WolfeNotes.com

Still, those [regulatory relief] bills won the approval of all but a handful of state lawmakers.

“Our regulatory process stinks and needs to be overhauled. . . . I think we should do much more,” said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester). “I think we’ve regulated the state almost out of business.” ~~~ Environmental Regulatory Shift In NJ Draws Praise and Concerns (Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/21/11)

Senator Sweeney simply is ignorant and misinformed on both environmental regulation and economic development.

Is he competing with Governor Christie for the Biggest Idiot award? Or just talking to Hal Bozarth too much?

That Sweeney quote is from yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer story by Maya Rao.

I worked with Maya on the story and it follows what I wrote about most of last year, and more specifically in January when I outlined the year’s upcoming events (see: Shoes Drop in 2011, As DEP Implements Christie “Regulatory Relief” Policy):

I forsee a series of train wrecks, as DEP implements Governor Christie’s pro-business “regulatory relief“ policies that are codified in Executive Orders #1-4. The framework and foundation for implementation of those policies was laid during 2010. 

Because Senator Sweeney repeats the business community’s lie that environmental regulations “regulated the state almost out of business“, let me remind the Senator of a few fundamental facts about:

• why we regulate
• environmental regulations provide net economic BENEFITS
• there is no credible study that demonstrates that NJ regulations have driven economic development out of the State
• virtually all economists agree that the cause of the economic recession is related to the Wall Street fraud, greed, and deregulation driven real estate bubble.
• Basic democracy: Poll: 79% of NJ Residents Oppose Relaxing Environmental Regulations

I) Here’s why we regulate strictly in NJ

Because another Governor named Christie – as in Whitman – tried and failed to rollback strict NJ standards to federal minimums, let me start with an excerpt of the transcript of my testimony to the US Senate Confirmation hearing on Christie Whitman for US EPA Administrator. I cited that excerpt in testimony to the NJ legislature last March 18:

At that time, we disclosed a July 29, 1994 memo from then DEP Assistant Commissioner Lou Nagy to Commissioner Shinn. The memo compared DEP’s strict standards with weaker EPA requirements and warned of a significant increase in the number of potential fatalities.

This was not some tree hugger warning, it came from Shinn’s own Assistant Commissioner who wrote to Shinn to warn about:

“Industry (e.g., CIC and NJBIA) would obviously prefer backing off to the EPA thresholds. .However, the increases made by EPA on adoption were so large (averaging some 18 times the TCPA values with 33 of the 60 substances common to both lists assigned from 5 to 167 times corresponding TCPA values) that they are not technically justifiable in an area as densely populated as New Jersey where substances are generally handled on small sites, and would correlate with a significant increase in the number of potential fatalities”. (complete Shinn memo found on page 126 of Whitman EPA confirmation transcript)

Got it Sweeney?

So let me repeat – especially given the toxic chemical industry in your district – we need strict regulations to avoid “a significant increase in the number of potential fatalities.” Ask Hal Bozarth about all that (or Jim Sinclair about this (watch it!) – the only effort to hold Christie accountable for “regulatory relief” EO and the first to focus on variance policy).

But lets look more broadly than fatalities associated with chemical plants adjacent to residential neighborhoods.

The environmental indicators that justify NJ’s stringent environmental and public health regulatory protections are uniformly dire.

On the public health side, NJ has the nation’s highest cancer and asthma rates.

As we wrote over a year ago (harsh truths we were unable to get published on NJ’s timid Op-Ed pages):

The environmental indicators that justify NJ’s stringent environmental and public health regulatory protections are uniformly dire.

NJ is the nation’s most densely populated state with the most cars, most development, most pavement and most toxic pollutants per square mile. NJ’s precious shore is highly over-developed and vulnerable to storms and sea level rise. Yet we continue to lose more than 15,000 acres of forests, farms, and wetlands per year to new development. NJ’s racially and economical segregated urban communities bear unjust disproportionate pollution and health burdens.  Contradicting lots of empty political rhetoric about reducing emissions, NJ’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise steeply. NJ has the most toxic Superfund sites and more than 20,000 other toxic sites. Communities are threatened by at least 15 chemical facilities, where an accident or terror attack could kill more than 100,000 residents. In NJ, more than 65% of streams and rivers and 100% of lakes [and Bays] fail to meet water pollution standards and lack cleanup plans. Statewide Fish Consumption Advisories warn that fish and shellfish are too toxic to eat. Over 12% of residential water wells fail health standards. The entire state does not meet health based standards for air pollutants ozone, fine particulates, and numerous cancer causing toxic chemicals; and not surprisingly NJ has the nation’s highest cancer and asthma rates.

