WolfeNotes.com

The Senate Environment Committee will meet tomorrow (Monday 6/20/11) to hear the Senate version of a bill to reverse Governor Christie’s plans to withdraw from RGGI (see:  S 2946)

The Senate hearing provides another opportunity for Legislators to show that they are serious about global warming, and not just playing political games.

It is simply astounding that Republicans voted “No” on party lines last week in the Assembly Environment Committee vote on A4108.

Obviously, Assemblywoman Coyle’s well heeled and highly educated Somerset County constituents know global warming is real and demand real solution, not political games.

And we’re sure that they are willing to pay far more than 28 cents per month on their electric bill (the current RGGI charge) to be part of the solution to the world’s climate change crisis.

It also gives Republicans another chance to move beyond pure unprincipled partisan loyalty to Governor Christie, and show that they see global warming as more than a political football.

So we will be closely watching how Republican members Beck and Bateman vote.

And I’m not convinced yet the Democratic Chairman Bob Smith is serious in reforming the RGGI program – ironic in that Senate President Sweeney was the sponsor of the original RGGI legislation that Governor Christie has abandoned (for RGGI’s legislative history, see this and this and this and this).

So, here are 9 specific amendments that should be considered and will serve as a test of whether this Committee is serious:

Dear Chairman Smith:

Please accept this email testimony on S2946. I am providing suggested amendments in advance of the hearing, so that there is sufficient time for consideration and for OLS to draft amendments.

While I opposed RGGI from the outset, given the failure of national global warming legislation and the fact that RGGI states’ recently wrote to EPA to support using RGGI to satisfy compliance with forthcoming EPA New Source Performance Standards for greenhouse gas emissions for existing sources under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, I support the objectives of the bill to assure that NJ remains involved in RGGI.

[Note: EPA projects that the upcoming new Clean Air Act “New Source Performance Standards” (NSPS) regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal power plants will reduce current emission by at least 10%. But RGGI would allow those emissions to increase by 10 – 30%. So if EPA adopts the state recommendations and allows RGGI to satisfy NSPS compliance, we are talking about 20 – 40% increase in emissions from coal power plants. That is HUGE. I doubt most NJ legislators are even aware of how EPA and State actions are related.]

However, passing a bill to merely retain RGGI in its current form would be an empty gesture. RGGI must be reformed in light of 6 years experience and the forthcoming new EPA NSPS rules.

Therefore, I strongly urge you to adopt amendments to clarify and strengthen RGGI’s original objectives.

Given the Governor’s withdrawal statement and DEP’s testimony before Chairman Chivukula’s Committee, it is a virtual certainty that the Governor will veto this bill.

Therefore, it is even more important that you pass a bill that eliminates political considerations and strictly adheres to sound policy and science.

As you know, the RGGI caps are far above current electric sector emissions. When the original RGGI MOU was signed in 2005, NJ’s RGGI caps were 10% above then current emissions.

DEP testified to Chairman Chivukula’s Cmte. last week that the cap is 30% above current emissions.

The Governor has used this fact to claim – correctly – that RGGI is ineffective in terms of changing behavior of energy producers and consumers. PSEG themselves described the affect of RGGI as “negligible” (see page 59) 

Environmentalists (i.e. NRDC and Environment NJ) testified that RGGI originally was designed to undergo an internal performance review scheduled for 2012. The expectation all along is that the generous caps would be renegotiated and lowered.

However, given the Administration’s opposition to RGGI, it would be foolish to think – even if the bill were to pass and NJ remain a part of RGGI – that the caps would be lowered via the RGGI administrative negotiating process among State Governors.

Outside intervention and legislative policy direction are required.

With that in mind, I recommend the following amendments.

1. Legislatively reduce the RGGI cap in statute to current 2010 emissions, or the most recent actual emissions monitoring data. This would lock in any emissions reductions that have been achieved and assure that emissions do not increase.

2. Eliminate the discretionary use of “up to 100%” of revenues derived form RGGI auctions and mandate that 100% be used for the legislatively specified purposes. This would be consistent with your announced intent to Constitutionally dedicate the RGGI proceeds.

3. Delete reference to and required consistency with “the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by NJ and other states on December 20, 2005.” This would be consistent with legislatiely establishing policy and lowering the NJ emission allowances (cap).

