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Science and risk assessments done by the DWQI and DEP scientists have HUGE impacts on public health and the environment, as well as industry compliance costs

Christie DEP Working With Industry to Block Costly Protections

[Important Updates with news coverage below]

Unfortunately, that headline is not a rhetorical question.

Tomorrow in Trenton, the Assembly Environment Committee will hear a bill, A2123 (Burzichelli, D-Gloucester) that would do just that.

The bill was initiated by the NJ Chemistry Council and is supported by the Governor’s Office. DEP was told to get in line and will not oppose it.

Assemblyman Burzichelli

Burzichelli serves on Gov. Christie’s “Red Tape Commission” as the legislative point man for the Governor’s “regulatory relief” and “Red Tape” policy initiatives designed to roll back NJ’s tough standards to federal minimums and block the DEP from developing any additional new regulatory protections of public health and the environment.

The bill would do 2 really bad things:

• add 3 industry members to the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute (DWQI), allowing industry to have a formal role in setting NJ’s drinking water standards;

• revise the procedures and substantive requirements for how DEP conducts chemical risk assessments. The procedural changes would delay and provide additional industry control over risk assessments. The substantive changes would block consideration of thousands of valid, high quality scientific studies on the health effects of chemicals from being considered by DEP in a risk assessment.

Putting 3 industry representatives on the DWQI is a huge conflict of interest, because industry is directly regulated by the DEP standards recommended by the DWQI and must spend billions of dollars to comply with those DEP regulations.

Obviously, industry has huge economic stakes in derailing, delaying and weakening any DEP standards and those conflicts should disqualify them from any scientific credibility or formal regulatory role on the DWQI.

Hal Bozarth, NJ Chemistry Council, AKA “The Godfather of NJ Toxics”

The bill furthers the chemical industry’s strategy to manufacture uncertainty to block, delay, and weaken environmental and public health regulations – for an outstanding in depth analysis of how the chemical industry has distorted science, see Professor David Michael’s recent book Doubt is Their Product – How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. The book has numerous NJ specific examples, especially on chromium and the shameful history of Dupont, a major player in NJ.

The DWQI was created by the Legislature in the 1983 Safe Drinking Water Act and is responsible for reviewing the science, conducting risk assessments, and recommending drinking water standards for adoption by  DEP. DEP relies on the DWQI for the scientific basis for “Maximum Contaminant Levels” (MCLs) – or drinking water standards, based on an individual cancer risk of 1 in a million.

When DEP adopts a MCL drinking water standard and the risk assessment upon which it is based, the groundwater standards are automatically revised as well.

New drinking water MCLs, chemical risk assessments, and groundwater standards in turn have direct impacts on not only drinking water, but on surface water quality standards, soil cleanup standards, toxic site remediation requirements, and – depending on the chemical, air pollution control requirements.

Thus, the science and risk assessments done by the DWQI and DEP staff have HUGE impacts on public health and the environment, as well as industry compliance costs.

But the DWQI has not met in over 2 years. There is a huge backlog of recommendations by the DWQI to update and strengthen drinking water standards – those recommendations have been ignored by DEP.

DEP Commissioner Martin has blocked the DWQI from meeting.

In another move to retaliate against the DWQI, Martin demoted and transferred the head of the Health Effects Subcommittee that adopted the risk assessments and developed MCL recommendations.

The former Chairman of the DWQI resigned in protest of DEP’s refusal to act on the DWQI’s recommendations. Amazingly, former Chair Mark Robson stated his frustration with DEP’s failure to adopt DWQI recommendations as his reason for leaving in an NJN TV interview (see:

• Total Collapse at NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute
• Running the Regulatory Gauntlet – A Dispatch from the Weeds

So, that is the outrageous context for this outrageous bill.