II) Environmental Regulation Provides Net Economic Benefits

According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) thirteenth annual Report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal regulations:

“The estimated annual benefits of major Federal regulations reviewed by OMB from October 1, 1999, to September 30, 2009, for which agencies estimated and monetized both benefits and costs, are in the aggregate between $128 billion and $616 billion, while the estimated annual costs are in the aggregate between $43 billion and $55 billion.”

EPA recently testified to Congress that the economic benefits of Clean Air Act regulations exceed costs by a factor of 10-40 to one.

DEP economic benefit estimates of NJ’s clean air rules are similarly positive on the economics (while showing reductions in thousands of asthma attacks and other respiratory events, hosspital emergency room visits, sickenss, and death).

A DEP study calculated huge economic value of NJ’s “natural capital” that is protected by environmental regulations.

The Final Report was quietly posted on the Division of Science and Research’s website. Despite score of press releases posted by DEP, the only place I could find Report mentioned was in July 31, 2007 Corzine press release:

“New Jersey has preserved over 1.3 million acres of open space and farmland. In addition to the environmental impact of preserving open space, a recent DEP report valued New Jersey’s “natural capital”, which includes open space, at $20 billion annually.”

III) “Horror Stories” – But No credible Study – Blame Envrionmental Regulation for the Recession

No studies to summarize and link to here, as none exist.

Worse, by their own admission, the NJ Chamber of Commerce sought “horror stories” – not facts –  to fuel the Christie DEP Transition Team deregulation juggernaut.

According to NJBIZ,

Assembly Republican Executive Director Rick Wright said the transition team is interested in hearing from businesses about how regulations affect them. He encouraged the audience at a New Jersey Chamber of Commerce breakfast Friday morning to show the transition team “the horrors that they need to hear about regarding regulations’  effect on businesses.

As we predicted:

So, the Christie Transition Team will be inundated with all sorts of anecdotes and alleged horror stories explicitly designed to mislead. Given the composition and bias of that group, they will lack expertise and experience to evaluate the merits of this sort of propaganda.

Worse, there is no public process during the transition, which tends to be secretive. Therefore, there will be no independent check on the process, to provide countervailing information, to correct errors, to create a context for misinformation, and to reject flat out falsehoods and bad information likely to be submitted.

This is a very poor policy-making process and – given Christie’s regulatory animus – a prescription for disaster.

IV) Economists agree that Wall Street Fraud, Greed and Deregulation caused the economic crash

A large body of literature exists to demonstrate this fact. But instead of quoting the superb journalistic work of Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone (see: Why Isn’t Wall Streeet In Jail), let me quote more mainstream Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman:

When the financial crisis struck, many people, myself included, considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated.

How naive we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.

The bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was established by law to examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States. The hope was that it would be a modern version of the Pecora investigation of the 1930s, which documented Wall Street abuses and helped pave the way for financial reform.

Instead, however, the commission has broken down along partisan lines, unable to agree on even the most basic points.

It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure. First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks”, which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.

Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.

It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally.

Sweeney now joins the know nothings in the Republican party, including Governor Christie.

In a classic illustration of contentless, vapid, “he said/she said” journalism, Scott Fallon of the Bergen Record today reports on a squabble in the environmental community with this story:   N.J. picking its spots with environment suits

The Christie administration dropped out of one high profile environmental lawsuit and sought to join another in the span of a few days, drawing criticism and praise, respectively, from green advocacy groups.

New Jersey officials quietly withdrew last week from a seven-year-old suit brought by eight states to force power companies to cut greenhouse gases emitted by plants in 20 states.

A few days later, state officials announced that they are seeking permission to join a lawsuit with New York, Connecticut and Vermont challenging a federal rule that allows nuclear waste to be stored at power plants 60 years after a reactor shuts down.

 The story is based on dueling press releases issued by Jeff Tittel criticizing Governor Christie, and then by Dave Pringle in his usual role of defending Christie.

I tried to warn Fallon that he was being spun, by sending him the NY Times story I linked to in my post yesterday, including the legal brief filed to the Supreme Court in the case by the Obama administration’s Solicitor General.

