

Monday is Chris Hedges Day. That’s when his weekly column at Truthdig.com appears.

Today, Hedges examines the rise and fall of “The Unreasonable Man” (movie), Ralph Nader: “How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too“.

I share many of Nader’s policy views – particularly on government regulation – and have professionally struggled with the forces Nader unleashed, so I can assure readers that it is an amazing history:

The Congress, between 1966 and 1973, passed 25 pieces of consumer legislation, nearly all of which Nader had a hand in authoring. The auto and highway safety laws, the meat and poultry inspection laws, the oil pipeline safety laws, the product safety laws, the update on flammable fabric laws, the air pollution control act, the water pollution control act, the EPA, OSHA and the Environmental Council in the White House transformed the political landscape.

Hedges traces Nader’s fall, not coincidentally, to the rise of an organized corporate backlash, which was first articulated in an extraordinary 1971 strategy memo to the US Chamber of Commerce titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System“. The memo was written by then corporate lawyer and future Nixon Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

Powell urged corporate America to organize and fight back against what he saw as an assault by campus radicals, socialists, environmentalists, and consumer advocates like Nader (does this all sound familiar?).

Powell railed against the “appeasement” of corporate America to the extremist attacks, and laid out a systematic propaganda based plan to target media, college campuses, Congress, and shape pro-corporate public opinion.

The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.

The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.

As they say, the rest is history (and even Harvard now understands what “regulatory relief“ means).

Powell’s recommendations led to the creation of the Business Round-table, right wing think tanks, and the very effective attack on government, particularly government health, safety, consumer and environmental regulation. Powell’s propaganda campaign focuses on the corporate capture that I believe was a major factor that led to the Reagan anti-regulatory agenda, the decline of both activist government, and the destruction of the media. The memo really should be read in its entirety.

Ironically, Powell concluded his recommendations with a warning written from a position of weakness:

But this would be an exercise in futility unless the Board of Directors of the Chamber accepts the fundamental premise of this paper, namely, that business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.

Forty years later, with the ascendance and dominance of corporations almost total, Powell’s fears seems hard to reconcile with reality, in any other than paranoid TeaParty events or Fox News rants.

Without understanding this history, it is almost impossible to appreciate just how bad the media and political climate is right now.

The evidence is everywhere, overwhelming and impossible to ignore (see Princeton Professor Sheldon Wolin’s: “Democracy Incorporated“). But let me give just one concrete NJ example that can illustrate what Hedges, Nader and Wolin are driving at.

Before I read Hedges this morning, I noted a disturbing NY Times article: “Law School Clinics Face a Backlash”

Law school students nationwide are facing growing attacks in the courts and legislatures as legal clinics at the schools increasingly take on powerful interests that few other nonprofit groups have the resources to challenge.

On Friday, lawmakers here debated a measure to cut money for the University of Maryland’s law clinic if it does not provide details to the legislature about its clients, finances and cases.

The measure, which is likely to be sent to the governor this week, comes in response to a suit filed in March by students accusing one of the state’s largest employers, Perdue, of environmental violations” the first effort in the state to hold a poultry company accountable for the environmental impact of its chicken suppliers.

Law clinics at other universities “from New Jersey to Michigan to Louisiana” are facing similar challenges. And legal experts say the attacks jeopardize the work of the clinics, which not only train students with hands-on courtroom experience at more than 200 law schools but also have taken on more cases against companies and government agencies in recent years.

“We’re seeing a very strong pushback from deep-pocket interests, and that pushback is creating a chilling effect on many clinics,” said Robert R. Kuehn, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, citing a recent survey he conducted that found that more than a third of faculty members at legal clinics expressed fears about university or state reaction to their casework and that a sixth said they had turned down unpopular clients because of these concerns.

The Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic and NJ litigation are targeted, yet we hear nothing about this in the NJ press.

And after students at a state-financed law school clinic at Rutgers University in New Jersey sued to stop a developer’s plans for a strip mall in Franklin Township, the developer filed suit against the clinic under the open-records law seeking copies of internal documents, saying he planned to expose how the clinic used taxpayer money to discourage investment in the state.

An appellate court in Trenton will hear oral arguments this month in the case.

“Like the hapless Wizard of Oz, the clinics want all attention directed elsewhere, while they struggle mightily to keep concealed their actual use of public funds” Kevin Kelly, the lawyer for the developer, Sussex Commons, wrote in his brief.

