Christie DEP Spinning Out of Control on Why Drinking Water Quality Institute Was Shut Down

DEP Commissioner Martin Pulled the Plug, Based on Dupont and Chemical Industry Opposition

DEP Allowed To Use “Defuse” and “Spin” Tactics

Star Ledger story derails critical Associated Press expose

It’s time to set the record straight on the Drinking Water Quality Institute (DWQI).

I’ve written about all this multiple times, so now that the story has finally broken in the press, I am compelled to set the record straight.

Simply put, Ryan Hutchins’ Star Ledger story today is a muddled piece of he said/she said crap. Hutchins got the story badly wrong.

Worse, after giving the DEP press office a pass to flat out lie, Hutchins took it upon himself to inject this innuendo, and attack the “narrative” allegedly presented to him by some un-named “lobbyist ” with this editorial gem:

“Toward the end of the Corzine period, I grew tired because those sort of people stopped paying attention to it,” Robson said, contradicting a narrative presented by some lobbyists who had suggested the professor resigned over tensions with Christie’s team. “It’s nothing to do with the Republican Party. It has nothing to do with the new DEP commissioner.”

It is rare for a reporter to note any “contradiction” between the spin of his sources, so Hutchins is really injecting his own assessment of credibility and therefore obligated to expand on that assessment and at least identify the discredited “lobbyist” whose narrative he rejected.

Hutchins didn’t call us for a comment, but here is what we wrote on Chairman Robson’s resignation, way back on May 5, 2010:

In February 2010, the longtime Chair of the DWQI, Dr. Mark Robson of Rutgers University, resigned when it became clear that the DEP under outgoing Gov. Corzine would not act on the DWQI’s March 2009 recommendations. His successor will presumably be announced at the upcoming DWQI meeting this Friday, May 7. That meeting, the first under Christie, may also reveal the future of the DWQI itself. ~~~ PEER: Tighter NJ Drinking Water Standards In Oblivion (May 5, 2010)

So, with that upfront clarification in mind, here we go.

• Journalistic backstory

At the outset, keep this quote in mind from the recent NJ Spotlight killer analysis: What’s wrong with Christie’s government?. It precisely describes the role DEP press spokesman Larry Ragonese – a former Star Ledger reporter who knows how the media works and obviously still has relationships there – is being allowed to play:

“As a division director, I could talk to reporters whenever I wanted, and if something happened, I had relationships I could call upon to defuse the story,” recalled one former state official who served under three governors. “But Christie’s cabinet isn’t allowed to talk the press, so they don’t have any ability to spin stories. They just go into a foxhole and wait for the bombardment to end.”

With that quote about how to “defuse” or “spin” bad news or critical stories, first, let’s take a step back to Hutchins’ story last week on March 19, where he thinks he “broke” the story of the resumption of meetings by the Drinking Water Quality Institute, see: Water quality board to meet for first time in four years.

Check out the free pass Hutchins gave to Larry Ragonese of DEP to “defuse” and “spin” the reason for the 4 year hiatus at the DWQI:

The board has not held a meeting since early 2010, around the same time its chairman resigned.

“The board stopped meeting because we ended up with less members than we needed,” Ragonese said, adding that the administration was preparing new appointments when it was delayed by Hurricane Sandy.

The “Institute” (not the “board”) last met on September 10, 2010, not “early 2010”, so Hutchins got his chronology wrong. (and that’s over 2 years before Sandy struck)

The DWQI did not lack a quorum, so the DEP spin “we ended up with less members than we needed” is an obvious lie that Hutchins allowed to go unexamined.

Hutchins’ false chronology also tied what he mistakenly believed was the last DWQI meeting to the resignation of former Chairman Robson, thereby falsely implying some relationship, e.g. the reason that the DWQI stopped meeting involved the resignation. That is not an inadvertent or minor mistake. Hutchins was told this by a source, most certainly DEP spinmeister Larry Ragonese.

The fact that Hutchins got that chronology badly wrong is not an accident, because the entire reason the DWQI was ordered by DEP Commissioner Martin to stop meeting was a result of the what went on at the September 2010 meeting, not the February 2010 meeting when Robson resigned.

Hutchins based his initial 3/19/14 story on Gov. Christie’s appointments of DWQI members. By writing that story based on the “news hook” of Gov. Christie’s 3 appointments to the DWQI, Ryan took the bait and he didn’t do any real reporting.

The bait Hutchins took was an effort to derail a real piece of investigative journalism by Geoff Mulivihill of the Associated Press.

DEP’s Ragonese knew that AP’s Mulvihill was working on a DWQI story – and from the OPRA’s Mulvihill filed and the questions he was asking, it was obviously going to be an explosive and critical story.

So, Larry Ragonese of DEP “defused” the AP Mulvihill story and used Hutchins as his chump.

In fact, I strongly suspect that it was Mulvihill’s investigative work that prompted the Gov.’s announcement of his 3 new DWQI appointments.

•  Who Shut The DWQI Down and Why?

I’ve told this story multiple times, so let’s look elswhere.

According to Delaware Riverkeeper’s July 24, 2013 memo (Riverkeeper has done great work on the DWQI, PFOA, and PFNA):

But the shut down of the DWQI was not at all “inexplicable” – nor was the DEP’s efforts to cover up the  story by denying OPRA requests.

Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill did some real investigative work on those questions – including filing his own OPRA requests.

Here is what AP’s Mulvihill found, in a story that the Star Ledger’s Hutchins forced AP to publish prematurely (curiously, an important AP story not picked up by NJ media):

The Drinking Water Quality Institute, formed under a 1983 law, has long been watched closely by industry and environmental groups.

Its last meeting was in September 2010, when a subcommittee proposed that limits be considered on how much perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA — a chemical used to make everything from Teflon to waterproof clothing — should be permitted in the water supply.

The request upset the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, a group that represents manufacturers that use chemicals. The month after the proposal, the council complained to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The Associated Press recently obtained dozens of communications between the industry group and the DEP concerning drinking water standards and the institute. The correspondence showed that the Chemistry Council repeatedly sought and received meetings with officials to discuss the institute’s structure. The AP also requested similar communications between the DEP and environmental leaders, but the state said there were no similar letters from environmentalists.

BINGO!

How can a scandal like that not be reported by NJ media?

So let’s recap what happened, according to the AP story:

1) The DWQI last met on September 10, 2010;

2) at that meeting, there were efforts to regulate PFOA, a Dupont manufactured chemical;

3) the NJ Chemistry Council objected to that, intervened behind the scenes, attacked the DWQI, and was granted private meetings with DEP.

My sources told me a very similar story to that reported by AP. I was told:

1) DEP Commissioner Martin was blindsided and angered by a September 16, 2010 NJN TV news report by Ed Rogers on the September 2010 meeting, in which I was interviewed and praised the action taken that day (sorry, had to link to my update because the original NJ TV link was dead);

I previously, in April 2010, caught and called out Commissioner Martin for a lie on killing the perchlorate drinking water standard, a claim validated by a killer 4/25/10 Bergen Record story and an April 30, 2010 followup highly critical editorial “Cleaner Water”, so I was on Martin’s shit list for sure:

Cleaner water 

… Martin’s new opinion came about after he was embarrassed publicly. The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility released e-mails sent to Martin from the EPA that made clear that even if the agency imposed a limit, 6 1/2 years could elapse before the rule was in place, Staff Writer James O’Neill reported. Martin would have been playing Russian roulette with the public’s health.

Perchlorate is linked to thyroid dysfunction. In fetuses and infants (through formula or breast milk), high levels of perchlorate can cause developmental delays and learning disabilities. No parent would ever choose to give perchlorate-laced juice to a baby, and no pregnant woman would ever drink a caffeine-free beverage if she knew it included a rocket-fuel additive.

The previous commissioner had proposed a sensible perchlorate limit of 5 parts per billion, far below a possible federal limit. The state limit would leave it in a good position if later scientists find that even 15 parts per billion is too high.

Martin has not said what the perchlorate limit will be. We know what it should be: 5 parts per billion.

Ouch! (BTW, DEP never adopted the perchlorate MCL, no did EPA).

2) Shortly thereafter, Commissioner Martin directed DEP staff to the DWQI to stop meeting;

3) Commissioner Martin also retaliated against DEP professional staff that were involved in the September 2010 meeting;

4) In addition to the NJ Chemistry Council, the Dupont Corporation was involved in attacking the science of DEP professionals and the credibility of the DWQI.

I’ve written about all this multiple times, so now that the story has finally broken, I am compelled to set the record straight.

The almost 4 year shut down had nothing at all to do with a lack of a full set of DWQI members or with the resignation of former Chairman Robson.

The DWQI was shut down because they were in the process of recommending regulatory standards that were strongly opposed by Dupont, the NJ Chemistry Council, and other corporate interests (there was another key standard under development for toxic heavy metal chromium found at over 100 NJ toxic sites. That too was aggressively opposed by powerful corporate interests.)

The anti-regulatory and pro-business Christie DEP agreed with that industry attack, and sacrificed public health to industry profits.

It’s as simple as that – and there is a huge paper trail to prove it – had only intrepid Star Ledger reporter Mr. Hutchins filed an OPRA, cracked a file and read the record – instead of being spun by Ragonese.