Just as we have warned (and more specifically with respect to potential ecological collapse of Barnegat Bay), today NBC News is reporting:

Monster Algae Bloom Off Jersey Shore

An NOAA satellite has identified a monster algae bloom off the New Jersey coast that could soon impact fishing and beach goers.

Images show a swirling blueish green blob stretching from Brooklyn past Sandy Hook all the way down to Cape May — a distance of more than 100 miles.

An arm of the bloom goes due East from Long Beach Island for dozens of miles, then heads north and northeast across the middle of the New York Bight, also for a distance of about 100 miles.

When the algae dies in the next week or so, it could cause a huge dead zone just off shore.

“If there’s no way for oxygen to be replenished, yes it could have an impact on fish,” said Josh Kohut, an assistant professor at Rutgers’ Marine and Coastal Sciences school.

Kohut explained that as algae dies and sinks to the ocean floor, it is eaten by bacteria.

That process consumes oxygen in the water, which either suffocates fish that can’t get away in time or drives them to more oxygen-rich waters.

Kohut said the bloom was caused by an unfortunate combination of southwesterly winds that allowed the upwelling of cold, nutrient rich waters to come to the surface.

That upwelling gave the algae so much food they could quickly multiply. Kohut compared it to a sort of Miracle Gro in the ocean.

Some of the nutrients appear to have come from New York Harbor following heavy rains over last weekend and the overflow of sewage and storm drain systems.

“The secondary process with extensive rainstorms over the weekend seemed to fuel the secondary growth to the north,” said Heather Saffert, a staff scientist with Clean Ocean Action, based on Sandy Hook.

Normally, Kohut said Nor’easters and hurricanes will churn up the waters enough to prevent a dead zone from Cape May to New York Harbor.

Without that, he warned fishing could be slim and beach-goers may notice a brown foam covering their bodies as they get out of the surf.

Not to worry, Governor Christie just toured the shore, and he and Bob Martin over at DEP are on top of it!

[Update: glad to see Kirk Moore story and COA scientist make connection to combined sewer overflows, that discharge raw sewage into river, bay and ocean waters.

DEP Responds To Scandalously Low Rates For State Land Deal for Gas Pipeline

Informal Guidelines Allow Pay-to-Play System to Persist

DEP released a Report yesterday – accompanied by a self congratulatory press release – touting new State lands policy principles and Guidelines regarding leases and easements for the use of State lands. According to DEP:

The DEP alone owns 800,000 acres of parks and fish and wildlife habitats that are crossed in many areas by utility lines.

The report identifies key principles for leasing State land, guidance on appraisals related to valuing leases of State land, and a framework for improved coordination of project review and mitigation related to large linear corridor projects that fall under the jurisdiction of multiple agencies and programs.

(See: Interagency State Land Lease Valuation Panel Report).

Before I discuss the content of the report, let me give a brief recent history of how and why this Report came about.

The DEP Report was driven by last year’s scandalously low $45,000 24 year lease deal DEP cut with Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company (TGP) (see: Christie DEP Cuts Sweetheart Deal with Gas Industry

That DEP deal was severely criticized as a “rip off” and rejected by the State House Commission (SHC), a legislative body that must approve DEP state land deals. The SHC increased the lease 4 fold, to $180,000 (See: State Spurns Proposed Gas Pipeline Lease, Citing Lowball Offer

But long prior to that dirty 2010 Tennessee deal, for over a decade, in a series of three increasingly critical Office of Legislative Services (OLS) audits, the DEP State Land lease program has been criticized for mismanagement and failure to collect fair market value for leases and easements of State lands (See: NEW JERSEY PARKS LOSE MILLIONS IN UNCOLLECTED LEASE PAYMENTS — Park Closures Could Be Averted by Reaping Concessionaire and Easement Revenue

So, in 2008, long before the Tennessee scandal, the Legislature mandated that DEP begin to collect fair market value and issue a Report to the Legislature no later than July 1, 2009.

The 2008 legislation specifically mandated that DEP:

conduct a re-appraisal of the rents and fees charged for all residences and other buildings and structures, and for utility easements and right-of-ways, located on State park or forest lands to ensure they reflect current fair market values and will continue to do so;

More than 2 years past this deadline, the DEP has yet to comply.

More than 10 years after an OLS audit flagged the problem, DEP still has not conducted an inventory of state lands under leases or easements.

DEP still does not know what it owns or what it is worth – as if a landlord didn’t know how many houses he owned or tenants that lived there, or whether they are current and are paying market rents!

DEP has not upgrade existing leases to reflect fair market value, and has not submitted the required Report to the legislature.

While admitting that lease reform was “long overdue”, the DEP press release omits specific mention of all this history, the three negative OLS audits, and the Legislative mandate.

So, let’s get to the Report contents.

First of all, keep in mind that the Report merely presents principles and Guidelines – these are NOT regulations.

This informal approach contrasts sharply with the Christie Administration’s across the board assault on the environment, which specifically targets regulations in a concerted series of Executive Orders, Red Tape Reports, and regulatory rollback initiatives.

The Christie team well knows how to deploy the levers of real State power, which are found in regulations, budgets, and contracts.