Instead, NJ outlets like the Star Ledger – who should be informing their readers and exposing this kind of un-American abuse – not only fail to cover the substance of the current NJ manifestations of the Powell campaign (i.e. the Christie Administration’s environmental regulatory rollback I’ve been writing about for months), just this weekend, they somehow felt the need to ridicule environmentalists. See: “Jilted Treehuggers”

No wonder both the newspapers and the public interest are simultaneously going down the tubes – just what Powell and his corporate backers long sought.

Good morning and Happy Easter!

Wish I could be sharing some peeps and Easter Baskets with you right now!

I remember when I was a kid, I would eat them last. I’d wait a few days for them to get stale, hard, and chewy. I liked ’em better that way.

You kids both liked em fresh!

This Easter, I think about other things. So you can take a few moments and suffer Dad’s sermon.

42 years ago today (April 4, 1968), Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Dr. King was there advocating for garbage men who were out on strike. The garbage men protested and wore placard’s that said “I am a Man” – and they were brutally repressed. To many, black men were not even considered people then – many still refused to recognize their humanity 42 years later.

Exactly one year before that, MLK made a speech at Riverside Church “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence” – read it and then watch recent PBS Bill Moyers and Tavis Smiley shows for a discussion of that. Smiley focuses exclusively on the speech, while Moyers has a broader discussion. Cornel West of Princeton had the most profound observations -  asked by Smiley to contrast King with Obama, he called Obama a politician, while King was a prophet and truth teller. West called out Obama as the happy smiling face of US Empire! Please read, listen and watch – here are the links:  Smiley and Moyers (April 2 segment)

Sadly, Dr. King’s concerns remain largely unaddressed and his analysis profoundly apt.

King’s essential message is still ignored:

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. …

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Right now, we are in 2 brutal, illegal, immoral wars, that have many similarities to Vietnam. Materialism is rampant while we destroy our finite planet, blindly driven by an economic system that values profits and property rights over people and the earth. Disparities in income, wealth, health and overall well-being are the largest in US history, and probably world history. Racism, materialism, and militarism are rampant and few leaders have the courage or integrity to “break silence”.

Here’s what King said about Vietnam, a war that at that time most Americans saw as the US righteously saving the Vietnamese people from an invasion by Communist North Vietnam and China. King’s truth telling words shocked most and prompted vicious political and media attacks on him virtually everywhere:

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy — and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us — not their fellow Vietnamese –the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go — primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them — mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force — the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Calling the US the largest purveyor of violence on the planet”, King’s call to end the war was ignored:

“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.”

I am sickened by the fact that not only did my generation largely fail King’s vision, but compounded the madness he called out.

So, the challenge to make a better world now shifts to your generation.

This challenge is perfectly in keeping with the religious spirit of Easter, which originated in pagan worship ceremonies of spring: a time of hope and renewal.

Love,

Dad

[Updates below]

On March 24, 2010, Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Bob Martin quietly issued Administrative Order 2010-3.

In doing so, Martin followed the unilateral, radical, and lawless rollback approach established by his boss, Governor Christie, who issued a series of Executive Orders 1-4.

Just one week after he killed DEP’s proposed perchlorate drinking water standard, Martin’s Order makes significant substantive changes to the DEP’s Water Quality Management Planning Rule: N.J.A.C. 7:15.

The Martin changes significantly weaken the WQMP rules, benefit developers and property owners, prohibit enforcement, and delay implementation (see below for details of Order). So Martin is just beginning to deliver the “regulatory relief” promised by Governor Christie in Executive Order #2.

The DEP’s WQMP rules have long been highly controversial, because they dictate where sewers and high density development can occur and are a means of protecting NJ’s last few remaining environmentally sensitive lands. Ever since the Whitman Administration tried to weaken them (does anyone recall the Whitman April 17, 2000 “Sewers: The Last Frontier of Smart Growth” speech at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School?), the WQMP rules have been one of the highest priorities of both builders and environmentalists. The WQMP rules have been the subject of several failed lawsuits filed by the Builders and led to scores of high profile battles in Trenton and at the local level (probably the most visible were the Merrill Lynch and Washington Valley sewer wars).

The WQMP rules are so significant, that the the NJ Builders Assc. and the development lobby convinced the Legislature to pass a bill during the Lame Duck Session to weaken and delay their implementation. The US EPA opposed that bill as a violation of the federal Clean Water Act and the bill was vetoed by Governor Corzine.

