A Fracked Gas Pipeline Thru The Pinelands To a Power Plant On Great Egg Bay is Not Sustainable or Leadership

“Sustainable NJ” Called Out for Taking Corporate Money In Return For Providing  “Leadership” Platform for South Jersey Gas  Company

Time To Get Corporate Money Out of NJ Environmental Groups

Environmental activists protest gas pipeline at Stockton forum

By JOEL LANDAU, Staff Writer | Posted 1 hour ago

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP — The protests over a controversial gas pipeline proposal spread to an environmental forum Monday at Richard Stockton College.

State environmental activists complained that an environmental group accepted money from South Jersey Gas — which is proposing building a pipeline through a section of the Pinelands — and was allowed to be a sponsor of a forum to promote energy sustainability among local municipalities. The activists said the group allowed the utility “green cover.” […]

Bill Wolfe, director of NJ PEER, likened the relationship with the American Cancer Society presenting a conference sponsored by tobacco companies.

“People would say, ‘Come on. We can see right through this,’” he said.   ~~~ Press of Atlantic City 10/28/13

Let’s keep this short and simple.

Most progressive voices agree that we need to get corporate money out of politics. Well, we need to get it out of self proclaimed environmental groups too.

It is simply wrong for a group called “Sustainable NJ” to take money from South Jersey Gas Company (SJG) in return for providing them a “Leadership” platform, at precisely the time when the hugely controversial $100 million SJG pipeline is pending review by the Pinelands Commission.

The pipeline, whose route violates the forest protection standards of the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan,  is designed to carry 20 billion cubic feet per year of fracked gas to repower the $400 million BL England plant at Beesley’s Point on Great Egg Bay (the mouth of the Great Egg Wild And Scenic River). That plant lacks cooling towers and slaughters billions of aquatic organisms.

The BL England plant would emit over 1.2 million tons of CO2 – not counting all the methane gas emissions from the pipeline and fracking wells. Methane is at least 23 time more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

So, a group of activists from NJ’s largest environmental organizations distributed leaflets today at an event sponsored by Sustainable NJ.

That event, at Stockton State College, featured Jeff DuBois, President, South Jersey Gas, as a “Sustainable Leader”.

The objective of the leafletting was to raise awareness of the SJG pipeline and to call out Sustainable NJ – in front of their own members – for taking SJG money in return for providing them green cover at a critical juncture in the review of the SJG pipeline.

After speaking with several SNJ members entering the event today, I’m fairly certain that few SNJ “Green Team” members are aware of the proposed SJG Pinelands pipeline or the fact that SJG is funding SNJ in exchange for the “leadership” platform – an outrageous quid pro quo.

Just think for a moment how outrageous the SJG – SNJ relationship is.

It is actually worse than the American Cancer Society taking tobacco industry money to provide a platform to praise the tobacco industry as “leaders” in public health.

A project with just ONE of these environmental harms would be deemed “unsustainable” – the SJG has them ALL, so let’s list them:

• creation of huge new greenhouse gas emission
• diversion of $500 million in capital investment to fossil infrastructure than undermines the economics of renewable energy
• violation of the forest protection standards of the Pinelands National Reserve, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve
• distribution and expansion of markets for 20 billion cubic feet per year of fracked gas
• repowering a $400 million power plant that fails to include  cooling towers, located on the Bay of a Wild and Scenic River.

Sustainable NJ took the SJG money in a quid pro quo deal to promote the corporate sponsor of this disastrous pipeline project as a  “Sustainable leader”.

It is actually difficult to imagine a more Orwellian situation – maybe a nuke plant in the Grand Canyon to promote Ecotourism by the National Parks Service ?

Shame on them.

I hope  their members force the leadership of that organization to either resign or change policy.