In this report, the Christie Administration simply has failed to ratchet down to collect the rent owed by major energy corporations for their destructive use of publicly owned State lands.

• The Report policy Guidelines are not enforceable. They do NOT modify existing flawed regulations and lease contracts.
• Despite the fact that the Report notes that many leases are 100 years old, it does not call for the modification of existing leases to update them to reflect fair market value.
• There are no recommendations that key applicable State regulations, such as State appraisal, leases, grants, licenses, Tidelands, or Green Acres diversion regulations, are changed so that the Guidelines can be enforced across State government.

These are fundamental failures that maintain the failed status quo in State government programs and allows continuation of pay-to-play abuses.

One example: the Tennessee Gas Company made a $10,000 contribution during the last quarter to the Republican State Committee, at a time when the Company was seeking State permits and easements for a $2 billion pipeline project. (Source: h/t to CS)

[Note: Tennessee also has huge economic interests in the Christie DEP vote in support of DRBC fracking regulations, as frack gas is the source of gas for the pipeline. TGP also has huge economic interests in energy policies in the Energy Master Plan revisions that just so happen to greatly favor gas pipeline construction and expansion of natural gas fuels.]

To its credit, the Report admits that the current system is broken (that’s not hard to do given the OLS audits and the Tennessee fiasco). Still, bureaucracies rarely admit error, so we give DEP credit for his.

The biggest issues are how to calculate, apply, and collect Fair Market Value (FMV).

The Report maintains the current real estate appraisal based methodology to derive FMV. That land based appraisal approach fails to reflect the actual economic use of the land.

For example, a billion dollar revenue producing gas pipeline should pay the State a portion of the gas revenues, not just the value of a commercial appraisal of land value, i.e. pay a portion of the economic profits they receive from the use of state lands, not just the value of the underlying land.

A common sense illustration would be how a landowner would consider the value of an easement for a neighbor to access a driveway, versus how that same landowner would charge a cell phone company for an easement to a cell phone tower.

The DEP should exert leverage and act to collect a fair and full market price, just like any other private landowner would.

The Report’s FMV recommendation calls for a uniform rate of $0.15 per square foot per year (15 cents) (while perpetuating the option for case-by-case deals that invite pay-to-play abuse).

This is peanuts.

For example, in comparison to DEP’s 15 cent value, the Report finds that the NJ Turnpike authority, infamous for “The Tree Massacre” and a notoriously anti-environmental organization, charges $1.25 per square foot to easements in highway ROW for fiber optic cables!

Highway right-of-way lands are valued at more than 8 TIMES the value that DEP considers for State Parks, forests and the most environmentally sensitive lands, including Category One streams, lakes, and reservoir watershed lands!

There are several other examples of low ball FMV’s: for private use of the State’s irreplaceable tidelands, the Report recommends a value of just 10 cents per square foot per year.

Not only is this 12 times LESS than highway right-of-way, but it is less than half of what the State of Massachusetts charges, which is 22 cents.

There are even examples of gas pipeline companies getting REDUCTIONS in current leases under the new Guidelines.

For example, a gas pipeline lease in Clinton/Somerville would be reduced from $17,800 per year to $12,150.

Aside from the current $7.8 million 25 year Tennessee proposed lease – which increased the prior $45,000 lease by 172 times – the Guidelines are NOT being implemented (see implementation status in Appendix 1).

As previously noted, actual implementation of the Guidelines requires a comprehensive set of regulatory and statutory changes.

But as the Report makes clear, the Christie Administration simply doesn’t want to go there.

We urge the public and the legislature to read this Report and act to strengthen its recommendations.

[End Note – the Bergen Record covers the story today, but I suspect that the story was edited and it surprisingly does a lousy job: Utilities to pay more for use of state land

[Update #3 – 11/8/11: pipeline construction complete, just in time for DRBC approval of more gas supply: Bergen Record Portly pipeline goes on line

Update 2 – 8/30/11 – Surprise, surprise! NJ Herald reports: Efforts to contain mud at pipeline site unsuccessful

Work crews from the Tennessee Gas Pipeline project did their best to secure the work sites near the Minerals Resort in Vernon, but despite their best effort, Hurricane Irene simply dumped too much rain to be contained.

According to a statement from the company, “erosion control devices placed on the ski slope at the Minerals Resort held the soil along the construction site in place. However, due to the extreme amount of rain, water washed over the area, including the parking lot for the resort.”

The resulting erosion of the pipeline project washed mud, rocks and sediment down the mountainside and into the condominium communities and parking lots of the resort.

Zach Past, a resident of the Great Gorge Condominiums, said that walls of mud washed down into the development from the mountain work site on Sunday.

“It got pretty messy here,” Past said. “There were inches of mud just building up in the streets.”