The Obama brief was filed last summer, and it sides with the polluters. Remarkably, Obama filed on behalf of the those good clean guys over at the Tennessee Valley Authority.

[Update: 3/21/11 – just to amplify what’s at stake in this case. Once in awhile, the truth comes out. Check this out – federal court of appeals decision calls BS on EPA spin that they are actually regulating greenhouse gas emissions. This is exactly what I hae been saying for months – it’s all fiction, there are no EPA regulations on GHG emissions curently in effect (below is quoting summary of the decision from the Obama brief):

Finally, the court of appeals held that the CAA has not displaced a federal common-law public nuisance cause of action seeking to cap and reduce carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. The court of appeals’ discussion of displacement drew a line between the actual “regulation” of greenhouse-gas emissions and mere “study” or “monitor[ing]” of such emissions. It discussed EPA’s 2009 proposed finding in the context of Section 202 of the CAA that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, but said that “[u]ntil EPA completes the rulemaking process, we cannot speculate as to whether the hypothetical regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act would in fact speak directly to the particular issue raised” by plaintiffs here. The court observed that “EPA has yet to make any determination that [greenhouse-gas] emissions are subject to regulation under the Act, much less endeavor to actually regulate the emissions. In the absence of “the requisite findings” from EPA, the court concluded that the CAA “does not (1) regulate greenhouse gas emissions or (2) regulate such emissions from stationary sources.” As a result, the court held that plaintiffs’ federal common-law claim had not yet been displaced. . at 142a (internal quotation marks and alterationsactually to regulate the emissions.”  

 

Citizen suits and Common law remedies are becoming even more important as government regulators are captured by corporate polluters, and as EPA shies away from strict regulations under pressure by Koch brothers and the parade of corporate funded right wing Republican attacks in Congress.

Reflecting those corporate interests, the Obama administration took the industry position: “the stunning claim that EPA’s announced intent to curb carbon emissions “displaces” citizen suits seeking direct reductions”. That’s right – mere EPA intent to propose rules would close the courthouse door to citizens.

The Christie Administration concurs with this very bad idea, as NJ AG Dow’s spokespeson noted:

A spokesman for Dow said withdrawing from the Connecticut vs. American Electric Power lawsuit is prudent.

“The lawsuit that was originally filed in 2004 has been effectively mooted by the 2007 Supreme Court decision declaring that the regulation of greenhouse emissions is a federal issue,” said the spokesman, Leland Moore. “Considering the Supreme Court’s ruling and the Obama administration’s subsequent position that the EPA must determine an appropriate plan of action, it does not make sense to incur further taxpayer expense on an unnecessary lawsuit.”

So BOTH Obama and Christie are on the wrong side of a very important legal dispute – siding with polluters –  on the most important environmental issue of the day.

But you wouldn’t know any of this by reading the newspapers.

The second case deals with the important issue of NRC rules that extended the period during which nuclear waste can be stored on site at nuclear power plants from 30 to 60 years.

The merits of this controversy also were ignored by Fallon, and the context shares similar elements of hypocrisy.

Substantively, the case deals only with process – NRC did not conduct a full blown environmental impact statement required under NEPA (a far less significant legal issue than the GHG case above).

The context revolves around the fact that the timing reeks of opportunism, in terms of the tragic events in Japan (see self promotional DEP press release).

Another elephant in the room ignored.

If Governor Christie is so concerned about the risks of storage of spent fuel at NJ’s nuclear power plants for 60 years after shutdown, he could have addressed that issue in the political deal he cut with Exelon, to allow that plant to operate for 10 more years without cooling towers. Surely he was aware of the issue, because the NRC rules were proposed in late 2008.

If Governor Christie is so concerned about the risks of nuclear power plants, he  could stop supporting construction of a new nuke plant by PSEG in Salem County.

If Governor Christie is so concerned about the risks of nuclear power, he could abandon the pro-nuke changes he is seeking to the Energy Master Plan.

If Christie is so  supportive of NEPA and the need to conduct full blown environmental impact statements before major decisions are made, he could support the need for an EIS on the Delaware River Basin Commission’ proposed fracking rules that he is supporting.

Presumably, Dave Pringle understands all this – but apparently Scott Fallon does not.

And that’s a sham and a shame.

(and I was planning to write about EPA’s proposed mercury rules today!)

