WolfeNotes.com

According to a story in today’s Bergen Record:

Safety testing lax on new school sites
http://www.northjersey.com/education/educationnews/Clifton_school_site_lacks_test_for_pesticides.html

“Nearly four years ago, Clifton voters approved an $11 million plan to convert an old industrial building into classrooms for 500 high school students.
They hadn’t been told that groundwater on the 3-acre site had excessive levels of pesticides, nor that arsenic and other poisons were present at elevated levels and that other dangerous organic compounds had seeped into the ground just outside the building’s rear entrance.

A review of the controversial [school construction] project by The Record reveals that Clifton school officials recommended the property to voters without doing a single environmental test or obtaining a sign-off from state environmental regulators.

In interviews last week, state officials acknowledged that there are essentially no regulations stipulating that school districts test potential school sites before seeking voter approval.
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“This is more than a crisis. This is a tragedy, a failure of our government at a time when we need protection more than ever,” said Roy Jones, a board member of the non-profit New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance. “If the state can’t protect us on stuff like this, what’s the use in having a government at all?
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“State officials have their heads buried in the sand on these cases because they know that the problem is a potentially huge one that will be very hard, and expensive, to address,” said Bill Wolfe, a former official of the state Department of Environmental Protection who now runs the non-profit advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

For links to documents and an analysis of the underlying causes of the problems, see:

A Tale of Two Toxic Schools
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/02/a_tale_of_two_toxic_schools_ho.html

I haven’t done a quantitative analysis, but it seems obvious that media is increasingly tawdry, tabloid, and irrelevant. Mindless coverage and uncritical repetition of government propaganda divert public attention away from real substantive problems, and worse, actually poison the well of democratic dialogue.
Media shares responsibility for our sorry state of affairs (Hint to you Ledger editors, writers, and NJ Voices “bloggers” and anonymous electronic commenters).
When I try to raise these issues, I get attacked by petulant and arrogant “journalists”, so I’ll let well known journalist Bill Moyers explain, in the words of Marvin Gaye “What’s Goin’ On” (listen to that wonderful tune here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s
. . . the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that “freedom” simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege — the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs — is as subversive as Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of the Revolution he had once served.

(from his new book “Moyers on Democracy” http://www.alternet.org/democracy/85521/?page=entire
Because I am an environmental advocate, I’ll leave off with this excerpt:
The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children’s children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like “liberty” and “individual freedom” invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to “promote the general welfare” have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn’t necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam’s palace grounds wailing “The Greeks are coming.” Or Socrates, the gadfly, stinging the rump of power with jabs of truth. Or even Paul Revere, if horses were still in fashion. You need only be a reporter with your eyes open to see what’s happening to our democracy. I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft’s essential imperatives: connect the dots.
The conclusion that we are in trouble is unavoidable. I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments — genuine savings — in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.
And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of sixty-year-old banking and securities regulations designed during the Great Depression to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? An administration and Congress who are the political marionettes of the speculators, and who are well rewarded for their efforts with indispensable campaign contributions. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of an electoral system that effectively limits competition to those who can afford to spend millions in their run for office. Like it or not, candidates know that the largesse on which their political futures depend will last only as long as their votes are satisfactory to the sleek “bundlers” who turn the spigots of cash on and off.
“MERCY, MERCY, ME” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BA6fFGMjI&feature=related

Former U.S. Vice President and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore will give the keynote address at Carnegie Mellon’s 111th commencement ceremony, Sunday, May 18, 2008.
The ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. and will be broadcast online.
Live Webcast of the Commencement Ceremony
http://www.cmu.edu/about/commencement/index.shtml
You can select one of the options below now to check your connection speed and browser plugins. You will need either Quicktime or Windows Media Player.
For Quicktime please use:
http://media4.andrew.cmu.edu/web/Comm_audio.mov
http://media4.andrew.cmu.edu/web/Comm_320.mov
http://media4.andrew.cmu.edu/web/Comm_640.mov
For Windows Media 9 please use:
http://wms.andrew.cmu.edu/pushit01
For my photo tour of Carnegie Mellon campus, click on (examples)
http://greenserver.dyndns.biz/bw/photos/cmu_visit/