Update 1: 8/18/11 – and this is what a gas pipeline explosion looks like – photo credit: Asbury Park Press

Tennessee Gas Pipeline (Vernon, NJ)

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Construction (Wawayanda State Park, West Milford NJ)

[Update: 8/26/11 – Looks like DEP failed to issue enforcement fines to TGP for damage to Lake Lookover – but Bergen Record report at least they will attempt “restoration”. See: Pipeline co. to begin restoration efforts at Lake Lookover in West Milford

But who knows, the proposed filtration system could make the problem worse, by filtering aquatic life along with the suspended soil. – end update]

These photos were taken on 8/17/11 at 4:45 pm

[Update: 8/17/11 – DEP and TGP did a lousy job in permitting and design. See today’s Record story: Heavy rain force mud into pristine lake

These major water quality violations warrant huge enforcement fines. This is a DEP project with DEP permits, so DEP enforcement is required. DEP must not be allowed to transfer responsibility to the local Soil Conservation District, which lacks effective enforcement powers.

And it wasn’t the heavy rains that caused this problem, which was occuring prior to the recent deluge. This is a chronic problem. On August 5, 2011, the Record reported: Residents of West Milford’s Lake Lookover continue to deal with runoff problem = end update]

“If the Christie managers want to run the state more like a business, they should start by collecting the rents truly owed. Doing this basic job would eliminate the need to panhandle in the parks with chintzy privatization schemes.”

We’ve previously written about the scandalous sweetheart deal that DEP provided for the Tennessee gas pipeline easement across NJ’s most environmentally sensitive public lands.

We also written about how that pipeline will carry fracked gas and why fracking is a serious threat to NJ’s water supply.

But today’s post focuses on a long ignored aspect of the story we have repeatedly been trying to put on the table.

DEP has failed to collect fair market value for energy infrastructure easements across state lands as required by 2008 legislation that specifically mandated the DEP submit a plan by July 1, 2009.

That law mandated that DEP:

conduct a re-appraisal of the rents and fees charged for all residences and other buildings and structures, and for utility easements and right-of-ways, located on State park or forest lands to ensure they reflect current fair market values and will continue to do so;

See below for today’s PEER press release for details and links to the relevant documents.

 

Fair Market Value Leases Could Fund Jersey Park System

Shale Gas Pipeline Highlights State’s Failure to Collect Full Payments from Utilities 

Trenton – Responding to protests from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and others, the State of New Jersey has dramatically hiked the lease payment it is demanding for a proposed shale gas pipeline crossing state parklands.  Despite this huge increase, the state is still not collecting fair market value on hundreds of leases, easements and concessions, thus forfeiting millions of dollars.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 8/17/11)), the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is holding a public hearing on its plan to lease up to 30.21 acres of state land in High Point, Long Pond Ironworks and Ringwood State Parks to Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company.  This pipeline is just one segment of the “Northeast Pipeline Project” to import natural gas into the New York City metro area.  The gas is produced by controversial fracking of the Marcellus shale play underlying most of Pennsylvania and New York’s southern tier.

DEP originally proposed a lease payment for an earlier pipeline segment of just $45,000 for a 24-year term.  After protests led by PEER, the state raised that rent to $180,000.  DEP is now proposing for the next pipeline segment a rent of approximately $7.84 million over the same period – a more than 170-fold increase over what DEP proposed for the first segment.  Even with this hefty hike it is not clear that DEP is charging the full market value as it is required to do by law.

“PEER is proud to have won New Jersey taxpayers $8 million in additional revenue but they may be owed even more,” state New Jersey PEER Director Bill Wolfe, who testified against the original lease in July 2010 before the State House Commission which must approve all state land leases. “DEP proposed a lease that was less than pennies on the dollar due to a flawed real estate appraisal but we still do not know at what price a proper appraisal would peg this lease.”

Over the last several years, a series of audits by the Office of Legislative Services found major flaws in the DEP Office of Leases and Concessions, most notably its failure to charge fair market value or collect overdue lease and concession payments.  In response to these audits and PEER advocacy, the Legislature mandated that DEP “conduct a re-appraisal of the rents and fees charged for all residences and other buildings and structures, and for utility easements and right-of-ways, located on State park or forest lands to ensure they reflect current fair market values and will continue to do so” (P.L. 2008, c.31). DEP was then supposed to integrate this with its plan to fund state parks and forests, a plan due on July 1, 2009.

More than two years after this statutory deadline, DEP has done neither mandated task.  Instead the Christie administration has explored a number of small revenue measures to commercialize parks, such as selling corporate naming rights for park facilities and privatizing various park operations.

“As this new lease richly demonstrates, charging fair market value for utility easements from the energy industry, as the state is required to do, would be a major funding source for depleted parks and state lands budgets” Wolfe added.  “If the Christie managers want to run the state more like a business, they should start by collecting the rents truly owed. Doing this basic job would eliminate the need to panhandle in the parks with chintzy privatization schemes.”

###

Look at past audits faulting state land lease collections

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1369

View photos of the pipeline construction

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2010/11/tennessee-gas-pipeline-blasts-through-nj-highlands-watershed-lands-will-import-marcellus-frack-gas/

See lowball lease on first pipeline segment

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1375

New Jersey PEER is a state chapter of a national alliance of state and federal agency resource professionals working to ensure environmental ethics and government accountability

[End note: my site data tracker tells me that they’re reading this in Texas, home of “Tennessee Gas Co.!” What’s up TGC guys?