DEP, explicitly conceding political pressure by legislators and developers, caved in before a bill was even passed. Political influence over DEP is now so deep that it is an accepted fact of life. For example, in a July 14, 2009 letter, DEP Acting Assistant Commissioner Scott Brubaker explained why he was setting aside enforcement of the WQMP rules because legislators had introduced a bill to bully DEP to bend over:

The Department is also under pressure from the development community, which fears that the Department will unilaterally remove sewer service areas. Recently, legislation has been introduced that would extend the submission deadline. Together these added burdens would preclude the Department from adopting any new or updated wastewater management plan for the foreseeable future. Any Department effort to withdraw sewer service areas would encourage this legislation.

So, rarely does a DEP regulatory issue rise to this substantive significance and political controversy.

This all proves that Martin’s Order is highly substantive – and therefore patently illegal – because it amends DEP regulations without complying with the public notice and comment due process rule-making procedures mandated by the NJ Administrative Procedures Act.

Martin not only arrogantly ignored and blatantly violated NJ legal requirements, he is on a collision course with US EPA over Clean Water Act compliance. Again, US EPA opposed the WQMP rule rollback. A harsh statement issued by Judith Enck, EPA Regional Administrator said:

“EPA continues to disagree with this misguided policy. We thought this was a bad bill, it’s now a bad DEP policy. Delaying water quality planning is never a good idea. We urge the New Jersey DEP to explain to the public and to the EPA why this is a good thing for water quality.”

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, so let’s talk more broadly before we get into the weeds of a critique of the Martin Order.

To make matters even worse, when the Order was disclosed to the media (see Star Ledger), DEP Deputy Commissioner Ray Cantor not only spun to downplay the significance of the Order, incredibly, he claimed that a “Stakeholders meeting” would somehow fix it all! According to the March 30, 2010 Bergen Record:

“We are more concerned with getting the plans right than getting them in early,” said Ray Cantor, a special assistant to Martin. “The underlying plans still apply. Nothing has really changed. A county can submit their plans tomorrow if they want to. This just gives them a little more room, which is what they have been asking for.”

DEP officials said the order is not as severe as the bill, which was sponsored last year by state Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Wood-Ridge. Business groups had supported the bill, saying it was needed to help builders weather the economic downturn.

Tittel said Martin’s order was done with no public input, unlike the Sarlo bill, which was the subject of several public hearings in Trenton. [My note: see Sarlo bill]

Cantor said a stakeholder meeting is scheduled for Thursday to hear concerns from developers, environmentalists and government officials.

The so-called “stakeholder meeting” is being held today. It is a complete sham and transparent “divide and conquer” strategy.

Not only is the meeting being held AFTER Martin made a very bad decision to issue Administrative Order, the meeting is secret, by invite only, and will be attended by a small hand picked group of friends. No statewide environmental advocacy groups are going – one was invited but will not attend – sadly, I am told, due to scheduling conflicts, not as a matter of principle.

Ironically, while Martin issues edicts that blatantly violate public participation requirements of administrative law and hides behind sham “stakeholder” political cover, in his January 20, 2010 inaugural address, Gov. Christie declared that:

Today, a new era of accountability and transparency is here.

So Martin has failed early tests of transparency reform.

Martin is also failing to comply with law. The lead case is known as “Metro-Media“. That NJ Supreme Court decision sets out clear criteria to judge when a State agency action amounts to “regulation” that must be subject to public notice and comment rule-making procedures to preserve fundamental rights of due process and democratic accountability. The Metro-Media decision set out 6 criteria, any one of which trigger mandatory rule-making procedures. The Supreme Court found:

We can synthesize from this authority that an agency determination must be considered an administrative rule when all or most of the relevant features of administrative rules are present and preponderate in favor of the rule-making process. Such a conclusion would be warranted if it appears that the agency determination, in many or most of the following circumstances, (1) is intended to have wide coverage encompassing a large segment of the regulated or general public, rather than an individual or a narrow select group; (2) is intended to be applied generally and uniformly to all similarly situated persons; (3) is designed to operate only in future cases, that is, prospectively; (4) prescribes a legal standard or directive that is not otherwise expressly provided by or clearly and obviously inferable from the enabling statutory authorization; (5) reflects an administrative policy that (i) was not previously expressed in any official and explicit agency determination, adjudication or rule, or (ii) constitutes a material and significant change from a clear, past agency position on the identical subject matter; and (6) reflects a decision on administrative regulatory policy in the nature of the interpretation of law or general policy. These relevant factors can, either singly or in combination, determine in a given case whether the essential agency action must be rendered through rule-making or adjudication.

