Murphy DEP Embarrasses The Governor And Orchestrates A Demonstration Of Their Impotence And Mismanagement
DEP Abdication Inverts DEP’s Regulatory Role And Promotes Privatization
Losing Sight Of The Fundamentals
The NJ American Water Company, a private corporation, last week issued an Order to their customers mandating water conservation measures. Get that: a statewide mandatory Order.
The mandatory NJ American Order came one day after Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette failed to invoke DEP’s mandatory water conservation powers by issuing a voluntary “drought warning”.
Many NJ water resource experts chastised DEP for long delays in issuing that Order and had called on Governor Murphy to issue a drought emergency, which would authorize DEP to issue mandatory water conservation measures, among other things.
Obviously, a private corporation issuing a water conservation mandate shines a bright light on DEP’s timidity, delay, and reluctance to mandate water conservation.
It also embarrasses Gov. Murphy for his lack of leadership and failure to protect the State’s drinking water and natural resources.
Yet just days after being embarrassed and upstaged by NJ American’s mandatory Order, NJ DEP Commissioner LaTourette released a Public Service Announcement (PSA) with NJ American Water President:
What’s wrong with this picture?
Why is a private corporation usurping the Gov.’s and DEP’s role and powers and assuming the lead role in managing the public water supply?
Why is a private corporation acting quicker and more aggressively than the Governor and DEP?
And why, after being humiliated by NJ American Water, would DEP Commissioner LaTourette grovel before the President of NJ American Water?
Who is wearing the pants here? It seems pretty clear that NJ American Water is.
Let’s restate the fundamentals: (source: NJ DEP Order)
- The water resources of the State are held in trust by the State, not by a private corporation:
WHEREAS, the State of New Jersey holds all natural resources in trust for the benefit of its people, including all water resources within the boundaries of the State, which are comprised of springs, streams, and bodies of surface and groundwater, whether natural or artificial, as well as the ocean and its estuaries to the seaward limit of the State’s jurisdiction;
- The water resources of the State are owned, held in trust, and managed by the DEP in the public interest, not by a private corporation in the interests of profits:
WHEREAS, the State Commissioner of Environmental Protection serves as the Trustee of all natural resources of the State with a possessory interest to protect the same, and a fiduciary duty to the people of New Jersey to ensure their good care, including the aforementioned water resources, which are essential public assets critical to the health, safety, economic wellbeing, recreational and aesthetic enjoyment, and general welfare of all New Jersey residents;
- Under law, DEP is the lead entity in managing water resources and drought, not a private corporation:
WHEREAS, pursuant to the Water Supply Management Act, N.J.S.A. 58:1A-1 et seq., and the attendant Water Supply Allocation Rules, N.J.A.C. 7:19, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is responsible for ensuring that water resources are planned for and managed as a common resource to provide an adequate supply and quality of water for all New Jerseyans, and is obligated to seek to prevent and respond to water supply emergencies.
The Murphy administration is not only politically timid and slow in honoring its sacred Trust duties and reluctant to enforce the law to protect the public interest, public health, and natural resources.
The Governor and the DEP Commissioner are so blinded by anti-regulatory Neoliberal ideology – and fear of the political backlash against DEP “mandates” – that they abdicate these duties and responsibilities under law and effectively delegate them to a private corporation.
Then after being humiliated by that private corporation, they embrace a “partnership” role.
This is a sickening inversion of reality. Commissioner LaTourette is a eunuch: no balls and no spine.
President Roosevelt got it exactly right in his 1938 message to Congress:
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.