Bill WolfeGesling Stadium, Carengie Mellon University. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

Bill Wolfe

Bill Wolfe

Bill Wolfe

Builders and Powerful Developers opposing DEP behind the scenes

Bill WolfeJeff Tittel, Sierra Club, joins DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson (center) to praise DEP proposed “Category One” stream protections at Earth Day press conference at Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association in Hopewell. Jim Waltman, Director (SBMWSA), Dave Pringle, NJ Environmental Federation, and Julia Somers, Director, Highlands Coalition joined Tittel.

Environmentalists and developers eagerly await May 21, 2008, which marks the deadline for DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson to decide whether to adopt proposed stream protection designations of 910 miles of environmentally sensitive and water supply streams. The DEP proposal would establish 300 foot wide protected natural buffers along each side of designated “Category One” (C1) streams, rivers, and lakes. Buffers protect water quality, provide wildlife habitat, and reduce flooding. (To see the list of all the proposed C1 streams and rivers click on link to DEP proposal: http://www.nj.gov/dep/rules/notices/052107b.htm
The “Category One” waters buffers initiative was developed by the McGreevey Administration, who designated over 1,000 miles of new water supply and exceptional ecological C1 streams and rivers, including all of NJ’s major reservoirs. McGreevey’s DEP also established new 300 foor buffers along all existing trout based C1 stream (about 3,000 total miles), providing protections for over 200,000 acres of environmentally senstiive riparian lands. The C1 anti-degration policy later became the framework for much of the Highlands Act’s water protections.
In a high profile Earth Day event last April at the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association, Commissioner Jackson built on the McGreevey initiative and boasted:
DEP DELIVERS ON COMMITMENT TO PROTECT NEW JERSEY’S
WATER QUALITY
TRENTON – Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson today announced more than 900 miles of waterways and 1,300 acres of reservoirs that supply drinking water to millions of New Jerseyans deserve special protection from the dangers of development – one of two unprecedented water-quality initiatives unveiled by Governor Jon S. Corzine’s Administration to mark the 37th anniversary of Earth Day.”
(Link to DEP Press release: http://www.nj.gov/dep/newsrel/2007/07_0023.htm
DEP rules were proposed in the May 21, 2007 NJ Register. Under NJ law, DEP has one year from that date to either adopt the proposal or it will expire.
As of yesterday, the proposal had not been signed.
Almost 1,400 public comments were submitted on the proposal, overwhelmingly in support of the stream upgrades.
But powerful opponents are seeking to kill or scale back the proposal, including the NJ Builders Association, NJ Business and Industry Association, Chamber of Commerce and Schoor-DePalma Engineers.
Major corporate entities with controversial development projects calling for thousands of new housing units and millions of square feet of commercial development in the pipeline also objected, including Bristol Myers Squibb (Hopewell Campus expansion), IntraWest Mountain Creek Resort, BPG (former Lucent Technologies Hopewell site), Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Heritage Minerals, and the Departments of the Army (Picatinny Arsenal) and Air Force strongly opposed the proposal.
Environmental groups, while supporting the proposed specific designations of rivers and streams, strongly criticized and opposed DEP’s proposed changes to narrow and restrict the scope of the scientific methodology, which will limit future “C1″ designations. The proposed changes in the C1 method also will eliminate a list of 1,600 current qualified but backlogged C1 stream designations proposed by DEP in the March 2003 NJ Register for public comment.
The proposal was also opposed by Corzine’s own Office of Smart Growth – Director Ben Spinelli claimed the proposal conflicts with the State Plan’s Smart growth policies. The State Department of Transportation also objected to restrictions on new highway construction (so much for the DOT spin about “context sensitive design” and “fix it first”)
Comments are available upon request.
I argue that the proposal has a legal procedural defect that requires re-proposal. I have implored the DEP Commisisoner not to give the opponents another legal bite at the apple by changing the C1 designation methodology, which was upheld by the Appellate Division. The Court rejected a challenge by the NJ Builders Association and found the current C1 designation methodology was scientifically and legally sound. Thus there is no reason to change it and risk another legal challenge, one which I believe will be successful this time around as a result of a procedural defect.
It should be interesting to see how this one turns out.
(full disclosure: I headed the C1 program initiative for former DEP Commissioner Campbell from 2002-2004, staffed the Governor’s Highlands Task Force, and drafted the DEP regulatory provisions of the Highland Act, so I am a biased observer).