The Martin Administrative Order triggers not one, but ALL 6 Metro-Media criteria!

Ironically, the Christie Administration’s Red Tape Review Group is using this specific case law as a means to beat up DEP, rollback environmental requirements (A2486), and erect new political and procedural barriers to effective regulatory protections (A2464). At their first hearing, the Red Tape Group took testimony from builders lawyer Neil Yoskin who implied that DEP informal practices routinely violated legal requirements under Metro-Media. Yoskin later gave legislative testimony in support of A2464 (see this), legislation that would handcuff DEP and lead to weakening of environmental protections. Yet Yoskin provided no examples or case law where courts have found that DEP failed to follow the law.

It is beyond hypocrisy that Martin is clearly violating exactly the legal requirements he and the Christie gang are using as an excuse to rollback environmental protections and demonize DEP. Where is the outcry from Neil Yoskin and the NJ legal community about Martin’s gross abuse?

Adding to the irony, the NJ Builders Association has launched lawsuits attacking the Administrative Orders of former DEP Commissioners for alleged violation of public participation and due process requirements. For example, builders unsuccessfully challenged former DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson’s Administrative Orders issued in 2007 and 2008 on 300 foot stream buffers. They also challenged former DEP Commissioner Bob Shinn’s Administrative Order regarding making DEP rules consistent with the State Plan.

Substantively, Martin’s Order does the following – all of which are substantive and trigger Metro-Media rule-making requirements (sorry, I have the Order as pdf file and am unable to post. Drop me an email and I will forward):

1) further delays implementation of the mandatory requirements and timetable of the rules, until April 7, 2011;

2) surrenders the DEP’s authority to withdraw lands from sewer service areas, in direct conflict with the mandate of the rules;

3) pledges that the DEP will not act upon or enforce the new development impact build-out requirements of the rules. The order also adds additional substantive mapping requirements and new procedural steps in the rules in this regard, including web posting, public notice, public comment, and public hearing procedures that are not in current rules;

4) provides new opportunities, standards, criteria, and procedures for a property owner to request that his/her property become part of a sewer service area; and

5) provides new opportunities and procedures for a property power to block DEP’s deletion of environmentally sensitive lands from a sewer service area.

[Update 1: per points #1 & 2 above, thought I’d make things easier on readers by providing the applicable regulatory text. What is it about the term “shall” that DEP can’t understand? Non discretionary duty:

NJAC 7:15-5.23

[(a)]

(b) If a wastewater management plan in compliance with the schedule in (a) above is not
in place on July 7, 2008, the WMP agency shall submit a WMP or WMP update by April 7,
2009. If a municipality accepts wastewater management plan responsibility through alternative
assignment under N.J.A.C. 7:15-5.13, the municipality shall submit a wastewater management
plan by July 7, 2009 or in accordance with the schedule established in (e) below.

(c) If the wastewater management planning agency fails to comply with the schedule in
(a) or (b) above or an alternative schedule established under (e) or (f) below, the general service
areas for wastewater facilities with planning flows of less than 20,000 gallons per day which
discharge to ground water, the general service area for wastewater facilities with planning flows
of less than 2,000 gallons per day which discharge to ground water, and sewer service areas shall
be withdrawn in accordance with N.J.A.C. 7:15-8.1.

7:15-8.1 Withdrawal of wastewater service area designations

(a) Except as provided in (b) and (d) below, wastewater service area designations shall
be withdrawn in areas which fail to adopt and maintain a wastewater management plan in
accordance with the requirements of N.J.A.C. 7:15-5.2(b), 5.13 and 5.23.

[Update 2 – 4/2 – I was just informed that Martin was not at the meeting, which was run by Cantor. While I never said Martin was, just thought I’d clarify.]

[Update 3 – again, to make it easier on readers, here is the Legislature’s intent for passing the WQMP rule extension. Whether one agrees with these findings and policy is not the issue. Note the substantive significance of what is at stake. Given the essentially legislative policy nature of the substantive issues the Legislature considered, it becomes crystal clear why Bob Martin of DEP may not effectively legislate by Administrative Order:

l.The withdrawal of wastewater service areas on a Statewide basis would have a severe negative economic impact and would further exacerbate the current economic recession, precluding development projects and activities, which would otherwise generate jobs, act as sources of fee generating activities for sewerage authorities and other public and private utilities, and act as a source of tax and other revenues. Such an occurrence would hamper the State’s ability to recover from the economic recession, slowing job creation and redevelopment that are normally a source of revenue, increasing the revenue shortfall in the State’s budget, and further hampering the State’s ability to provide for the general welfare needs of its residents.