4. Insert the year “2008” to clarify that the Corzine Energy Master Plan goals and principles are to be considered, not the proposed changes by Governor Christie.

5. Delete the subsidies, exemptions and loopholes of the original RGGI legislation provides to a cogeneration facility, combined heat and power, and any other “on-site generation facility”.

6. Mandate that all RGGI records shall be public records and subject to the Open Public Records Act.

7. Mandate that DEP adopt the January 20, 2009 proposed greenhouse gas emissions monitoring and reporting rule that was killed by Governor Christie’s Executive Order moratorium (see: http://www.nj.gov/dep/rules/proposals/012009a.pdf

This will provide actual NJ data to base decisions on, not projections based on federal emissions factors and fuel use estimates.

8. Eliminate the $7 per ton relief valve. If we are going to have a market based trading scheme, prices should be determined by supply and demand and the market.

9. Eliminate the $2 per ton price cap for certain emission sources.Market assumptions require a level playing field between all sources.

Let me know if you’d like these proposed amendments formatted to the provisions of the current bill. I’d be glad to go over this with OLS staff.

Thank you for your favorable consideration.

Bill Wolfe, Director

NJ PEER

We continue the 2010 year in review today, starting with a brief discussion about the ways the environmental rollback has been publicly justified by slogans used by Governor Christie, his DEP Commissioner Bob Martin, and the Red Tape Czar, Lt. Governor Guadagno.

The little media coverage there has been has mostly uncritically embraced and parroted these slogans, media thereby abdicating their role as truthtellers in favor of stenography.

So let’s start by briefly describing the Christie slogans, explore their deeper meaning, and expose the policies they mask and the special interests they benefit.

Slogans are intended to shut down thought. Slogans are a very different form of rhetoric than the traditional practice of spin.

Spin at least remains tethered to underlying reality: spin seeks to interpret reality and persuade through rational argument. But slogans are not grounded in interpretation of reality or a form of persuasion.

Slogans are empty – they displace the substance of reality, and fill it with a myth that appeals to irrational motives or fears. Slogans are designed not to seek truth or persuade, but to hide the truth and manipulate thought and emotion by creating a false perception of reality.

Slogans are made necessary because of the strong public support for protecting public health and the environment.

Obviously, a DEP Commissioner is not going to simply say we are going to make it easier and more profitable for developers to rape the landscape and reduce the pollution control cost of oil and chemical companies so they can dump more toxic crap in your air and water while making record corporate profits (all while emulating Dupont, who according to the Associated Press is off shoring US jobs, disinvesting in the US, and massively investing in third world countries:

“Take the example of DuPont, which wowed the world in 1938 with nylon stockings. Known as one of the most innovative American companies of the 20th century, DuPont now sells less than a third of its products in the U.S. In the first nine months of this year, sales to the Asia-Pacific region grew 50 percent, triple the U.S. rate. Its stock is up 47 percent this year.

DuPont’s work force reflects the shift in its growth: In a presentation on emerging markets, the company said its number of employees in the U.S. shrank by 9 percent between January 2005 and October 2009. In the same period, its work force grew 54 percent in the Asia-Pacific countries.

“We are a global player out to succeed in any geography where we participate in,” says Thomas M. Connelly, chief innovation officer at DuPont. “We want our resources close to where our customers are, to tailor products to their needs.”

So instead we have slogans, founded on either false premises or outright lies.

The worst false premises and outrights lies that Christie has manufactured to mask and support his agenda are that:

• environmental and public health protections are related to the economic recession, unemployment, and State budget crisis (Slogan: “Common sense regulation“);
• that regulations drive companies out of NJ and create barriers to new investment (Slogan: “Red Tape“); and
• that DEP bureaucracy is preventing the private sector from creating jobs and improving NJ’s environment (Slogan: “DEP Transformation“)

These slogans serve a dual purpose.

