It Is Not “Loopholes” That Allow Development And Pollution To Destroy The Landscape And Water Resources – It’s A Lack Of DEP Enforcement Of Current Laws And Regulations

False Claims About “Loopholes” Let Murphy DEP Off the Hook

False Claims About Local Control Of Development Divert From State Regulatory Powers

Reliance On Cherry Picked Data From Chemical Industry Funded Groups Misleads Readers

It looks like this is going to be a multi-part series, because today NJ Spotlight published round two of their firehose of puff and spin on water resources and land use issues, sponsored by the misleadingly named (after a good old American and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania), the Wm. Penn Foundation.

As I revealed yesterday in Part One, the Wm. Penn Foundation is actually a creation of the Haas family, the money behind giant corporate chemical polluter Rohm & Haas.

Can anyone imagine the outcry if a media outlet printed a series on public health, sponsored and shaped by the disgraced criminal Sackler family Foundation (hiding the role of Purdue Pharma) and that series of stories never once mentioned the pharmaceutical industry or the health disaster caused by their drug, oxycontin?

Well, that is exactly what the Haas family – hiding behind the facade of Wm. Penn Foundation – has done to NJ Spotlight and the environmental groups who take their corporate polluter blood money.

It’s not hard to understand why a major corporate chemical manufacturer would not fund environmental groups to focus on government regulatory and enforcement programs and instead point the pollution finger elsewhere. That’s also why they fund land preservation and non-point pollution projects. That’s why they target and fund water quality monitoring of streams like Lopatcong Creek, instead of, for example, chemical water quality monitoring or analysis of sediments and fish tissue in the Delaware River and bay.

Just like the Sackler family would not put their neck in the noose by funding projects on oxycontin and collection of data on over 100,000 drug over-dose deaths.

I hope to begin to get to the substance of the issues that were misrepresented, so let me start with this “big picture” broad overview.

The thrust of yesterday’s coverage on the Highlands – highlighted in the subtitle “Highlands loophole lets development grow, fertilizer fuels lake pollution – is that “loopholes” in the Highlands Act are the source of the problem.

That is false. I will write a specific post on the Highlands issues soon.

Today, Tom Johnson writes a “big picture” overview  – that repeats exactly that same “loophole” falsehood:

To some, it points to the need to take a tougher stand on new projects impacting water quality. “Right now, we have a baker’s dozen of warehouse projects around the state that have real water quality impacts,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. The DEP needs to close regulatory loopholes that allow these projects to move forward, he said.

That too is false.

It is not “loopholes” but lack of DEP enforcement that “allow these projects to move forward.” (Hey Tom, your bias is showing: DEP approval of a bad project is not “moving forward”, it’s moving backward!)

This is not an accident. It is an intentional outcome of the Wm. Penn funding.

As I wrote yesterday, the Wm. Penn Foundation (Haas family) does not fund work on laws, regulation and government planning. They support local and voluntary private sector projects  that target non-point source pollution, land preservation, and voluntary “ecological restoration” projects.

Wm. Penn funds NGO groups that either don’t work on DEP regulatory issues or that don’t understand DEP regulations or that just spin to divert attention and provide cover for DEP.

I fired off this letter to Doug O’Malley:

Doug – DEP issues Water Quality Management Plan approvals for warehouses, most new development, and water infrastructure.

The Clean Water Act Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program establishes legally enforceable numeric caps on total pollutant loads (point and non-point) and pollutant reduction requirements in impaired waters (cumulative impacts). The TMDL requirements are enforced in DEP permit programs (land use and water quality and water allocation and stormwater).

The Surface Water Quality Standards include enforceable “anti-degradation” requirements that are designed to prevent degradation of high quality waters (in light of cumulative impacts). Again, anti-degradation (and numeric and narrative water quality standards) are enforceable in DEP planning and permit programs.

Those regulations provide adequate authority to deny permits.

There are no “loopholes”. I’ve been working on this for 35 years. Where have you been?

There is lack of DEP enforcement. Surely you must know that.

Yesterday’s story on the Highlands made exactly the same false claim about “loopholes” in the Highlands Act.

All this does is let DEP off the hook.

Do better.

BTW, tell NJ Spotlight reporters that they don’t have to rely on Wm. Penn funded groups for cherry picked data and amateur assessments of current water quality conditions and trends in water quality. The Clean Water Act mandates that DEP publish Statewide Water Quality Reports (known as the Section 305(b)/303(d) integrated Report)

*For groundwater pollution data, DEP used to issue Private Well Testing Act reports, but no longer does so.

For threats to public drinking water supplies, see DEP’s Source Water Assessment Program – find the needle buried in the DEP website haystack and hit the link to find specific threats to specific water systems. Then wade through to the end of those documents to find the real threats buried at the end. Of course the data re over 20 years old. DEP doesn’t do that anymore.

And don’t even ask about the legislatively mandated annual Clean Water Enforcement Act Report – DEP stopped issuing that many years ago (2010) in blatant violation of law, but with no accountability, no media, no environmental group criticism, and no consequences.

Much more to follow.