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reforesting of meadow at Baldpate Mountain

[Update: 10/27/10 – Surprise, surprise! The Trenton Times put the story on page one above the fold – you read it and decide where quality resides – I’ll try to locate a link. Sorry, link not currently available.]

As I’ve written here before, Mercer County’s Baldpate Mountain is one of my favorite places, especially the magnificent tranquil trails through towering tulip trees! (see this and this for some good photos of the place).

I am a regular visitor there – but it’s not just the forests that inspire.

Meadows may be sub-optimal from an ecological standpoint, but they nonetheless attract.

I examined the source of that attraction as a result of my most recent visit to the mountain last week.

I discovered that a small meadow is being reforested.

It initially did not sit well with me so I spoke to the Mercer County park ecologist who was supervising volunteers. I asked her about the rationale for the reforestation project. I also reached out to a colleague, who provided the following info, which was virtually identical to the response I got from the County staffer, so I’ll post it here:

Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space and Mercer County are partnering on the reforestation project.  In all, a little over 8 acres are being planted with native trees and shrubs.  I know the sight of the deer fencing is jarring but, without it, the new plantings wouldn’t stand a chance with the hungry deer.

This field and the smaller one near the orchard are the only ones being reforested. The decision was made after careful consideration of bird habitat needs.  We have a substantial body of data on Baldpate’s bird populations and, without a doubt, the forest on Baldpate is its most critical habitat, particularly for forest interior nesting warblers.  Since the two fields are not providing critical habitat for grassland birds (too small, wrong configuration) it was decided that the greater good could be served by filling in the gaps and providing even more protection for the forest interior.  The fields near the house that provide the views over the river will be left open.  There is some talk of planting native meadow grasses and flowers in the lower one, where the septic field is.

The ecological rationale is impeccable – but still, as I continued on in my hike back to Washington Crossing State Park, I was uncomfortable.

I began to wonder why.

As a strong supporter of ecosystem based management, a lover of trees, and scientifically trained to understand the multiple benefits of the restoration project, support of this project should have been a no brainer.

As I walked, I mulled this over. What was really bothering me about it?

I finally concluded that it was a combination of 1) aesthetics, 2) my vision of the larger function of public parks, and 3) nostalgia.

Aesthetically, the fence just spoils the day for me.

But there are other non-visual aesthetic values behind my hatred of fences that have to do with private property rights and control. I am a rambler and just hate fences. Period.

In terms of a larger vision for the Park, the Mercer County staffer correctly noted that Meadow accomodating recreational experiences were provided in other Mercer County Parks.

Her view was that Baldpate’s unique essence was large intact forest. This reforestation project would fill the holes so that 80 years from now, the forest would be unbroken. She saw diversity of Park uses as something to be found within the park system, not necessarily to be found within an individual park.

As an adherent of Fredrick Law Olmsted’s design and functional views on parks as places for people,  I just disagree with that view.

[Update – illustration of my point:

Olmsted believed that natural surroundings had a subconscious effect on viewers. The jarring noises and chaotic visual cues of the urban environment produced a tension of the mind, which he contended only nature could undo. Moreover, he felt that the effect was most powerful, not from individual aesthetically pleasing elements (i.e. a rose garden or a pond), but from a totality of design that focused on the composition of wide, sweeping vistas and encompassing scenes that drew the viewer out of his or her own mind and produced feelings of peace and relaxation. As such, his designs avoided hard edges and embraced a constant opening up of new views as the user moved through the space. The Long Meadow is an excellent example of his trademark style: with its undulating hills and scattered trees, the viewer never sees the entire space at once, rather getting a sense of infinite distance with no distractions or boundaries.

and this is good too:

Olmsted brought to this site an organizing concept that separated the farm into three types of spaces: farm, forest and parkland.  He also brought design principles learned from his early European travels and mastered in parks such as Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Shelbourne Farm: a (Lancelot “Capability’) Brownian landscape via F.L. Olmsted These design principles, commonly though of as the  English naturalistic landscape tradition of the early 18^th century  are broad meadows with occasional clumping of shade trees, undulating hills, rich and diverse woodlands that transition into these meadows, looping roads strategically through the landscape to alternately reveal and obscure views and the appreciation of an expanse of water to reflect the sky.