In addition to being used to mask and justify a rollback agenda, slogans are deployed to redefine problems and pre-empt alternative real solutions by diverting attention from the real underlying causes of serious problems:

• instead of environmentalists going on offense and talking about ways to respond to global warming; cleanup air, water, and land pollution; or preserve remnants of vanishing open space, our collective focus, resources, and advocacy efforts are diverted. We are forced to play defense and defend existing weak and ineffective protections and programs from rollback and attack;
• instead of putting the flawed policies and those responsible for creating problems on the defensive and talking about the greed of Wall Street financial institutions and the failures of lax regulatory oversight, Christie scapegoats DEP and environmental protections (more subtly, but basically the same way he attacked the teachers union); and
• instead of conducting campaigns to shut down coal plants and make a rapid transition to renewable energy, we are consumed responding to straw men arguments are used to change the conversation and frame false choices like the need to reduce energy costs by ending subsidies to renewable energy and eliminating the Societal Benefits Charge.

So the use of slogans provides the business community a twofer: they dodge accountability for creating huge problems AND are provided “regulatory relief”.

Viewing developments through this lens, we present stories from the second quarter of 2010:

April

• Not Much to Say (4/7/10) 
• Life’s a Beach, and then … (4/8/10) 
• Report: Glaciers Disappearing From Glacier National Park (4/9/10)
• The Role of Economics At DEP (4/11/10) 
• Dems Give Christie A Pass On Environmental Cuts and Rollbacks (4/12/10) 
• DEP Commissioner Martin Uses State Police To Eject Environmentalist From Public Meeting (4/13/10)
• Clean Air Council Ignores Elephant in the Room (4/14/10) 
• Tax Day Essay: “On Civil Disobedience” (4/15/10) 
• “Onerous Regulations” Had Nothing to Do with This Plant Closure (4/16/10)
• Landing In Atlantic City (4/16/10) 
• Christie’s Earth Week Preview (4/19/10)
• Earth Week: Day 1: “Red Tape Rollback” (4/20/10) 
• Earth Week Day 2: Back Door Man (4/21/10) 
• Earth Week Day 3: Clean Communities Covers Urban Policy Failure (4/22/10) 
• Earth Week Day 4: Making the Shore (Look) Safe for Private Beach Clubs (4/23/10) 
• Christie’s Earth Week in Review (4/24/10) 
• “Immoral Failure To Act” To Protect Mothers and Infants (4/25/10) 
• Will Senate Draw a Line on Christie rollbacks? DEP Budget Up Tomorrow (4/26/10) 
• Emails Show DEP Commissioner Martin Lied About EPA Perchlorate Standard (4/26/10) 
• Senate Dems Blast Christie Global Warming Cuts and DEP’s Abandonment of Perchlorate Drinking Water Standard (4/27/10)
• More Corporate Cannibalism (4/28/10) 
• The Cartoon Made Martin Do It! (4/30/10)

May

• A Note To DEP Readers (5/3/10) 
• EPA Caves on Coal Ash Regulation (5/4/10)
• Drinking Water Risks Rise, While DEP Ignores Science (5/5/10)
• DEP Trial Testimony Admits Corruption Widespread (5/6/10) 
• Whitman Lobbying for BP (5/6/10) 
• Christie Has Unleashed the Dogs of Pollution (5/6/10) 
• The Obfuscation Proclamation of 2010 (5/6/10) 
• BP Got NEPA Exemption for Gulf drilling (5/6/10) 
• Obama WH Over-Ruled EPA Scientists On Coal Ash Regulations (5/8/10) 
• Drinking Water Institute Urged to Defend Science and Refute Martin Attack (5/8/10) 
• Mother’s Day Note – The Plants Are in Charge (5/9/10) 
• Political Influence at DEP Now Something to Brag About (5/10/10) 
• Bully Bob Martin Now Attacks BPU and Rutgers on Energy Master Plan (5/11/10) 
• They Want to Shoot Bears? (5/11/10) 
• DEP Commissioner Martin Called to Testify Tomorrow (5/12/10) 
• Dupont and Polluters’ Consultants Named to DEP Science Board (5/14/10) 
• Dems Say Oversight Not the Purpose of Martin Kabuki (5/15/10) 
• Environmental Standards Undergoing Internal DEP Review – Red Flag Rollback Threat (5/18/10)
• Cancer Risks in Garfield Homes More than 2,000 Times Allowable Risk (5/20/10) 
• DEP Caves to Trucking Lobby (5/21/10) 
• Trenton Protest Against Christie Budget (5/22/10) 
• Lessons of Gulf Oil Spill Lost On Martin (5/25/10) 
• A “Big Map” for Toxic Site Cleanup? (5/27/10)
• State of the Shore (5/27/10)

June

• Dupont[s Tentacles Extend into North Carolina Science (6/1/10) 
• Did BP Gulf Oil Blowout Cloud Martin’s Vision? How About Exelon’s Rebuke? (6/3/10) 
• DEP Abandons Dry Cleaner Chemical Phase Out – Instead Pays Polluters Not To Pollute (6/4/10)
• Rank Propaganda at DEP (6/5/10) 
• Orwell Lives – Stenographic Praise Displaces Journalism (6/6/10) 
• NJ Parallels to Gulf Disaster – Monday Oversight Hearing (6/11/10) 
• The Day Before Disaster (6/13/10) 
• Symbolism Displaced Substance at Trenton Gulf Oil Blowout Hearing (6/14/10) 
• Police can not “rummage at will” (6/15/10) 
• Martin Doubling Down – Revolving Door Opens For Business Crony Appointment (6/16/10) 
• DEP Caught in Cut & Paste Job on Global Warming Data (6/17/10) 
• Christie Repeating Lax Oversight Errors that Led to Gulf Blowout (6/17/10) 
• All Quiet on the Privatization Front (6/19/10) 
• Obama’s Dr. Strangelove –  BP Tentacles Extend (6/22/10) 
• Deep Confusion About DEP Science Board (6/24/10) 
• Christie Slashes DEP Enforcement and Shifts Burden From Polluters To Taxpayers (6/25/10) 
• You Were Warned – But TOO Late:  You’re Dead! (6/25/10) 
• DEP calls toxic landfill leachate “natural” (6/28/10)

Tomorrow we’ll try to close out the year – and if space and time permit, highlight expectations and priorities for 2011.

Senate Majority Leader Buono Calls Legislation “Assault on Decades of Environmental Protections”  

So Why Are Her Colleagues Rolling Over To Enact Governor Christie’s Agenda?

DEP studies have found over 500 unregulated chemicals polluting NJ drinking water – but instead of requiring treatment to remove them now, Gov. Christie’s DEP wants to wait decades until federal EPA develops national standards.

Democratic legislators jumped on board the Christie Administration’s “Red Tape” environmental rollback wagon yesterday, as 3 more horrible bills were released by legislative committees.

Christie and his corporate backers are shamefully using the economic recession as a pretext to attack and rollback environmental and public health protections, under the guise of slogans:  “common sense regulatory principles” and “streamlining red tape”.

(DEP permits need to be “streamlined” to create jobs? Thousands of projects with DEP approved permits are stalled, which was the logic of the Permit Extension Act – but facts and logic dont matter).

Perhaps worse, corporate Democratic leaders seem intent on outspinning the Governor, cynically calling the rollback  bills part of a “back to work” package.

But in fact, no credible economist – none - links the recession to environmental protections. No one argues that rollbacks will create jobs.

Just the opposite is true:

• the recession and unemployment were caused by the bursting of an unregulated Wall Street greed driven speculative bubble;
• environmental compliance costs are grossly exagerated by industry;
• protections have huge public health benefits; and
• environmental protections create jobs and don’t force relocations of industry.

According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) thirteenth annual Report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal regulations:

“The estimated annual benefits of major Federal regulations reviewed by OMB from October 1, 1999, to September 30, 2009, for which agencies estimated and monetized both benefits and costs, are in the aggregate between $128 billion and $616 billion, while the estimated annual costs are in the aggregate between $43 billion and $55 billion.”

Revealing the true policy intent hidden by the “common sense” slogan, Christie’s own Executive Order #2 explicitly calls for “immediate regulatory relief”.

But somehow the media (and some environmental groups) still seem incapable of reporting these facts which contradict and expose the Governor’s spin.

The bills released yesterday were based on Lt. Governor Guadagnos’ business dominated Red Tape Review Group Report. That Report attacked DEP and targeted 12 specific DEP regulations for rollback (see Appendix H).

The Red Tape Report also called for major changes to the way regulations are developed in order to promote business interests. Changes would allow industry to derail, weaken and delay regulations, and increase political control over the content of regulations.