Ever heard of “The “Pharmaceutical Environmental Committee”?
Sounds like a bunch of good deed doers.

Bill WolfeBMS joined the chemical and oil industries to attack drinking water protections proposed by DEP.

How about the “Site Remediation Industry Network”? Harmless, right?
Well that’s just not the case. They are front groups that some of NJ’s largest corporations hide behind to attack environmental and public health protections.
Yet these same corporations – many leaders in the health care industry – carefully cultivate a “green” corporate image. To protect their “brand”, they distance themselves from the dirty deeds of anti-environmental corporate lobbying and trench warfare.
Let me offer the most recent egregious example of this hypocrisy and irresponsibility.
Last week, DEP caved to industry pressure and withdrew proposed soil standards designed to protect groundwater drinking water supplies from toxic contamination at hazardous waste sites. (see: DEP caves to industry – abandons groundwater protection standards
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/05/dep_caves_to_industry_abandons.html
Environmentalists say state standards fail to protect water
DEP shelves uniform regulations for cleanup
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-10/12106533547840.xml&coll=1
The proposed groundwater standards were vehemently opposed by “The Pharmaceutical Environmental Committee” and the “Site Remediation Industry Network”. Both groups filed extensive written comments attacking the proposal, largely to protect their own corporate profits from the costs these groundwater protections would impose on these industries.
These corporations are legally responsible to pay billions of dollars for cleanup, Natural Resource Damage injuries, and liability for poisoning people and water supplies at hundreds of toxics waste sites across New Jersey.
The people of NJ deserve to know who these corporations are and what interests they serve – so, next time you’re shopping, consider just who is looking out for your health (and I trust that their SEC filings accurately represent the full scope of their NJ cleanup liability):
1. Abbott Laboratories
2. Baxter Healthcare Corporation
3. Bristol -Meyers Squibb
4. Cardinal Health
5. DSM Nutrition Products (Roche)
6. GlaxoSmithKline
7. Hoffman-LaRoche
8. Johnson & Johnson
9. Johnson Mathey, Inc.
10. Merck & Co.
11. Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp
12. Pfizer, Inc.
13. Sanoff-Aventis Pharmaceuticals
14. Schering Corporation
15. Wyeth
And here are the tradtiional major polluters that the “Pharmaceutical Environmental Committee” joined up with to attack DEP’s proposed drinking water protections:
16. ExxonMobile Corporation
17. Conoco Phillips Company
18. Hercules Inc.
19. Stepan [Chemical] Company
20. Tierra Solutions, Inc.
21. Sunoco, Inc.
22. Fuel Merchants Association
23. Weeks Marine Inc.
24. United States Department of Defense
25. Standard Coating Corporation and Union Ink Company
26. Chevron Environmental Management Company
27. National Slag Association [Note: my favorite!]
28. New Jersey Petroleum Council
29. PSEG
30. New Jersey Gasoline, C-Store, and Automotive Association
31. Valero Refining Company
32. Chemistry Council of New Jersey
33. Gerdau Ameristeel Sayreville, Inc.
34. Jersey Central Power & Light
35. Styrene Information and Research Center, Inc.