So is this excerpt from “A Clearing in the Distance”:

“They submitted a preliminary plan [for Prospect Park in Brooklyn] as well as a report. The report is a remarkable document, not simply a technical description but an extended essay on urban parks. It begins by emphasizing that the purpose of such parks is to provide “the feeling of relief experienced by those entering them. On escaping from the cramped, confined and controlling circumstances of the streets of the town; in other words, a sense of enlarged freedom [emphasis in original] is to all, at all times, the most certain and the most valuable gratification afforded by a park.” Yet parks are more than scenery, the report emphasizes, they are social spaces “for people to come together for the single purpose of enjoyment, unembarrassed by the limitations with which they are surrounded at home, or in the pursuit of their daily avocations, or of such amusements as are elsewhere offered.” Olmsted and Vaux admit that there is a conflict between the desire to create a pastoral landscape to contrast with the urban surroundings, and the need of large numbers of people to enjoy avocations and amusements. The purpose of their plan is to bring these disparate elements into one harmonious whole.

But, I found a far deeper level of resistance that I can only describe as nostalgic.

Lyndhurst, Tarrrytown NY

I grew up in Tarrytown NY, in the shadow of Axe Castle.

I was a rambler at a young age in an historic region known for Hudson River estates, with awesome landscapes (Sunnyside, and  Lyndhurst) of meadows, gardens, trees, (Kykuit)…

I regularly enjoyed Rockefeller’s Pocantico Hills property, which is now known as “Rockwood Hall State Park”. 

Rockwood’s magnificent meadows are surrounded by thousands of acres of dense forests, in some places punctured by carriage paths and landscaped specimen trees. (Woody Allen’s romantic and visually stunning movie “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Commedy” was filmed there).

Those remote meadows provided countless opportunities for everything from frisbee, to picnics, to youthfull romance, to drunken beer parties and other consciousness raising experiences!

I was deeply saddened by the fact that Mercer County kids would no longer have a place to have those kinds of experiences.

And no 8 acre reforestation can possibly match or be justified by that kind of loss.

view from top of Baldpate – Delaware River looking southeast

NJ electric utilities are blocking solar installations

That’s why the utility is publicly reminding its customers to apply for permits before investing in solar projects that typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. Not all will be approved.

“Some of our circuits have reached capacity and can’t accommodate new solar projects, but we are working with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and are committed to exploring options to increase the number of customers we can connect to our system,” said Robert Revelle, vice president of Atlantic City Electric.

This summer, the utility estimated more than 1,400 of its 547,000 customers, most of them homeowners, were operating solar systems.

“It used to be, everybody could go solar and the interconnect permit was merely a formality,” said David Sugrue, general manager of Mercury Solar Systems’ office in Mays Landing.

How many have been denied permission to install is unclear, although Sugrue said nine of his customers have encountered that obstacle, mostly in rural Cumberland County.

Complete story runs in Atlantic City Press: Southern New Jersey homeowners are urged to get a permit if they plan to add solar panels

“This is what we call self-mobilization of society”

Wingnuts create a “Summer Hell” – NJ 12th CD event. It can happen here.

[Update 2: 10/17/10 – could the press finally be figuring out that Christie is a wing nut? See: Bergen Record: Signs of N.J. Gov. Christie’s emerging social agenda

Update 1: 10/17/10 – Tom Moran of Star Ledger nails it: Tea Party candidate Anna Little taking wild swings – end update]

A New York Times story today – provides an historical lesson for our current Tea Party politics (dominated at the State level in NJ by an authoritarian governor who won a recent Tea Party straw poll for President 2012):

Hitler Exhibit Explores a Wider Circle of Guilt

“This is what we call self-mobilization of society”, said Hans-Ulrich Thamer, one of three curators to assemble the exhibit at the German Historical Museum. “As a person, Hitler was a very ordinary man. He was nothing without the people.”