[Update below]

We have written that the Obama administration is in full retreat on the EPA regulatory front (see: Browner Departure Just Another Sign That Obama Is In Full Retreat).

The reteat posture is a compex combination of response to republican attacks, as well as Obama’s own pro-corporate policies.

In contrast to all the favorable press coverage, the timidity and backtracking have been particularly acute on the issue of global warming and EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, EPA further confirmed that assessment. According to EPA’s press release:

EPA Issues Extension to Greenhouse Gas Reporting Deadline

Release date: 03/17/2011

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued a final rule that extends the deadline for reporting 2010 data under the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reporting Program to September 30, 2011. The original deadline was March 31, 2011. EPA previously announced its intent to extend the deadline on March 1, 2011.

The Obama move is similar to prior polluter friendly NJ rollbacks on greenhouse gas monitoring.

Last year, we criticized Governor Christie for killing NJ DEP’s proposed greenhouse gas reporting requirments (see: CHRISTIE SHREDS NEW JERSEY CLIMATE CHANGE PROGRAMS — Kills Emission Reporting, Diverts Green Energy Fund & Defunds Climate Office

So while I’m on this topic of showing similarities between Obama and Christie, I need to clarify the recent criticism of Governor Christie for withdrawing from a global warming lawsuit before the US Supreme Court (see: Environmentalist faults Christie for leaving lawsuit).

The fact of the mattter is that the Obama Justice Department – last summer – took the side of the polluters in that case. Filing legal briefs in support of the polluters’ position is far worse than merely withdrawing from the case.

As reported by the August 25, 2010 NY Times:

Obama Admin Urges Supreme Court to Vacate Greenhouse Gas ‘Nuisance’ Ruling

By GABRIEL NELSON of Greenwire

Published: August 25, 2010

The Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to toss out an appeals court decision that would allow lawsuits against major emitters for their contributions to global warming, stunning environmentalists who see the case as a powerful prod on climate change.

In the case, AEP v. Connecticut, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a coalition of states, environmental groups and New York City. The decision, handed down last year, said they could proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to force several of the nation’s largest coal-fired utilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The defendants — American Electric Power Co. Inc., Duke Energy Corp., Southern Co. and Xcel Energy Inc. — filed a petition for review with the Supreme Court earlier this month, asking the court to reject the argument that greenhouse gas emissions can be addressed through “public nuisance” lawsuits (Greenwire, Aug. 4).

In a brief (pdf) filed yesterday on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal agreed with the defendants, saying that U.S. EPA’s newly finalized regulations on greenhouse gases have displaced that type of common-law claim.

Here is the larger context, from our friends at PEER:

Anti-regulatory zeal

• Obama’s plan to boost the economy by “eliminating red tape” bears a troubling similarity to the Bush era’s zeal for deregulation

Climate Change

• The Obama administration sided with major polluters in filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme court seeking to block environmental lawsuits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps the most stunning claim is that EPA’s announced intent to curb carbon emissions “displaces” citizen suits seeking direct reductions.
• At the Copenhagen Climate Conference, President Obama put forth greenhouse gas reduction targets that are far less stringent than scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change;
• Obama has embraced a watered-down climate change bill that Dr. Jim Hansen and other experts warn will do too little too late;
• Central to the Obama effort is embrace of a cap-and-trade approach that is unworkable and unenforceable.

Coal Embrace

• Central to the Obama energy program is an embrace of more coal and developing “Clean Coal Technology” process that does not yet exist. In the interim, the administration is funding schemes to pump sequestered carbon into the ocean floor;
• The Obama team has backed away from promises to restrain the environmental damage wreaked by mountaintop removal coal mining;
• In a huge and dangerous hidden subsidy to the coal industry, the Obama administration delays taking action to address toxic coal combustion wastes.