[Updates:

• NJ Spotlight story: Expanded Role for Industry Doesn’t Hold Water with Environmentalists
• Philadelphia Inquirer story:  NJ bill could change regulation of drinking water contaminants
• Dems Do Christie’s Dirty Business For Him
• Chemical Industry’s War on Science Gains Support of Christie’s DEP
• Chemical Industry’s War on Science and Public Health (Part 2)
• Delaware Riverkeeper’s webpage on DWQI- see letters to DEP, et al
• Assemblyman Burzichelli Pulls Bait and Switch on Chemical Industry Drinking Water Bill 
• Op-ed: Don’t pollute, dilute N.J. drinking water panel

 We Must Not Let Symbols, Stunts, & Slogans Trump Science & Public Policy

Christie’s Kleenex Circuit, Faux “Town Halls”, and Flogging the Fleece

"On the beach" - Is this the image NJ wants to project?

“If I believe that me appearing in the ads is the best thing to increase Jersey tourism then I’ll appear in the ads,” Christie said Monday on a tour of Bradley Beach, where work crews began stacking discarded Christmas trees to help rebuild dunes.

After reading Charlie Stile’s column this morning, I couldn’t help myself with the photo.

Charlie Stile ran a superb column today, calling out Governor Christie’s You Tube stunts, his faux “town halls”, and related media and political self promotional demagoguery.

Stile laid it all out in full glory  – exactly what we have been saying here for a very long time (see: Christie Princeton Speech – A Dangerous Demagogue)

I urge you to read the whole thing – hit this link:  Christie’s videos blurring the boundaries of official and political

The only problem I have with the way this is written is that it makes it seem like Christie’s Sandy record is ALL positive – that there is no downside for the Governor.

That doesn’t leave much room for Democrats, who don’t even know who from their party will run against Christie this fall.

So their strategy, for the moment, is to wait. Maybe Sandy won’t still be dominating the public conversation in a few months, they figure, giving them room to raise other issues on which they think Christie might be vulnerable.

But if media, environmental groups, and the Democrats would only just do a little policy research, they would see that the Governor has enormous vulnerabilities.

As we’ve written:

1) the NJ Transit fiasco was not unique, but the tip of the iceberg – no one has written about that, other than this WNYC story;

Christie also got hammered in a superb national investigative piece by the Huffington Post, see: Hurricane Sandy Damage Amplified By Breakneck Development Of Coast 

2) Christie’s response to Sandy is in sharp contrast with NY Governor Cuomo’s – Christie is highly vulnerable if and when the focus shifts from emotion to policy.

But no one is writing or talking about substance and policy.

3) Christie’s approach to rebuild is sharply at odds with the science and President Obama’s Executive Order on Sandy Rebuild.

Again, no one has written about this.

Again, when the focus shifts from emotion to substance, Christie is highly vulnerable.

This explains why he’s working the Kleenex Circuit and Flogging the Fleece so hard.

But we must not let Symbols, Stunts, and Slogans trump science and public policy. 

Christie Whitman injected over a decade of delay in EPA regulation of GHG’s

At best, Lisa Jackson returned to the status quo ante set in 1998

Please don’t dominate the rap jack, if you’ve go nothing new to say. ~~~ Grateful Dead (1970) (listen!)

[Update: 1/12/13 – this makes Obama/Jackson nonfeasance virtually criminal – it is finally sinking in, even at the NY Times:

• Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide ~~~ end update]

I just got an Action Alert from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) asking me to take action to “Thank Lisa Jackson, Clean Air and Climate Leader“.

First on the list of accomplishments that I am supposed to thank Jackson for, EDF claims that Jackson:

Under her leadership, the EPA has:

• Determined, on the basis of an irrefutable body of science, that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, establishing a bedrock science-based foundation for our nation to address climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

I’ve read similar misleading garbage in numerous media outlets and environmental group press releases- all of whom get the “endangerment finding” story just flat out wrong.

So, here are the facts and the history on that

Endangerment finding

On November 8, 2012 – before the Jackson resignation was announced – I wrote about the history of the endangerment finding to hold Christie Whitman accountable, see:  Setting the Record Straight on Christie Whitman and Global Warming.