Here is the summary of the bill that passed the Legislature and was vetoed by Governor Corzine – compare what the Legislature tried to do with points #1-5 above from Martin Administrative Order and it becomes OBVIOUS that Martin was illegally legislating via AO:

The Assembly Housing and Local Government Committee reports favorably and with committee amendments Assembly Bill No. 4345.

As amended, this bill would extend for two years the requirement for wastewater management planning agencies to prepare and submit a wastewater management plan or a wastewater management update to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and would maintain during the extension period the validity of wastewater service areas and sewer service areas. The amended bill defines “extension period” as the time period beginning on April 7, 2009 and ending on April 7, 2011.

Under the DEP’s current Water Quality Management Planning rules, N.J.A.C.7:15-1.1 et seq., adopted effective July 7, 2008, wastewater management planning agencies are required to submit a wastewater management plan or a wastewater management plan update to the department by April 7, 2009. This bill would extend that time period by two years, and would further provide that no sewer service area designations would be withdrawn during the extension period.

The bill would also require the DEP to act upon site specific or project specific amendments or revisions to wastewater management plans and water quality management plans within 90 days after receipt of a complete application.

In addition, the bill would establish a specific requirement for notice and public hearing whenever the department proposes to remove property from a sewer service area.

The bill also sets forth conditions for the inclusion of property within sewer service areas. Specifically, under the bill, sewer service areas shall include all parcels of land for which at least one of the following approvals were issued prior to the wastewater management planning agency adopting a new, revised, or updated wastewater management plan and that plan is approved by the department: preliminary or final site plan approval, preliminary or final subdivision approval, municipal building or construction permit, or general development plan approval pursuant to the “Municipal Land Use Law”; a treatment works approval; or a New Jersey Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. As amended, the legislation provides that a landowner may petition the department and the applicable wastewater management planning agency during the extension period for a change to the sewer service area designation for the real property identified in the petition. Upon approval of both the department and the applicable wastewater management planning agency, the change to the sewer service area designation would take effect immediately.

Further, the bill requires the department and wastewater management planning agencies to consider the following when making a determination regarding the inclusion of a parcel in, or the exclusion of property from, a sewer service area under any new, revised or updated wastewater management plan:  (1) the zoning of the property; (2) the existing development and land use surrounding and in the vicinity of the property; (3) the existing infrastructure and availability of utilities; (4) any affordable housing obligations; (5) redevelopment opportunities and objectives; (6) the designation of the property pursuant to the State Development and Redevelopment Plan; and (7) any prior or existing development or partial development on or associated with the property.

The amended bill also provides that, during the extension period, whenever the State, a local government unit, or a qualifying tax exempt nonprofit organization is contemplating the acquisition of a specific parcel of land for recreation and conservation purposes or farmland preservation purposes using public funds, or a landowner is contemplating the sale or other transfer of land for such purposes, the governmental entity, nonprofit organization, or landowner may request in writing of the department to decide, in consultation with the applicable wastewater management planning agency, and within 180 days after receipt of the request, whether the specific parcel of land will or will not be included in a sewer service area. If the landowner disagrees with the decision of the department, the landowner may follow the appeal procedure set forth in the bill. The decision of the department, in consultation with the applicable wastewater management planning agency, would be used to assist in the valuation of the parcel for possible preservation under open space and farmland preservation programs.

COMMITTEE AMENDMENTS:

The committee amended the bill:

1) to provide that, during the extension period, a property owner may petition the department and the applicable wastewater management planning agency for a change to the sewer service area designation for the property, and upon approval of both the department and the wastewater management planning agency, the change to the sewer service area designation would take effect immediately;

2) to provide that, during the extension period, whenever the State, a local government unit, or a qualifying tax exempt nonprofit organization is contemplating the acquisition of a specific parcel of land for recreation and conservation purposes or farmland preservation purposes using public funds, or a landowner is contemplating the sale or transfer of land for either of those purposes, governmental entity, nonprofit organization, or landowner may request in writing of the department to decide, in consultation with the applicable wastewater management planning agency whether a specific parcel of land will or will not be included in a sewer service area, when the State, a local government unit or qualifying non profit is contemplating the acquisition of a specific parcel of land for recreation, conservation, or farmland preservation purposes. The modifications also set forth an appeal procedure for this decision;

3) to change the ending date of the extension of the validity of sewer service areas and wastewater service areas from April 7, 2012 to April 7, 2011.