Oil & Gas
The Obama plan seeks to reduce reliance on foreign oil by increasing production of domestic oil “ with no limits:

• Adopted much of the offshore drilling plan formulated by Bush. Brushing aside NOAA’s concerns, the Interior Department has placed energy exploration above protection of sensitive marine resources. Significantly, the Obama administration green-lighted offshore drilling in the Arctic, Atlantic and eastern Gulf before it developed a promised coherent oceans policy.
• “Drill, Baby, Drill“ No part of the Outer Continental Shelf or the domestic U.S. has been put off-limits to petroleum production. Some lease sales have been slowed for further review – but they will be back;
• The Obama administration has approved a pipeline to bring Canadian oil sands, one of the most environmentally destructive petroleum extraction sources, to U.S. refineries (so much for ending dependence on foreign oil);
• Obama’s Interior department has defended a Bush plan to lease western Colorado’s beautiful Roan Plateau for oil and gas drilling; and
• A key priority is to back the construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline championed by Alaskan ex-Gov. Sarah Palin;
• Washington Post, Oct. 20: The Interior Department has approved permits for Shell to drill exploratory oil wells on two leaseholds in the Beaufort Sea off the north coast of Alaska.

[Update – 3/18/11 – on the positive side of the regulatory ledger, EPA finally proposed new mercury rules yesterday. More to follow on that.]

But NJ’s Leadership a Thing of The Past

The State of Delaware just followed NJ’s lead and has proposed new drinking water standards for toxic chemicals.

Following up on the excellent series “Delaware Drinking Water At Risk” by reporter Jeff Montgomery, Delaware online news reports today:

Delaware proposes stricter limits on 3 toxins in drinking water

Delaware plans to impose stricter drinking water standards for three toxic chemicals suspected of causing cancer in people, a move that will require increased filtering of public supplies in systems serving more than 200,000 state residents.

Two water utilities would be affected immediately by the proposed lowering of allowable limits for perchloroethylene in drinking water to 1 part per billion from the current 5 ppb level. The chemical, often called PCE or “perc,” is widely used in dry cleaning, and has turned up in groundwater across Delaware and around the country.

A similar tightening is under consideration for a related solvent, tetrachloroetheylene or TCE, and vinyl chloride. All three are considered probable carcinogens. TCE and PCE are widely used as cleaning solvents in industry, while vinyl chloride is used in making plastics. …

New Jersey already has a 1 ppb limit for the same chemicals.

Both NJ standards and the proposed Delaware drinking water standards are more stringent than federal standards set by US EPA.

However, shamefully, NJ’s leadership no longer exists.

Governor Christie killed it by issuing Executive Order #2, which discourages any NJ standards that are more stringent than federal minimums.

EO#2 mandates that any new NJ standard be justified by cost benefit analysis, a hurdle to new regulation that conflicts with NJ’s Safe Drinking Water Act.

NJ’s Safe Drinking Water Act establishes 3 science based factors upon which to base drinking water standards. Unlike the federal SDWA, NJ law does not include a requirement to consider costs. NJ’s law is stricter than the federal law in this important regard, which leads to NJ’s stricter standards, that are primarily health based.

As we wrote, quoting DEP:

The [Drinking Water Quality] Institute considers three factors when recommending MCLs: health effects, technological ability to measure the contaminant level, and ability of existing treatment technologies to meet the MCL. For chemicals causing effects other than cancer (noncarcinogens), the goal is the elimination of all adverse health effects resulting from ingestion, within the limits of practicability and feasibility. The Federal standard-setting process considers these factors and an additional economic factor. (proposal at page 19-20)

DEP Commissioner Martin has gone even further than Christie’s EO.

• Martin failed to adopt a recommended drinking water standard for perchlorate  
• Martin failed to adopt a recommended drinking water standard for radioactive contaminants
• Martin failed to adopt numerous other drinking water standards that were recommended by DEP and academic scientists on the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute
• Martin denied a petition to require testing and treatment for over 500 chemicals found in NJ water supplies.

Martin not only ignores – and even attacks – his own scientists’ recommendations, he now has blocked the Drinking Water Quality Institute from even meeting to make recommendations.

The DWQI meets on a quarterly basis. They last met in September. It’s been over 6 months (see: Total Collapse at NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute

What’s up with that, Bob?

Governor Christie’s tactics of acting like an asshole in public – e.g. calling out Star Ledger editorial writers, attacking teachers, bullying citizens, slandering public employees, obfuscating his record and repeatedly lying - and then posting video on YouTube  – have been exposed as a cynical self promotional media strategy.

But now, I see that opponents are fighting fire with fire.

Check out this YouTube about Christie’s lies on the Highlands Act  – Click here to watch the video

Hey, but don’t blame us, we were a lone wolf voice in the wilderness BEFORE the election  (see: Christie’s Environmental Agenda Would Be A Disaster for New Jersey).