Readers had to hit the links to read the documents, so let me make it easy and put the relevant text in this post. I want to make 4 points, all of which have been ignored in the Orwellian spin on Jackson’s record:

1) Jackson broke no new legal or scientific ground in making the December 7, 2009 endangerment finding that EPA had authority to regulate GHG emissions.

The Clinton/Browner EPA made essentially the same legal determination 11 years earlier on April 10, 1998  (see memo below).

2) Jackson exhibited no Leadership on this issue – legally she was required to issue the finding by the April 2007 US Supreme Court’s Massachusetts decision and the science was long well settled.

[Note: I like this statement from the CAFE rule cited below

Given the non-discretionary duty in Section 202 (a)(1) and the limited flexibility available under Section 202 (a)(2), which this court has held relates only to the motor-vehicle industry,* * * EPA had no statutory basis on which it could ‘ground [any] reasons for further inaction’’ (quoting State of Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 533, 535 (2007).

A petition by an environmental group and legal action by the State of Massachusetts is what brought the issue to the Supreme Court, not any EPA action or Jackson effort.

3) Jackson’s EPA has not implemented the endangerment finding in terms of directly regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing major sources (500 coal and oil fired power plants)- instead she exempted them from regulation.

(Note: EPA didn’t need the endangerment finding – as the NY Times claimed –   “to negotiate strict new emissions standards for cars and light trucks” or to enact mercury, inter-state haze, and particulate rules, all of which could have gone foreward under the Clean Air Act and existing CAFE laws, aka “the Energy Policy and Conservation Act as amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act” (Fed. Reg. Vol. 77, No. 199 @ p. 62624 10/15/12).  And even Obama justified the fuel economy standards based on reducing dependence on foreign oil, consumer savings at the pump,energy security, and “creating an economy built to last”, NOT on slowing global warming. Seems like climate change, carbon emission, and global warming were tabooed terms that could not cross Obama’s lips.)

Instead of regulation, Jackson supported a market based alternative to regulation, known as “cap and trade”. Even after the cap & trade legislation failed in Congress, EPA still did not regulate existing major sources like 500 coal and oil fired power plants.

4) While Jackson was NJ DEP Commissioner (2006-2009), she did nothing to implement or enforce State regulatory authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to DEP rules adopted in 2005 by her NJDEP predecessor, Bradley Campbell.

I will keep this simple and am willing to document all of the above claims at the request of any reader. Supporting evidence is available by reading the links above, but I’d be glad to walk you through the complex regulatory documents.

Here is smoking gun text that documents the 1998 Clinton/Browner EPA finding on the legal issue of whether greenhouse gases are regulated pollutants under the Clean Air Act and the 2003 Bush/Whitman EPA reversal of the Clinton/Browner legal finding.

On August 28, 2003, EPA General Counsel Robert E. Fabricant – who had previously served in Whitman’s Governor’s Office – wrote: (read the full memo)

Relevant to the Agency’s consideration of this petition is an April 10, 1998 memorandum regarding “EPA’s Authority to Regulate Pollutants Emitted by Electric Power Generation Source” from then [EPA] General Counsel Jonathan Z. Cannon to then [EPA] Administrator Carol M. Browner. In that memorandum, Mr. Cannon concludes that CO2 is an “air pollutant”  under the [Clean Air Act] CAA and thus subject to regulation under the CAA to the extent the criteria of any of the Act’s regulatory provisions are met.

I have reviewed Mr. Cannon’s memorandum and the text and history of the CAA in the context of other congressional actions specifically addressing global climate change. Based on my review, I have determined that the CAA does not authorize EPA to regulate for global climate change purposes. Accordingly, CO2 and other GHGs cannot be considered “air pollutants” subject to the CAA’s regulatory provisions for any contribution anthropogenic GHG emissions may make to global climate change. This memorandum explains the reaons for my conclusions and formally withdraws Mr. Cannon’s April 10, 1998 memorandum as no longer representing the views of EPA’s General Counsel.

The US Supreme Court explicitly cited and rejected Mr. Fabricant’s analysis in the 2007 Massachusetts decision.

Christie Whitman injected over a decade of delay in EPA regulation of GHGs and Lisa Jackson returned to the status quo ante set in 1998.

In fact, it could be argued that Jackson has not even returned to the 1998 position – that she actually made things WORSE because she crafted a weak regulatory strategy  based on which EPA has failed to regulate existing sources and adopted seriously flawed interpretations of the CAA to limit EPA’s authority.

End of story.

So please stop giving Jackson credit for leadership; for doing something she was legally required to do; and misrepresenting what she actually did.

Cuomo Promises Action on Climate Change – Christie in Complete Denial

First thing we have to learn is to accept the fact – and I believe it is a fact – that climate change is real. ~~~ NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo State of the State Address – 1/9/13

[Updates below]

I’ve been writing about how NJ Gov. Christie is in deep denial on global warming and ignoring the wake up call from Superstorm Sandy – most recently in Christie’s State of the State address see: Gov. Ignores Wake Up Call on Global Warming, Coastal Vulnerability, and Lax Regulation.

That is something that is even more stunning when compared to NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address, delivered just one day later, on Wednesday.

[we previously noted a similar sharp contrast with President Obama’ Executive Order on Sandy Rebuild – a major story that has had zero coverage in NJ media circles.]

While Christie has spent 3 years in climate denial (and worse); abandoned the northeast states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI); diverted $680 million in Clean Energy Funds to pay for $1.57 BILLION in corporate welfare; ignored science and expert recommendations on shore vulnerability; recklessly promoted and deregulated rebuilding; consolidated political power in a Rebuild Czar; and engaged in demagogic emotional manipulation of Sandy’s victims, here’s what Gov. Cuomo did and said:

Responding to the crisis. We have to do everything we’ve outlined above but we also have the added responsibility of needing to address Hurricane Sandy. And let’s start by learning from what has happened. We empaneled four commissions right after Hurricane Sandy to look at the various aspects of the storm and lessons learned. They did extraordinary work and I’d ask us to give them a round of applause now and recognize the chairmen who worked very hard.

First thing we have to learn is to accept the fact – and I believe it is a fact – that climate change is real. It is denial to say this is – each of these situations is a once in a lifetime. There have been – there is a 100 year flood every two years now. It’s inarguable that the sea is warmer and that there is a changing weather pattern, and the time to act is now. We must lower the regional greenhouse gas emission cap. And let’s make a real difference on climate change by reducing the CO2 cap. We must also increase our use of local renewable power sources. We propose increasing the use of alternative power, distributed generation of electricity, which will reduce the reliance on the large power plants.

We must understand the needs of coastal communities. Because they pose special challenges and many of them are manmade. Let’s take a look at lower Manhattan. This was lower Manhattan in 1609. This is lower Manhattan now, all man-made filled areas. This is lower Manhattan with the Sandy storm surge. You can see that the man-made areas are the vulnerable areas to the storm surge. It’s the way they were filled; it’s the way they were constructed. We propose the Recreate NY-Smart Home Program, where rather than just rebuilding a home today – that we may very well rebuild two years from now, three years from now, four years from now – we build it back once but we build it back once right and we mitigate for the environmental damage and disaster.  I’d rather pay more and put a house on high links today than rebuild that house three times.

While Gov. Christie was working the Kleanex circuit, here are other examples of Leadership, Priorities, and Action Items Cuomo promised:

• We propose a Recreate NY-Home Buyout program.
• We must harden our infrastructure .
• We must harden the New York City Subway system.
• We must harden our airports
• We need to harden our fuel delivery system
• We should have a strategic fuel reserve
• We must really get ready for the next storm and have a PSC that’s going to require the utilities to come up with a real plan.
• We must “put real regulatory enforcement teeth into the Public Service Commission, which has for too long been a toothless tiger”
• The time has come to abolish Long Island Power Authority, period.
• We want to establish a world class emergency response network.
• We want to create a statewide volunteer corps
• We want to establish a statewide not-for-profit network to help coordinate the emergency response
• We want to have a citizen education campaign to prepare citizens

Below is a national story on the Cuomo speech – I am providing the complete text because it is a subscription service and no link is available:

Gov. Cuomo pledges to flood-proof New York’s subway system, raise regional carbon emissions cap

Colin Sullivan, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, January 10, 2013

NEW YORK — Dealing with climate change and protecting New York City from future superstorms featured high on the list of priorities during Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address yesterday in Albany.

Cuomo, a Democrat, said he would work to make coastal areas and New York Harbor more resilient to climate change and storm surges thought to be intensified by the warming planet and rising seas. He also promised quick action to protect New York City’s subway system against flooding during future storms and tidal surges, describing inflatable bladders to block subway entrances.

He said flood-proof subways and bus depots would become a priority, with “vertical roll-down doors, vent closures, inflatable bladders and upsized fixed pumps (with backup power sources) … all options to harden New York’s subway system.” Although New York officials have weighed flood protection measures for years, their plans weren’t implemented, and Superstorm Sandy flooded and blacked out parts of the city’s subway and rail commuter systems in late October.

Cuomo talked at length of improving the state’s renewable energy capacity and lowering its carbon emissions. Citing the devastation brought by Sandy, Cuomo pledged to lower the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s carbon emissions cap. He also promised a $1 billion “Green Bank” to match private dollars with public on energy technology development.

The governor said redundancies must be built into the region’s fuel delivery network to avoid the long lines for gasoline and supply bottlenecks that hit the region after the storm. Cuomo said gas stations from here on out should have on-site backup power to protect New Yorkers from fuel disruptions.

A suggestion of harbor flood barriers

On carbon emissions, Cuomo urged the nine states participating in RGGI — a regional CO2 cap-and-trade program for electric power plants — to lower the current cap of 165 million tons of CO2. Cuomo noted that the target is well above the current emissions level of 91 million tons.

On New York Harbor, Cuomo said a long-term strategy should be developed to combine natural barriers with man-made obstacles to limit high tides and surges when a severe storm hits. He mentioned floodgates in his remarks but stopped short of backing specific proposals for the harbor, many of which would likely cost tens of billions of dollars to construct.

As he has before, Cuomo took a hard-line stance on so-called climate skeptics, saying they were living in a state all their own — “a state of denial.”

“Climate change is real,” he said, referring to Superstorm Sandy last year and Hurricane Irene the year before. “It is denial to say that each of these situations is once in a lifetime.”

Beyond that, Cuomo said he would abolish the Long Island Power Authority and hoped to privatize power generation and delivery on Long Island. Cuomo and others were downright hostile to LIPA in the wake of the storm last year as the power remained off through much of the island, and Cuomo said he would bring in another entity under stricter Public Service Commission regulation.

[Update #1: 1/12/13 – this makes the Christie denial and malfeasance criminal – it is finally sinking in, even at the NY Times:

Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide

Ronald Reagan’s Coastal Policy A Test For Gov. Christie

[Update below]

Governor Christie calls himself a conservative Republican.

He often emulates and harkens back to the words of President Reagan.

So, as a test of the Governor’s avowed conservative principles, I thought I’d lay out a federal legislative initiative championed by President Reagan that reflects conservative principles that could guide and be part of the Sandy Rebuild effort.

Conservative principles are relevant, because it sure looks like the Democratically controlled NJ Legislature is taking a pass and allowing the Governor and his rebuild Czar to control the game.

Conservative principles also could influence Congress, and suggest ways to impose strings and apply existing federal programs to the Sandy rebuild.

What I am suggesting is that conditions in the federal bailout package could require additional designations of NJ barrier islands and lands under the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (see map for currently designated NJ lands)

The real conservative principles I am talking about are:

• reliance on markets; 
• preference for small government solutions; 
• avoid incurring taxpayer obligations; 
• reduce wasteful federal spending; 
• state government control, not top down federal mandates; 
• personal responsibility

So, let’s hear how that would work, from the mouth of President Reagan: