WolfeNotes.com

Going the way of the update of the Water Supply Master Plan

We will combine three issues today that share common themes, with quick commentary based on news reports.

Christie Seeks To Kill Obama EPA Climate rules

Confirming my post yesterday, both DEP Commissioner Martin and BPU President Mroz revealed their corporate stripes in a political assault on the Obama EPA’s “Clean Energy Plan”. Issued just hours before their assault, my timing was impeccable!

Playing to the Republican primary base, Christie’s DEP Commissioner Martin again compromised the integrity of DEP by politically attacking the Obama EPA climate plan.

The timing of Martin’s letter to EPA, the red meat rhetoric used in the letter, and the high profile press release are strong evidence that the DEP is playing partisan politics to support Governor Christie’s presidential campaign ambitions.

Beyond any doubt, Martin’s words are campaign talking points – ideological red meat for the right:

… Obama administration inappropriately reaching far beyond its legal authority to implement more onerous and burdensome regulations on businesses and state governments alike.

Yet the media uncritically transcribes them without explaining that they reflect a radical right wing view of the historic consensus on federalism under the Constitution and the Clean Air Act and that they flat out contradict the US Supreme Court’s “Massachusetts” decision.

The Christie spin about “burdensome regulations” flat out contradicts the cost-benefit analysis of the EPA proposal, which found huge positive net economic benefits.

BTW, NJ DEP regulated greenhouse gases as “air contaminants” (i.e. pollutants) under NJ’s Air Pollution Control Act way back in 2005, a context that should be part of this story.

Bob Martin’s letter will live in infamy – again on the wrong side of the science and law, he follows Christie Whitman’s legal advisor Bob Fabricant’s infamous legal memo that set back EPA regulation of greenhouse gases by over a decade.

I’ve written about that but very few people know this inside story and the press, by failing to cover it, has given Christie Whitman a pass.

In part as a result of that decade of delay, we very likely have passed irreversible tipping points to runaway climate chaos.

Asset Management: Gone Down The Same Black Hole as The Water Supply Plan Update

Dan Van Abs has a good piece on Asset Management in today’s NJ Spotlight, read the whole thing:

• REQUIRE WATER UTILITIES TO SPEND MORE NOW SO THEY WILL COST LESS LATER

But Van Abs left critical information out of his analysis, as I wrote about last week.

DEP and the NJ Environmental Infrastructure Trust rolled out their “Asset Management” initiative years ago. They have touted the effort rhetorically in press releases and legislative testimony, but done very little in implementation.

DEP sent signals that they were planning to implement asset management via exactly the regulatory mandates Mr. Van Abs suggests (with which I agree), but DEP got strong pushback from the private water companies and the public authorities.

As a result, DEP blinked and did the traditional thing: delayed doing anything.

A strategy recommendation from DEP staff is now on DEP Commissioner Martin’s desk.

But based on the DEP staff briefing to the Water Supply Advisory Council last week (a meeting Mr. Van Abs attended) and the industry’s strong opposition to a DEP regulatory approach – coupled with this administration’s animus to regulation, which is particularly rabid with the Gov. on the campaign trail – the initiative is as good as dead – down the same black hole that swallowed the Water Supply Plan Update.

Pollution Worsens Drought Threats to North Jersey Water Supplies

Jim O’Neill at the Bergen Record gets the Passaic basin drought – pollution story wrong again.

He not only commits an error of omission by avoiding the critical issues, but states as a fact that passing flows were set to protect aquatic life, while they in fact were also set to protect public health from pollution in the river from sewage treatment plants.

Here are the two stories he ignores –

• Passaic River Running like An Open Sewer (Again)
• DEP Water Supply Plan Still Buried In Gov. Christie’s Office

Those interested in the history and basis for DEP passing flows, see this excellent technical paper by the NJ Geological Survey:

• History of Passing Flows in New Jersey, with Contemporary and Future Applications

I will be writing about the implications of this paper soon.

Government oversight has become Corporations for the Corporations

Welcome to the Brave New World of Deregulation

 Christie’s energy & environmental agencies headed by former energy industry lobbyists

Award winning journalist David Cay Johnston has another outstanding story today on how energy markets are gamed, see:

• New York’s electricity market is a scam

Read the whole thing, but below I’ll excerpt his closing paragraphs, because they highlight criticism I and several others recently made at the Christie Energy Master Plan public hearings. (see also: The Game Is Rigged)

We blasted the fact that the Gov. Christie appointed President of the NJ Board of Public Utilities, Richard Mroz, is a former energy industry lawyer and lobbyist, including a founder of the NJ Energy Coalition. 

BPU President Richard Mroz

Accordingly, he has gross conflicts of interest in reviewing and voting to approve billions of dollars of energy industry revenues for his cronies and the corporations he previously represented as a lawyer or lobbyist.

Most recently, the NJ Energy Coalition testified at the BPU Energy Master Plan hearings Mroz presided over and played a high profile role in supporting the controversial $500 million South Jersey Gas Pinelands pipeline and BL England repowering projects that Mroz voted in favor of.

Mroz also has a political revolving door past, as a player in the Whitman Administration, the disaster crew who deregulated the energy industry, a fiasco and billion dollar ripoff that keeps on ripping.

Similarly, Gov. Christie’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) – the agency that works closely with Mroz’s BPU to rubber stamp all the lax air and water permits for those energy industry facilities – is a former energy industry consultant, with absolutely zero environmental training or experience.

(*Despite his lack of experience and expertise – and without legislative authorization and contrary to 40 years of environmental law and agency practice – Martin unilaterally “transformed” DEP’s “mission critical role” to include “support of economic development”. He then, like a Mafia debt collector (“Nice shop you have here, it’d be a shame if it burned down“), openly threatened DEP professionals to get in line with his agenda via his “burning platform” briefing. Redolent of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Martin then ordered all DEP staff to attend “customer service” training: of course, the customers being business,  industry and developers seeking DEP permits, not the public seeking DEP protections. Unfortunately, DEP professionals fell in line. Amazingly, this arrogant abuse of power has been totally ignored by media and Legislative oversight bodies.)

DEP Commissioner Robert Martin