Gov. Murphy Punts On Drought – DEP Drought “Warning” Too Little And Too Late
While People Urged To Shorten Showers, Water Companies Get A Pass On Millions Of Gallons Per Day In Leaky Pipes
Yesterday, DEP Commissioner LaTourette finally issued a “drought warning” (Administrative Order), which allows DEP to Order drinking water systems to better manage water supplies and ask consumers to conduct voluntary water conservation.
That DEP Order should have been issued months ago, given extremely dry conditions, lack of rainfall, climate science, e.g. climate induced higher temperatures and atmospheric weather drivers (gulf stream), and forecasted dry weather.
Prior and worsening current drought conditions warrant a “drought emergency” declaration by the Governor. That declaration would give DEP additional powers to manage water demand, including mandatory conservation and other restrictions. Billions of gallons of water would have been saved had the Governor acted sooner, when he should have, based on science and precaution.
Restrictions on water use are not politically popular, and require political leadership. A suburban state like NJ has lots of wealthy people who like to water the lawns of their McMansions, top off their pools, wash their cars, power wash their driveways, “water rake leaves”, and play golf on green fairways.
Water intensive business and industry have a lot at stake as well economically in maintaining current water uses – and avoiding any DEP regulatory limits on both their water use and their pollution discharges (see below examples).
Governor Murphy has failed that test of leadership and again delayed issuance of a drought emergency.
Today, while I don’t want to be alarmist, I want to highlight important issues exacerbated and raised by the drought and DEP’s Administrative Order that are getting zero media attention.
1) From sewer plant discharge to your drinking water intake: “Viagara Falls”
One of the best kept secrets about NJ’s drinking water system, rarely reported by the press or mentioned by DEP, is the fact during a drought, from 75 – to 95% of the water flowing and taken from NJ’s major rivers to supply drinking water systems is wastewater discharges from industrial facilities and sewage treatment plants. That accounts for 475 million gallons per day of drinking water in the Passaic Basin alone. For the facts and receipts on that, see:
As the rainfall stops, the flows of the rivers decline. There is far less water in the river to dilute the wastewater discharges. When setting the pollution limits on the wastewater discharges for sewage treatment plants and industrial facilities, the NJ DEP has embraced a policy that “the solution to pollution is dilution”. DEP assumes a minimum flow in the river for dilution of pollutants, and limits pollution discharges based on that dilution. These pollution discharge limits are assumed to meet water quality standards and protect public health and the environment.
But river flows under drought conditions are far lower than DEP based pollution discharge limits on.
Keep in mind that the wastewater discharges are loaded with toxic chemicals like pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors and that the drinking water treatment systems do NOT remove 100% of these chemicals so that they pass through to your tap – and hundreds of these chemicals are not even regulated and have unknown adverse health effects. (does anyone even remember those stories about dual sexed fish found in NJ’s rivers?)
Big Pharma and the Chemistry Council must be pleased that those stories have fallen off the radar. I wonder why?
My friend and former colleague Jeff Tittel, a wizard of the sound bite, dubbed this problem “Viagara Falls” (for the Passaic River flows over the Falls).
These health risks are being suppressed. Note that the DEP press release and the NJ American press release and the news coverage does not mention these issues. I raised them in my testimony to DEP on Tuesday.
But if you closely read the DEP Order – which few will and fewer still will understand – these issues are buried in technocratic language: (emphasis mine):
6. These modified reservoir releases and passing flows shall remain in place until otherwise revised by any future order or directive. The Director of the DEP Division of Water Supply and Geoscience (Director) and/or her designee(s) shall coordinate with water providers to assess the potential for water quality degradation associated with any reductions or transfers of water hereby ordered.
You can be sure that those “assessments of the potential for water quality degradation” will be kept secret and never disclosed by DEP or reported by the press.
Tomorrow, we present additional significant under reported issues in Part 2 – here’s bullets of the topics as a teaser:
2) NJ Could Be Replicating The Flint Michigan Water Crisis By Transferring Water From One System To Another
3) There Are Massive Leaks In NJ’s Antiquated Water Distribution System – DEP is failing to mandate corrective action (while they ask you to take shorter showers)
4) The fish and critters are suffering and dying