Calling Bullshit On The Environmental Endowment For NJ

“Audubon has a $3.8 million dollar budget, ALS has $2.plus Million budget   For them to get money [from EENJ] it’s obscene same with COA with $1.2 million and takes money from grassroots like POP [People Over Pipelines] and CURE [Citizens United for Renewable Energy] etc… ~~~ A reader’s comment

[Update below]

Full dose of bitter bile coming – those with weak stomach’s should stop reading and hit the delete button right now.

I’ve been off line for awhile, and in checking my email backlog today came across this stunt from DEP.

The cynics at the Christie DEP have managed to pull off another stunt – more great PR that provides cover for the worst environmental record of any Administration.

The event is part of what is by now a well honed playbook – one that involves manipulating well meaning local groups and volunteers and safely diverting the policy agenda away from DEP regulatory failures and policy rollbacks – all while disabling effective advocacy by sapping resources, framing the issues and managing the media, and co-opting groups with State funds.

How long are so called “activist” groups going to go along with this bullshit?

But what stood out and caught my eye today was the progressive and authentic appearance of the local groups involved – e.g. permaculture, urban focus, local food, environmental justice.

So, after I saw a huge DEP $250,000 grant to the project, I chased a link on DEP’s press release and then looked into the the funding partners.

Surprisingly, funders included The Environmental Endowment for NJ.

I frequently write about how the major Foundation Funders control the activist and policy agendas and manipulate environmental groups by funding politically safe, corporate friendly, feel good measures.

These elite Foundations are part of a tightly knit group of insiders and interlocking inbred organizations. They are adept at fundraising and spend enormous resources self promoting and self dealing — the same folks who have controlled the money and the issue agenda for so long.

But today I want to focus on a smaller Foundation, which has long been NJ’s most progressive and aggressive Foundation, willing to take on controversial and hard hitting political and policy advocacy, the Environmental Endowment for New Jersey (EENJ). 

EENJ is endowed by funds obtained via

“funds from settlements of lawsuits brought to enforce compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.”

That origin and funding gave EENJ an aggressive and primarily regulatory focus.

EENJ used to be the place where those that could not get funded by the more conservative corporate Foundations like Dodge and Wm. Penn went for funding. EENJ provide funds for both small grassroots groups fighting important local battles and Trenton based groups that worked on regulatory and corporate and government accountability issues.

Not any more.

Now they fund political cover operations for the Christie DEP and other feel good measures like gardening and beach cleanups.

EENJ has been weeny – ized.

They too have been captured by the elite faction – take a look at the current Board members who make the funding decisions.

Now take a look at the list of their current grants – who gets them and for what.

Cindy Zipf (Clean Ocean Action) and Eric Stiles (NJ Audubon) fund their own organizations through EENJ.

They fund work very closely related to the primary work of their own organizations.

I wonder if they recuse themselves?

Full disclosure:

EENJ used to fund my work at NJ PEER.

That funding was terminated, and for no reason that was provided to me.

A former EENJ Board Member told me I was blackballed by members of the EENJ Board.

Fuck them.

[Update: This particular grant to NJ LCV really needs to be exposed:

17.   New Jersey League of Conservation Voters Education Fund  ($15,000) Trenton, New Jersey: to advance an agenda that protects and enhances the state’s water quality in key regions of the Garden State with three priority issues:  1) NRD Constitutional Amendment, 2) Releasing the Water Supply Master Plan (WSMP), and 3) Establishing Stormwater Utilities.

Funding for the Natural Resource Damage [NRD Constitutional Amendment] is an outrageous deception and fraud.

Let me explain why.

NJ LCV was one of the chief supporters and spokespersons for the Open Space Ballot Question.

As the public just learned, the ballot question diverted $32 million per year previously dedicated to State Parks maintenance.

But very few people understand that the original draft of the open space legislation explicitly INCLUDED dedication of NRD money.

Amazingly, NJ LCV and the Keep It Green Coalition OPPOSED inclusion of NRD money in the Open Space bill. As a result, the NRD money was deleted from the open space bill that authorized the ballot question.

The idiots at NJ LCV and KIG made a huge mistake. As I wrote during the open space debate:

The KIG coalition does not want the public to know that – to know that in addition to stealing the entire State Parks capital budget, that they also stole the lease and concession money.

And they also don’t want the public to figure out what a HUGE mistake they made by opposing dedication of Natural Resource Damage (NRD) settlement funds and expanding that NRD dedication to ALL cost recovery and enforcement settlement agreement funds.

The original introduced version of SCR84 included the NRD funds dedication. That provision could have been expanded by a simple amendment. Instead of seeking that amendment, the KIG fools OPPOSED IT ALL!

As I again wrote:

Earlier in the day, the Assembly Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the $225 million Exxon Natural Resource Damage (NRD) settlement.

Jeff Tittel was the only person who connected the dots.

Tittel correctly reminded legislators that Natural Resource Damage (NRD) settlement revenues were dedicated in the original version of the open space initiative and that Keep It Green opposed that and had the NRD revenues deleted from the final version of the Resolution that authorized the November open space ballot dedication.

For them now to fund themselves for a campaign to correct their huge blunder is ABSURD.