Again, the Christie Administration’s objective to rollback environmental regulation is clear. The objectives of the Red Tape Report are:

“employing a cost/benefit analysis on rules, justifying exceeding federal standards and refraining from doing so unless a New Jersey-specific policy goal is being pursued, …. working to lessen burdens and compliance costs to businesses.” ( page 33)

The controversial Red Tape bills re-emerged yesterday in obscure hearings before the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, and just days before Christmas after languishing for more than 8 months.

When the original package of bills were heard in the Assembly back in March, we wrote:

Less than 48 hours after the first “public” (by invite only) meeting of the “Red Tape Review Group” (for press coverage of that meeting, see NJ red-tape review board gets an earful, led by the new Regulatory Czar established by Governor Christie’s Executive Orders #1 (imposing a moratorium on certain regualtions) and EO#2 ( establishing “common sense” regulatory policies including cost benefit analysis and rollback to federal minimums) and EO #3 ( creating the Red Tape Review Group) today an Assembly Regulatory Oversight Committee rammed through a dangerous bill to gut enforcement of a broad array of DEP public health and environmental protections.

When the second round of bills was heard in Assemblyman Burzichelli’s Committee, later in March,we warned about the sinister influence of  “murderers row”:

Murderers Row: (L-R) Hal Bozarth (Chemistry Council); Lobbyist (Farm Bureau); Michael Engenton (Chamber of Commerce); & Dave Brogan (NJ Business and Industry Assc.). Jim Benton NJ Petroleum Council (rear) looks on from the shadows.

Senate Majority Leader Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) has been a leader in resisting the Christie rollbacks and defending environmental and public health protections.

So let’s consider how the Red Tape debate emerged.

During testimony at public hearings back in March , the Red Tape initiative came under harsh criticism. Later in April, when Senator Buono refused to support the report, we wrote:

…while Senator Buono sat on the so called “bi-partisan” Red Tape Review Group, she recently strongly distanced herself from the Report’s recommendations.

According to the April 19 Star Ledger:

“The [Red Tape] report, released shortly before 11 a.m., says the group had “arrived at a series of unanimous recommendations” but omits Buono’s name from the cover sheet.

Asked about the omission, Buono said she raised concerns after receiving the language of proposed legislation last week but was told the group wanted to present a united report. as “just unanimity at any cost, even if it means being dishonest” she said. “Bipartisanship is very different than strong-arming consensus.”

Senator Buono, Senate Majority leader (R) and Lt. Gov Guadagno at Red Tape hearing in Montclair

Fast forwarding to events in Trenton yesterday, it was obvious that the deal was in – industry lobbyists and Christie Administration officials didn’t even have to testify. The Democrats did their work for them.

So here’s what the latest round of bills would do:

S 2013 – would extend the current 5 year sunset rule expiration period to 7 years.

A bad idea. Would any business in a rapidly changing science and technology environment lock itself into a 7 year cycle for innovation? The 5 year expiration is the only thing that forces state agencies to review and improve their rules.

S 2014 – undermines the integrity of current rulemaking process and invites abuse by special interests.

Current law prohibits State agencies from making what are called “substantive changes” between the proposal of a rule for public comment, and the later final adoption of that rule. This prohibition was established by NJ courts, and it is intended to protect due process rights and assure that the public is given a clear notice and a chance to comment on regulations. It also provides incentives to DEP scientists to carefully draft rules, allows DEP scientists to control the substance of rules, and shields them from political pressures.

In contrast, the bill would change 30 years of practice and would allow DEP to engage in “bait and switch”. It would create even more political pressure DEP scientists to conduct wholesale negotiations on the substance of rules.

This would make rulemaking more like the corrupt legislative sausage mill, and a lot less like a science and law based system with integrity operating in the public interest.

Here’s how it would work in 3 simple steps: 1) DEP proposes a strong science based rule; 2) political appointees at DEP allow industry lobbyists to rewrite it; and 3) DEP then adopts the industry rewrite as a final rule. By the time environmental groups and the public later figure it out, the policy decision is a fait accompli.

S 6 – (identical to S 1914 and A 2853) – This bill flat out violates federal law and would make radical changes to current environmental laws:

• creates a private compliance certification process, a gross conflict of interest;
• creates a new cost benefit test, with no safeguards, thereby subverting public health and environmetal protection standards in all laws;
• consolidates unaccountable power in a “permit czar” in the Lt. Governor’s Office
• creates waivers of strict compliance based on vague “hardship”
• codifies Governor Christie’s sham new undefined “common sense” regulatory policy (per Executive Order #2?)

We urge you to contact your legislators to oppose these bills.

DEP NOT using huge regulatory powers to protect public health from known risks

I just posted the below as an Update to my piece yesterday on the DEP’s new dry cleaner grant program, but now realize that the underlying public policy and journalism issues deserve individual attention.

I initially sought to clarify the original post based on a conversation that emerged in a discussion of this issue on a national TCE (perc) listserve. The listserve discussion was focused on vapor intrusion of chemicals into about 450 homes in Pompton Lakes NJ from the Dupont site.

We were involved at the outset in Pompton Lakes (see this) and have written extensively about the situation (see this and this). Jim O’Neill of the Bergen Record has written several outstanding killer storries, most recently this: Dupont’s Danger Was Hidden Away.

But then I read the Star Ledger coverage  of DEP’s dry cleaner grant program and my head exploded. So, here’s the story.

A national vapor intrusion expert replied to my post to note that dry cleaned clothes can “off gas” perc in homes, and resemble vapor intrusion. I agreed, and said that perc also can enter homes from nearby industrial air emission sources (e.g. dry cleaners, chemical plants, et al).

I then tried to explain why the perc indoor vapor intrusion risks and outdoor ambient air risks were related and why I was so disgusted by the DEP press release touting the dry cleaner grant program.

You see, the “new” NJ DEP leadership makes a lot of noise in the press, especially in the Pompton Lakes community, that they are aggressively acting to protect public health. They say that now that they are aware of what’s going on in Pompton Lakes, they have made protecting the community a priority (in contrast to 25 years of prior DEP administration’s, who apparently either didn’t know or care about Dupont PL)

I don’t know how they pull that off, because the current Deputy Commissioner – who some say is really running the DEP due to the Commissioner’s lack of qualifications and experience -was the former head of the “broken” Site Remediation Program, which had “oversight” of Dupont, Pompton Lakes. In fact, her first public appearance as Deputy Commissioner was in Pompton Lakes,  where she was almost tarred and feathered for her comments and arrogant demeanor that gravely insulted residents.

The key point is that DEP has huge regulatory power to protect public health from serious known risks that they are NOT using.

The abandonment of the dry cleaner perc phase our rule is just one example of that.

In addition to the sham Pompton Lakes claims, DEP engages in PR stunts like the $5 million dry cleaner grant program – aside from getting the situation backwards by saying that polluting dry cleaners make “sacrifices” (instead of recognizing the fact that people’s health is sacrificed for the profits of polluters), DEP even have the chutzpah to note this:

 “Priorities for the grant money are dry cleaners located in residential settings, such as apartment buildings or mixed commercial and residential strip malls, and those located within 50 feet of day care centers.”

While DEP may consider proximity and residential/day care location risk in the dry cleaner grant program, the larger reality is:

1) DEP has no statewide vapor intrusion (VI) program. What DEP does on VI risks is site specific and privatized. The pace and extent of any VI investigation and remedy is under the control of polluters, not based on public health. DEP is well aware of scores of volatile organic contaminant groundwater plumes under occupied buildings that cause VI risks, yet does nothing to warn or protect the people in those buildings;

2) DEP is well aware of the fact that the DHSS school and day care center VI risk standards are based on a 1 in 10,000 risk level. Instead of adopting protective regulations using a  more conservative  risk standard for this extremely sensitive sub-population (i.e. children), current NJ school and day care standards are 100 times WEAKER than other DEP soil, water, and VI standards, which are based on 1 in a million risk level (which is derived by risk assessments that assume a healthy adult male exposure, not a developing child’s as mandted by law!); (i.e. for easy confirmation, see page 40-43 of DHSS rule adoption document – which flat out contradicts the “Kiddie Kollege” law, which mandates adoption of children’s health based state-wide DHSS standards, not site specific judgements); and

3) DEP does not have air quality standards or enforceable permit regulations to address exactly the kind of risky and unacceptable situation they describe in their press release, e.g. when an industrial emission source is located very close to homes or schools, DEP does not consider those health risks in setting permit emission limits on that source!!!

DEP knows all this irresponsible abdication, yet they get away with writing Orwellian press releases – which amounts to lying to the public – and no one calls them on it! – reporters instead stenographhically praise DEP for it!

[Update – Do you trust Dupont? Are they any more credible than BP or Goldman Sachs? In another killer story, Jim O’Neill of the Bergen Record reports: Dupont’s Danger Was Hidden Away:

The DEP and DuPont had been discussing that pollution privately for years. DuPont began drilling monitoring wells on its site to test for groundwater contamination in 1981. The DEP told DuPont in April 1983 to assess the impact on groundwater. In a July 1984 report to the DEP, DuPont said the groundwater was contaminated with lead, selenium and volatile organic compounds. It would later also be shown to contain mercury.

The 1984 report also said that “polluted groundwater may be leaving the site.”

In October 1985, DuPont sent a letter to some nearby residents, saying some groundwater was contaminated beneath the facility. In the letter, plant manager Anthony V. Scancella told residents that DuPont thought the solvents came from operations at the plant mostly during World War I and World War II.

He wrote: “I want to assure you that there is no health concern for you or your family.”

Two months later, Scancella sent residents an update — DuPont had sampled water from nine private wells from homes near the site and five had detectable levels of solvents.

In the reassuring letter, Scancella said DuPont was “instituting a program to clean up this contaminated groundwater.” He concluded: “I want to reemphasize that there is no health concern for you or your family from the low levels of solvents we have detected.”

The levels were not low. A DEP document from the period indicates one residential well showed contamination of nearly 5,600 parts per billion. The EPA’s current maximum contaminant levels for TCE and PCE, two of the solvents in the groundwater, are 5 parts per billion each.

Growing mistrust

 By 1989, DEP officials became impatient with DuPont. In a memo that January, the DEP stated DuPont “has done nothing to halt the spread of off-site contamination.”

“The off-site migration of the contaminated groundwater is a threat to human health,” the DEP said, and “requires the most immediate action.”

A month later, a DEP geologist reported that “at a DuPont-sponsored public meeting, DuPont informed people there was no reason for concern about the groundwater in the area. It appears that the public is possibly being misled about the problem.”

The State of North Carolina’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) has issued a draft risk assessment and recommended “Maximum Allowable Concentration”  (MAC) in groundwater for the toxic chemical pollutant known as PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid).

Not surprisingly, Dupont, the corporation responsible for poisoning workers and water resources with PFOA, played a major role in the NC SAB’s deliberations.

One could fairly say that Dupont’s hired guns polluted the science (and pressured regulators at EPA).

In fact, the same Dupont consultant who polluted NC science, Dr. Tardiff, previously appeared in NJ to attack NJ DEP science.

Interestingly, NJ’s own Rutgers scientist, Dr. Keith R. Cooper, wrote in the April 19, 2010 scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicilogy that  Tardiff’s work contained:

“numerous errors, omissions, misrepresentations, and deviations from established risk assessment approaches…”;

The North Carolina SAB recommendations and MAC have relevance for New Jersey, as NJ DEP is now grappling with PFOA pollution, which has spawned a class action lawsuit. North Carolina’s SAB recommendation will impact NJ because: :

1)  North Carolina relied on Dupont’s science to reject NJ’s PFOA risk assessment approach and NJ’s far lower and more protective 0.04 ppb recommended safe drinking water level;

2) Dupont will use the North Carolina SAB recommendations to attack NJ’s science and undermine the development of its own NJ state drinking water “Maximum Contaminant Level” (MCL). Those efforts have stalled since NJ DEP released its PFOA risk assessment; and

3)  We have warned about the influence of regulated entities, such as Dupont, who is a member of NJ’s recently formed Science Advisory Board (SAB). If Dupont is allowed to buy its own science and use that to sway North Carolina’s SAB, you can be sure they will try the same manuever on NJ’s SAB.

See all the releavent documents in links from PEER press release below: