WolfeNotes.com

Perhaps you don’t know about any of this because Big Pharma is one of the most economically and politically powerful corporate interests in NJ

Facilities involved in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products are an under-investigated source of pharmaceuticals to the environment. ~~~ USGS study

Bear with me as I begin with a hypothetical to create a journalistic analogy, before I get to the USGS study.

Could you imagine sensational news coverage of a United States Geological Survey (USGS) study that found high numbers of dead canaries in Appalachian coal mines, but failed to report on or investigate the health risk to miners – other than from eating canaries – the adequacy of governmental regulatory oversight, and the compliance history of the coal mining industry??

Would that reporting pass the straight face test?

Well that’s just what the Bergen Record did in recent stories on a USGS study that documented dual sexed fish in the Wallkill River and Great Swamp.

Those “alarms” raised by the study sure were rapidly quelled.

Instead of doing followup reporting on the implications of that USGS study, the Record quickly moved on and found a shiny new and politically safe object to entertain readers: the Claude Rains act in a series of stories (3 so far) regarding EPA’s failure to disclose – for 3 months – detected concentrations of the chemical 1, 4-dioxane in groundwater at the Ringwood Ford Superfund site.

Do Record reporters really not know that government witholding of information from the public to protect corporate polluters & downplay risks is standard operating procedure? It has even been reduced to writing in official policy, see: NEW JERSEY ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY ISSUES GAG ORDER TO STAFF

Note how even in one of the most egregious cases – where scores of young children were poisoned by the neurotoxin mercury – the DEP insisted – an even went on record and told the NY Times – that they did nothing wrong, see: Memo Shows Agency Knew of Danger in Child Care Building

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection knew in 1994 that a building that later housed a Gloucester County day care center was so dangerous that state inspectors were instructed to use respirators when entering the building, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times yesterday.

But the site remained contaminated, and as far as the department knew, unoccupied, until inspectors visited it in April and found that Kiddie Kollege, a day care center serving children as young as 8 months old, was operating in the building. Yet the center, which is in Franklin Township, was allowed to remain open for more than three months, until state environmental investigators determined in late July that the site was still contaminated. …

The [DEP] internal memo, dated Oct. 12, 1994, said “Level C at a minimum is required for entry into the building,” meaning respirators were required, said Bill Wolfe, a former department employee who is the director of New Jersey Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group that provided a copy of the memo.

Mr. Wolfe said that the department should have at least notified the center’s operators about the building’s potential dangers.

“Why didn’t somebody have the common sense to pick up the phone and call the operator of the facility and say, ‘Look, we have a reasonable concern?’ ” he asked. “That’s part of the culture of the program that needs to be reformed.”

Irene Kropp, the assistant commissioner for site remediation and waste management, replied, “We did not internally know of any risks at that time, so we didn’t have any discussion about notifying the parents.”

Now DEP Asst. Commissioner Kropp was not fired for those outrageous remarks – no, she was promoted and was Christie DEP Commissioner Bob Martin’s Deputy Commissioner and enforcer of his DEP “cultural change”, “transformation” and deregulatory initiatives. Kropp retired recently amidst ethics complaints growing out of the Fenimore landfill scandal.

Witholding information is the rule, not the exception, see: DEP Protecting Polluters, Not People

This lack of skepticism and naiveté by Record reporters is extremely revealing, and it explains why they so often take EPA & DEP press releases and statements at face value, as if government did not intentionally hide and spin information to downplay risks, protect polluters, and spin to cover their own asses.

The Record denounced EPA for a 3 month delay in disclosing a chemical that no one in Ringwood is drinking or being exposed to from the groundwater, but is present in many consumer products at levels hundreds of times higher than EPA found in Ringwood groundwater, see: “How might I be exposed” according to federal ATSDR:

You can be exposed to 1,4-dioxane in tap water.

Current levels of 1,4-dioxane in water are not known. In the 1970s, the level of 1,4-dioxane in drinking water was 1 microgram per liter of water (1 µg/L).

Your skin may come into contact with 1,4-dioxane when you use cosmetics, detergents, and shampoos containing 1,4-dioxane.

During 1992-1997, the average concentration of 1,4-dioxane in some cosmetic products reportedly ranged from 14 to 79 mg/kg. In a more recent survey reported by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, the levels of 1,4-dioxane in cosmetic products were found to be lower (1.5-12 ppm in baby and children’s products and 2-23 ppm in adult products) than in the survey done by the FDA in the 1990s.

The Record did a followup on this non-story, giving water officials and corporate polluters a pass and opportunity to look good – meanwhile, the Wanaque reservoir they are sampling for 1,4-dioxane receives millions of gallons of polluted water pumped from the Passaic River! Why not sample for EDC’s and pharmaceuticals in Passaic & reservoir?

Meanwhile, the Record ignored the fact that Dupont, EPA and DEP withheld knowledge of direct exposure to cancer causing chemicals from vapor intrusion by 450 families in their own homes for almost 8 YEARS (see the timeline of who knew what when in: The Great Dupont Train-RCRA.

Because Pompton Lakes homeowners lacked that knowledge of their exposure, they were unable to take actions to prevent exposure and they settled a lawsuit with Dupont and waived their ability to sue Dupont for vapor intrusion harms to their health and property values (get all the disgusting details in: F is for Fraud.)

In another glaring example of government sitting on or downplaying critical data, this April 2010 DEP Research paper reports on development of regulations to require treatment of over 500 unregulated chemicals DEP found in NJ water supplies – that controversial DEP paper has NEVER been reported on (and note how the links to the citations in that DEP paper are dead).

I’ve written about this set of issues so many times in failed attempts to get Record reporters to cover the big story literally right under their noses – the Record’s office sits off Rt. 80 high on a hill right above the Passaic River – that I went searching for an example I’ve not mentioned before.

So let me briefly lay out what you should be reading in NJ newspapers in followup stories on the USGS dual sexed fish study.

1. A simple Google of prior USGS research on the chemicals they call “emergent contaminants” reveals a large body of research that documents the problem, conducted over a period of many years. That work is hidden in plain sight.

The most recent USGS Wallkill & Great Swamp findings are NOT new and the sources of the problem are known and the public health risks are of concern, particularly in rivers that receive wastewater discharge that are used for drinking water supply. Rivers like the Passaic, which receive the water from the toilets flushed at Bergen Record HQ.

2. Similarly, this US EPA website provides a perfect example of how regulators downplay the problem to protect corporate polluters. Note how EPA limits the discussion to effects on aquatic life, and says nothing about public health risk and impacts. That’s the same approach as a “study the canaries, not the coal miners and never mind regulating the mining industry” I joked about in my earlier hypothetical case.

Th EPA webpage was so evasive, it could have been written by Big Pharma.

3. A little more investigation of the issue would reveal a 20 year history of repeated EPA regulatory inaction, a capitulation to Big Pharma.

Perhaps you don’t know any of this because Big Pharma is one of the most economically and politically powerful corporate interests in NJ.

4. But let me drill a little deeper to illustrate how pervasive the government fear and protection of the Big Pharma corporate polluters really is.

One USGS study in particular caught my eye – and it was conducted by a team that included a scientists from the USGS West Trenton office:

• Manufacturing Facilities Release Pharmaceuticals to the Environment

First of all, the title leaves out a critical fact that the study focused on PHARMACEUTICAL manufacturing facilities. Was USGS afraid to say that?

But it gets much worse. The study found:

In a 2004-2009 study, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists found that pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities can be a significant source of pharmaceuticals to the environment. Effluents from two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that receive discharge from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities (PMFs) had 10 to 1000 times higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals than effluents from 24 WWTPs across the nation that do not receive PMF discharge. The effluents from these two WWTPs are discharged to streams where the measured pharmaceuticals were traced downstream, and as far as 30 kilometers from one plant’s outfall. …

… Maximum pharmaceutical concentrations in effluent samples from the 24 WWTPs that do not receive discharge from PMFs rarely (about 1 percent) exceeded one part per billion (ppb). By contrast, maximum concentrations in effluents from the two WWTPs receiving PMF discharge were as high as 3,800 ppb of metaxalone (a muscle relaxant), 1,700 ppb of oxycodone (an opioid prescribed for pain relief), greater than 400ppb of methadone (an opioid prescribed for pain relief and drug withdrawal), 160 ppb of butalbital (a barbituate), and greater than 40 ppb of both phendimetrazine (a stimulant prescribed for obesity) and carisoprodol (a muscle relaxant).

Shoot, we may soon need prescriptions to swim in the river! Jeff Tittel’s famous one liner “Viagra Falls” to describe the Passaic is no joke.

So I hit the link to read the full paper.

Because the USGS conducted a national study and because NJ is a big pharmaceutical state, I wanted to see if any NJ rivers, sewage treatment plants, and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities were included in the study.

There were none in NJ, but there were several in New York state.

I was curious to find out exactly who these corporate polluters were and where these facilities were located and – after several links and database searches – I managed to find the supporting data.

I’ll be damned – the supporting data did not disclose the names of the pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, the sewage treatment plants, or the stream where these high levels of drugs were found.

The people who live near those streams, whose drinking water wells may draw from those streams, whose children and pets play in those streams, and those who fish in those streams have a right to know this information.

Those that work on developing legislative and regulatory reforms to reduce the risks of these chemicals deserve to know this information to hold the pharmaceutical industry and wastewater treatment plants accountable.

This information is public and should not be masked by USGS scientists. That kind of “supporting information” only protects corporate polluters.

I knew that government protected polluters in most regulatory and risk assessment work, but now they are even protecting the corporate polluters in scientific investigations.

That is just wrong.

Where are our intrepid journalists – those brave guys currently hammering EPA on Ringwood – in writing these stories?

[End Note: The Map above is from this USGS study, showing widespread impacts:

• Prevalent Glucocorticoid and Androgen Activity in US Water Sources

See USGS webpage:

• Biological Activity of Steroid Hormones in U.S. Streams

 

Protesters March On Chesterfield Pipeline Compressor Station Site

“When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices” ~~~ Proverbs 11:10

I am not one for leading with Biblical injunction, but I feel compelled to begin with Pastor Dan Sparling’s message to scores of NJ Natural Gas pipeline protesters today:

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices ..

Pastor Sparling spoke passionately about how the NJ Natural Gas Pinelands pipeline and compressor station – to be built less than 1/2 mile away from his Church and daycare facility – would undermine his stewardship mission and duty to protect the families and children of his congregation.

He noted that no one in the City was rejoicing about the pipeline and called the protesters righteous.

I thanked him afterwards for his remarks and he condemned the pipeline project in no uncertain terms, calling it “evil”.

Amen Bro. That is a refreshing expression of the kind of visible moral leadership that has been so lacking in liberal institutions, particularly the church.

The protest was largely self organized by local residents in Bordentown, Chesterfield and North Hanover – it was an old school event with cookies & hot chocolate and moms with strollers and kids and dogs.

Organizations – including the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, Sierra Club and Food and Water Watch – played minor supporting roles.

Protesters marched from the church east on Rt. 528 to the compressor station site in Chesterfield.

If nothing else, the scores of folks who marched today show that the anti-pipeline, anti-fracking & climate movement is mainstream and has a momentum of its own.

The greedy corporate energy moguls, corrupt politicians and their captured government bureaucrats in places like BPU, DEP and FERC must be sweating bullets, as authentic grassroots movement momentum builds.

These are not your radicals. When these folks feel compelled to hit the streets in protest, the Revolution is not far off.

Here’s some scenes:

Christie’s Monetization Schemes Flow From Liberty State Park to Sparta Mountain

Legislators must step up and stop this madness, just like they did at Liberty State Park

Revenue generation should be maximized through the use of concessions, camping and park rentals and forest management. ~~~ Christie DEP Transition Report

[With important end note]

(this is part nine of our look at the DEP’s proposed Sparta Mountain “Forest Stewardship Plan” which would significantly expand logging on the mountain. Here are links to read part one and part two and part three and part four and five and six and seven and eight).

Which is the more insane proposal: commercial development in iconic Liberty State Park or commercial logging of Green Acres acquired forests in the Highlands Preservation Area?

Bear with me as I rehash the Christie DEP’s Liberty State Park fiasco and then explain how it is very similar to what is now going on with the highly controversial DEP’s Sparta Mountain logging plan.

Comparison of the two disasters will show that they share the same roots:

1) a Christie policy to monetize, commercialize, and privatize State lands and natural resources to promote economic development and generate revenues to run State government operations;

2) outsourcing and secret planning by private groups to provide political cover for deeply unpopular plans;

3) public outrage.

The Liberty State Park Disaster – a bad idea, developed in secret

Friends of Liberty State Park – and supporters of NJ’s State Parks across the State – recently were outraged upon learning that the DEP planned to commercialize and privatize Liberty State Park.

DEP Commissioner Bob Martin and his politically installed parks management hacks knew that such a move would be controversial and would never gain public support.

So, to evade that controversy and public accountability,  they provided a $120,000 grant to the private planning group NJ Future to secretly develop the LSP plan and provide a veneer of legitimacy and political cover for it.

That secrecy and betrayal by NJ Future further outraged the public and Democratic legislators:

• Senators want ‘secret’ DEP report, plan hearing on Liberty State Park’s future

Public outrage over NJ Future’s secret planning forced NJ Future to try to do damage control and walk it back. Check out this NJF planning methodology:

Then, NJ Future ducked a legislative oversight hearing and had to make excuses for it.

But none of that worked, and as the controversy continued to rage, ultimately NJ Future was forced to publicly apologize and promise to never do it again: (NJ.Com Op-Ed)

While the content of the report may or may not create controversy, the secrecy which shrouds its issuance is very controversial and suggests there is a hidden agenda.  Clearly what has occurred is not what NJF expected.  According to an interview with Peter Kasabach, they had hoped that the report would get a “full vetting” and “based on being placed in this situation, they [NJF] would not do something like this again.”  

Since then, Legislators have been joined by leading candidates for the next Governor and have pledged to block Christie’s plan, see:

• Liberty State Park advocates to Christie: Don’t touch the ‘people’s park’

How and why did this happen? 

As I’ve written many times (see this and this), the news media finally reported that the source of the problem is Gov. Christie’s “Sustainable Funding Strategy” for State Parks, which seeks to generate revenues from State parks via commercialization and privatization (NJ.com story reported):

The park currently has two restaurants and a marina, but as part of Gov. Chris Christie’s “sustainable parks” initiative, the state is exploring ways to make Liberty State Park profitable. Reports have said the park operates with an annual loss of $500,000.

OK – now that we understand the dynamics and Christie policy that led to the Liberty State Park disaster, lets now turn to the Sparta Mountain logging scheme.

Original Sin Led To Logging: Christie DEP Transition Report written by special interests

We start at the beginning, which – similar to how the LSP disaster originated in a flawed policy –  was Gov. Christie’s DEP Transition Report.

That Report made a series of radical recommendations, among other things regarding economic development of natural resources and management of State lands.

The key player was a Transition team member Anthony Mauro, who represents a group of economic interests and right wing ideologues that range from farmers, fishermen, hunters and “mudders” (ORV) to commercial logging, professional foresters, gun manufactures, recreational vehicle industry, and the National Rifle Association. They call themselves the “NJ Outdoor Alliance”.

Accordingly, the special interests wrote recommendations designed to promote their economic interests in public lands and rollback DEP regulatory protections of natural resources, and provide revenue, all under the guise of “Stewardship”. Here it is, in their own words: (*lengthy excerpt, because DEP is sure to kill the link now that I posted it)

5) Natural Resource Stewardship: Establish a comprehensive and strategic approach toward public lands management, forest stewardship and management of Threatened and Endangered species habitat.

5. Natural Resource Stewardship:

Issue: The State’s efforts toward proper management and conservation of natural resources have been lacking. As mentioned earlier, the DEP has increased its own responsibilities in other areas, and the Legislature has placed new, unfunded mandates that do not pertain to the management of natural resources, which has ultimately forced the Department to neglect this area. Furthermore, shortsighted policies have limited the effectiveness of the DEP to protect species habitat, actively manage forests and efficiently preserve land.

Recommendation: The DEP needs a renewed focus on natural resource management and conservation. The DEP must research the feasibility of a self-sustaining Department of Natural Resources or other solutions that raise this issue area to the same level of importance as other areas overseen by the Department. Furthermore, the DEP must practice stewardship of forests and threatened and endangered species habitat. Finally, the DEP must take steps to more efficiently preserve land and be a better partner with agriculture.

The Department should:

• Create a task force of biologists, legislators, foresters, environmentalists, DEP personnel, Department of Agriculture personnel, business persons and representatives from the United States Fish and Wildlife Management Assistance Team to perform a feasibility study for creating a revenue oriented, self sustaining Department of Natural Resource Conservation or other potential solutions to better focus the State’s efforts on natural resource conservation.
• Transfer all real estate closures (Green Acres, DOT Rights of Way, farmland preservation, etc.) to the Treasury Department’s Division of Property Management and Construction to streamline the closing process, create consistency and eliminate costly and unnecessary delays.
• Establish a comprehensive public lands management strategy that includes forest stewardship and management of species habitat.
• There needs to be a recognition that agriculture, like every other business in New Jersey, has been overregulated and burdened by DEP rules. Farmers should be recognized as stewards to the land and treated as partners in land preservation not potential polluters.
• Revenue generation should be maximized through the use of concessions, camping and park rentals and forest management.

These economic oriented recommendations included an attack on DEP’s “Landscape Project”

The Landscape Project is a pro-active, ecosystem-level approach for the long-term protection of imperiled species and their important habitats in New Jersey. The N.J. Division of Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP) began the project in 1994. Its goal: to protect New Jersey’s biological diversity by maintaining and enhancing imperiled wildlife populations within healthy, functioning ecosystems. (more)

The objective of Mr. Mauro and his corporate bosses, hunters, loggers and right wing gun nut/NRA and developer friends was to assure that the Landscape Project was NOT used a a basis for regulatory protections of habitat.

That attack is not disguised – again, in their own words: (see page 12-13)

These policy recommendations have all been implemented in the Sparta Mountain logging plan.

The attack on the Landscape Project and the sham issue about “mapped areas where threatened or endangered species could theoretically exist” perfectly explains why NJ Audubon de-designated Sparta Mountain as High Conservation Value Forest – explicitly on an allegation that RT&E species habitats were mapped but the species were not present.

These are the economic special interests NJ Audubon is working for.

NJ Audubon is serving the same role as NJ Future did at Liberty State Park. They kept the logging plan quietly under cover and below the radar and out of public sight. They flat out lied about involving the public, conservation groups, and local governments in the plan’s development. And they are providing the same political cover and legitimation that NJ Future attempted (but failed to do).

I don’t know if I am more shocked and disgusted by DEP’s plan to log Highlands Preservation Area forests, or the lies of NJ Audubon and their faux “conservation” friends.

Truly disgraceful on both counts.

Let’s hope that Legislators step up and stop this madness, just like they did at Liberty State Park.

[End note: for those who think they know the economic value of everything.

The business friendly Gov. Christie issued Executive Order #2 that requires, among other things, that State agencies conduct cost-benefit analysis as part of the policy and regulatory process.

Furthermore, DEP Commissioner Martin is a former corporate consultant, with an academic background in economics.

So, here’s a simple back of the envelope cost benefit analysis for them:

A prior 2004 DEP study estimated the economic value of NJ’s State Parks and Forests (not including WMA’s), and concluded:

Underlying Policy Failures of the Christie Administration Still Not Identified

The real agenda driving the emphasis on cost impacts to poor residential users is to justify gentrifying urban redevelopment and privatization of water systems.

NJ Spotlight reports on a Legislative oversight hearing yesterday on the lessons of Flint, Michigan for NJ, read the whole thing:

• STATE’S POOR URBAN CHILDREN MOST AT RISK FROM LEAD IN WATER, ADVOCATES TESTIFY

I’m reluctant to be critical, because I’ve called for the Legislature to do just that and use oversight powers to expose the flawed Christie DEP policy, see:

• The Legislature’s Time Is Better Spent Conducting Oversight Than Passing Environmental Bills For Christie’s Veto Pen

I fleshed that out with a critical post that sought to highlight the real policy issues of Flint that were being ignored, and the self serving agenda that has filled that void, see:

• An Artful Dodge On Lessons of Flint For New Jersey

Yet, despite this well endowed white bread effort, they have completely failed to focus on the issues brought to the fore in Flint Michigan, including: structural racism, poverty, environmental injustice, austerity, unregulated chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals, river water quality, wastewater treatment plants,  childhood lead exposure, lack of adequate treatment of drinking water, or a host of related urban water and public health issues.

(Curious, the Dodge Foundation and its ENGO puppets cried no crocodile tears for poor urban residents when they launched their Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) campaign, which targets 14 of NJ’s poorest cities and will cost BILLIONS of dollars for marginal water quality improvements.

Meanwhile, those same puppets ignored – for decades – the need to upgrade treatment technology at Morris County sewage treatment plants that serve NJ’s wealthiest towns and discharge billions of gallons of inadequately treated wastewater to the Passaic Basin, which is used by downstream urban communities for drinking water.

That is one warped set of priorities.)

So, for now I will simply bullet those underlying science, policy and regulatory issues that continue to be ignored, just in case Legislators are serious or some intrepid journalist wants to do follow-up stories.

The links between Flint Michigan and current Christie DEP policy are to:

1) the collapse of DWQI,

2) failure to address unregulated contaminants,

3) failure to update Water Supply Master Plan,

4) failure to implement DEP’s Asset Management Plan, 

5) abandonment of the environmental justice program, and

6) outsourcing and industry capture of science.

I’ve written extensively about each of these issues, so, until I insert the links to those posts, you can just use the word search function in the top right.

[PS – the assumption that poor residential users must shoulder 100% of the financial burden via water bills is flawed – we used to have a robust federal financial capital construction program and NJ’s wealthy suburbs and corporations can subsidize a significant portion of the cost burden.

The real agenda driving the emphasis on cost impacts to poor residential users is to justify gentrifying urban redevelopment and privatization of water systems.