This show, “Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime” opened Friday. It was billed as the first in Germany since the end of World War II to focus exclusively on Adolf Hitler. Germany outlaws public displays of some Nazi symbols, and the curators took care to avoid showing items that appeared to glorify Hitler. His uniforms, for example, remained in storage.

Instead, the show focuses on the society that nurtured and empowered him. It is not the first time historians have argued that Hitler did not corral the Germans as much as the Germans elevated Hitler. But one curator said the message was arguably more vital for Germany now than at any time in the past six decades, as rising nationalism, more open hostility to immigrants and a generational disconnect from the events of the Nazi era have older Germans concerned about repeating the past.

“The only hope for stopping extremists is to isolate them from society so that they are separated, so they do not have a relationship with the bourgeoisie and the other classes,” Mr. Thamer said.  “The Nazis were members of high society. This was the dangerous moment. …

“This exhibition is about Hitler and the Germans” meaning the social and political and individual processes by which much of the German people became enablers, colluders, co-criminals in the Holocaust, said Constanze Stelzenaller, a senior trans-Atlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin. “That this was so is now a mainstream view, rejected only by a small minority of very elderly and deluded people, or the German extreme right-wing fringe. But it took us a while to get there.”

the roots of the Tea Party – “Summer Hells” 2009

Two recent superb Asbury Park Press editorials focused on failures to learn from mistakes, which is something I am continually disgusted by and that points to a collapse of our democracy (for a diagnosis of the underlying problems, see Princeton political scientist Sheldon Wolin’s book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism)

It is abundantly obvious to anyone who is paying attention that outright deregulation and/or lax regulatory oversight have led to a series of major catastrophies and that those who caused and economically benefitted from those disasters remain in charge of government policy:

• Radical financial deregulation predictably led to rampant fraud and reckless Wall Street speculation, which collapsed the economy.
• Weak regulations and lax government oversight led to the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, to deaths in West Virginia coal mines, to a massive coals ash spill at a TVA power plant, to dangerous drugs, deadly food poisonings and nationwide recalls of eggs.
• Record breaking storms, floods, droughts, and heat waves provide visible evidence that we are experiencing the effects of global warming NOW.

Yet as the disasters and corporate scandals mount, they have not prompted any real policy changes – if anything, the assault on government and regulations continues unabated, both here in NJ and on the national level.

But these are not just wonky policy debates – they directly and significantly effect people’s lives.

Let me use the APP editorials to illustrate just a few NJ specific examples.

In noting the significance of the Ciba-Geigy toxic nightmare in Toms River, which has been linked to a childhood cancer cluster, the Asbury Park Press editorial “Let’s learn from past” correctly warns about the uncertainties and underlying causes of the problem:

But still unknown is what the remaining environmental and health effects of that contamination might be and how many may linger for many more years. And even when the environmental protections are in force, there can still be unpleasant surprises. …

Lowering environmental standards and easing regulations is often just a pretext for opening a Pandora’s box for future costs and ongoing problems. Ciba-Geigy is living proof.

Yet we haven’t learned from the Ciba-Geigy nightmare – in many ways, we are repeating it now in NJ by “lowering environmental standards and easing regulations.”

Examples:

• some of the toxic chemicals at the Ciba site that were found to be associated with increased childhood cancers and lukemia were NOT regulated – and they still are not regulated.
• DEP has found over 500 unregulated toxic chemicals in our drinking water. But the Christie/Martin DEP are opposed to regulations and refuse to require treatment systems to remove these chemicals from our water supplies.
• We recently petitioned DEP to force them to take action. That petition will appear in the October 18, 2010 NJ Register for public comment.
• Governor Christie’s Executive Order #2 explicitly calls for “regulatory relief” and for lowering NJ’s strict environmental standards to minimum federal requirements. That policy has already been used to kill a proposed NJ drinking water standard for the chemical perchlorate and to block the adoption of scores more recommended by scientists.
• The DEP proposed new rules last week to provide a “safety cushion“ for those responsible for causing and cleaning up pollution at toxic waste sites.
• The Christie/Martin agenda has blocked progress on a number of major priority initiatives, such as: implementation of the global warming response act, update of the water supply master plan,  sustainable land use/smart growth, protection of threatened/endangered species habitat, reducing nutrient water pollution, strengthening chemical plant safety, upgrading drinking water standards, reducing urban air toxics, and promoting environmental justice.

Governor Christie and Bob Martin clearly have not learned from the past.

In criticizing the Obama administration for lifting the off shore drilling moratorium, (“We didn’t learn from oil spill“) the Asbury Park Press editorial again hits the nail on the head:

But now we’re supposed to believe that, this time, everyone involved has learned their lesson and will never again make a mistake or take a safety risk to save money? That officials have considered and addressed every contingency and closed every potential loophole? We’re not buying it, and neither should anyone else.

Again, we have not learned from the past.

• Just like BP Oil, the Governor Christie and DEP Commissioner Martin have made cost considerations equal to or more significant that protecting public health and the environment.
• Commissioner Martin has gone even further, and actually revised DEP’s Mission and directed DEP staff to promote economic development.
• Just like BP, Christie/Martin view environmental regulations as “Red Tape” and a barrier to the economic bottom line. So to “fix” those problems, they are creating loopholes and dismantling regulations.
• Just like BP, who saw the federal Mineral Management Service as a partner in promoting the economic interests of the oil and gas industry, the Christie/Martin DEP view industry as their client: to be treated like a customer to be served, not strictly regulated.

This  can only lead to disaster – as it has in the past.

[Update 2: 10/16/10: Atlantic City Press related story: DEP employees complain about being underfunded, understaffed in letters to boss

Some [DEP staff] suggested that efforts to privatize DEP functions – such as the cleanup of toxic sites – were not going so well.

“Consultants submit poor work products, and staff is expected to help them,” one complaint read. “Staff is reluctant to help because the consultants make so much more than them and staff does not feel as though they need to do the consultant’s job.” ...

The agency this week withdrew a proposal to privatize land-use permitting but is expanding the use of contractors to oversee the cleanup of private pollution.

Bill Wolfe, a former employee with the DEP, said he sees resistance among staff members to some of the proposals.

“They’re saying we pay more for private contractors and they do a worse job. That repudiates management saying that the DEP culture is the barrier,” he said.

Update 1: 10/15/10: Press coverage is unusualy harsh. Have they woken up? Do they smell blood in the water?  Star Ledger story: Release of unapproved N.J. private land-use permitting was a mistake, DEP says

NJ Spotlight story: Administration’s Attempt to Promote Privatization Studied By Assembly Committee – Stealth RFP continues to draw fire from lawmakers and environmentalists

In stunning legislative testimony today, DEP Deputy Commissioner Irene Kropp sought to blame DEP staffers for recommending the controversial plan to issue a Request for Proposals to allow private contractors to review land use permits.

But when she was probed on that claim by legislators, she backed away and admitted that the idea came from Commissioner Martin. Here’s how it went down.

The Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee held a Special Hearing to conduct oversight and explore how and why the RFP came about.

DEP Commisisoner Martin was invited by Chairman McKeon, but Martin ducked the hearing. He sent Deputy Kropp to take the fall for a really bad idea that was done in a stealth manner.

Kropp opened her testimony by tracing the DEP Transformation process, repeating the company line that there would be no weakening of environmental protections. I think Dave Pringle may be the only person in NJ who still believes this.

Kropp spoke of “scarce and dwindling resources”, cited the loss of 175-200 staff each year to attrition, and admitted that “lack of resources is driving transformation“.  I guess Kropp didn’t realize that this justification for transformation flat out contradicts Commissioner Martin’s repeated claims that transformation is needed because “DEP is broken” and requires a “change in culture” to make the agency become more “customer friendly” and “promote economic development”.

Kropp went on to explain the need to focus on DEP’s core mission. Part of that includes considering the ideas of DEP staffers. Kropp said she had received robust participation by DEP staff, including over 800 recommendations. (is “promoting economic development” part of DEP’s “core mission”?)

She then claimed that “everything comes from the staff“, implicitly including the RFP private contractor idea.

At that point, Chairman McKeon interupted Kropp to ask, in obvious disbelief:

“Are you saying that the RFP came from DEP staff?”

Kropp did not directly reply to the question, but said that DEP had been using private contractors to process air permits since 1983. She said that the RFP “did get ahead of Commissioner Martin” and was not fully vetted, but that she was “not making any apologies for that”. Kropp claimed that “nothing is going on behind closed doors”; “nothing is being dictated by upper management”; and the transformation process was “fully transparent”. As evidence, Kropp said that all DEP staff recommendations would be posted on the DEP website.

(Note: sure enough, as I write this I just got a DEP press release titled: DEP POSTS EMPLOYEE REFORM SUGGESTIONS ON WEB.

So I checked them out to see if I could confirm Kropp’s claim that DEP staff recommended privatization of land use permit reviews.

Click on this for DEP recommendations – the land use recommendations are found in comments #346-385:

Maybe #348 is Kropp’s source, but read it closely. Like the gun planted in the hand of the victim shot by cops, it is too good to be true. Spreadsheets are easier to modify than crime scenes, so I just doubt that it is authentic. It verbatim repeats a management transformation objective. Virtually no other staff comments do that. Given the verbatim quote, its direct link to LSP, and the fact that it is prominently the second recommendation in the land use section, I just sense it was inserted as cover:

Transformation Priority to ” Immediately focus on operational and regulatory reforms in the Land Use permitting program, including the expanded use of information technology, electronic submittals, general permits and permits by rule. This Transformation Priority could be mostly accomplished with regulatory reforms which establishing the use of Licensed Land Use Permitting Professionals who have the authority to approve “minor” regulated land use projects.

Most comments are just the opposite: they generally oppose contractors.Try #622 for example:

“The programs waste money using state contractors, when the same service can be provided at a much reduced rate. We sometimes end up paying 4 to 5 times the cost.”

“There is absolutely no doubt that the state will not be able to afford this required maintenance through the use of contractors. We are the only cost-effective answer to this issue”

“We should utilize the maintenance workforce in our parks. Instead of hiring outside contractors to maintain our buildings, construct pavilions and campgrounds, etc.”

Asssemblyman Gusciora later followed up on McKeon’s question and asked Kropp point blank: “Did any DEP staff recommend the RFP?” “Who suggested that the RFP be issued?”

At this point, Kropp contradicted her prior claims. She said that the privatization idea grew out of a meeting with DEP managers at which Commisioner Martin recommended that the current air permit private contractor program be expanded into the land use program. Based on this meeting, she said 1-2 managers pursued the idea and worked closely with Treasury Department on the RFP for 2 weeks or so.

So the proposal came from Martin, not DEP staff (others have told me that it was discussed during the Christie campaign and during the transition process, and Kropp herself said the Christie Privatization Task Force was involved)..

In response to follow-up questions by Guscioria, Kropp seemed to understand that the staff recommendation cover story was blown, so she then went out of her way to claim that Commissioner Martin never reviewed the RFP documents and the idea was not fully vettted internally.

Kropp’s testimony became increasingly aggressive and went on offense. She refused to back away from the privatization proposal, but merely said it would not be implemented “this year”.

Kropp implicitly criticized legislators for passing more laws and giving DEP more responsibilities without adequate resources. She even challenged legislators and other third parties to come to the table and become part of the necessary transformation.

In what seemed almost like a threat, Kropp said Governor Christie and Commissioner Martin have put “all cards on on the table”, including “privatization, outsourcing, and contracting out”.

McKeon closed the hearing by taking exception to “a variety of things that continue to bubble up”. He mentioned the reinstatement of the Office of Dispute Resolution, which he said was not helpful during the Whitman administration.

McKeon asked to be kept apprised of new policies and said he didn’t want to read about things in the paper.

He closed with a strong warning that he would not stand by and “allow the poor economy to become an excuse for degradation of environmental regulations”.