Bill WolfeDSM (formerly Roche) – Belvidere, NJ

Bill WolfeGovernor Jon Corzine

Corzine Administration Caves on Governor’s Signature Environmental Issue
Chemical Industry “Commends” DEP for Voluntary Rules
Despite Governor Corzine’s repeated campaign pledges to mandate new strong chemical plant safety rules, the Department of Environmental Protection has adopted voluntary chemical plant safety regulations, according to internal agency documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). These state rules were warmly praised by the chemical industry and condemned by unions representing plant workers in formal comments.
Promulgated under the state’s Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act, the rules were supposed to implement Governor Jon Corzine’s pledge to require the use of “inherently safer technology” (IST) to prevent catastrophic chemical accidents or acts of terrorism at an estimated 100 chemical plants throughout the state. Widely praised by environmental and labor groups, IST is supposed to require that industry adopt practices eliminating use of dangerous chemicals so as to reduce risks.
The regulations, which will appear in the next New Jersey Register, the state’s official legal publication, have three major weaknesses that are drawing criticism:
1) Implementation of IST is voluntary. The rules only require industry to conduct an IST review but do not require industry to take any action based on that review;
2) The IST reviews are deemed secret and therefore not subject to public or worker scrutiny; and
3) The chemical industry is allowed to base IST feasibility decisions on economic grounds, thus subjugating public health and safety to industry profit margins.
“‘Inherently safer technologies’ was supposed to be the most effective solution for managing the safety, security, and health risk associated with chemical plants, but what New Jersey produced is only a faint echo of what should have been enacted,” stated New Jersey PEER Director Bill Wolfe. “This is like the IRS requiring people to fill out tax forms but making actual payment of taxes voluntary.”
Not surprisingly, the Chemistry Council, representing industry, submitted comments in which it “commends the Department for not mandating the implementation of IST in this rule proposal and limiting the scope of IST to completing reviews…” By contrast, the New Jersey State Industrial Union Council, representing plant workers, blasted the secrecy of the IST reports.
As the nation’s most densely populated state with a large petrochemical industry, New Jersey has been in the national spotlight on chemical plant safety. Reflecting fears of stringent state regulation, the chemical industry recently battled in Congress to block states from going beyond minimum federal Homeland Security requirements. That battle allegedly ended in December with a mixed result.
“Experience has shown that voluntary compliance does not work, and due to the huge stakes, chemical safety is the last program that should be made voluntary,” added Wolfe, pointing to studies showing that a chemical accident or terrorism event at even one of 15 chemical plants could kill more than 100,000 people who live nearby. “If New Jersey’s chemical plant safety rules are going to be this weak, why should anyone care if they are preempted?”
###
Read the new chemical plant rules
http://www.nj.gov/dep/rules/adoptions/adopt_080505a.pdf
Read the PEER analysis of those rules
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2007/12/chemical_plant_safety_decision.html
Look at the praise from the chemical industry
http://www.peer.org/docs/nj/08_13_5_chem_industry_letter.pdf
View the State Industrial Union Council objections
http://www.peer.org/docs/nj/08_13_5_union_letter.pdf
Revisit the Corzine campaign pledge for “tough mandatory” chemical plant rules
http://www.corzineforgovernor.com/i/pdf/plan_environment.pdf
New Jersey PEER is a state chapter of a national alliance of state and federal agency resource professionals working to ensure environmental ethics and government accountability.

Today, the Legislature held hearings to explore the implications of drugs found in our water supply.

It’s about time.

The agency responsible for this problem – NJ Department of Environmental Protection – has done nothing to address the problem, despite having known about it for more than 5 years. DEP has looked the other way.

According to a study, dated June 2002, by the US Geological Survey (USGS) of monitoring pharmaceutical chemicals in our waters:

“A recent study by the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) shows that a broad range of chemicals found in residential, industrial, and agricultural wastewaters commonly occurs in mixtures at low concentrations downstream from areas of intense urbanization and animal production. The chemicals include human and veterinary drugs (including antibiotics), natural and synthetic hormones, detergent metabolites, plasticizers, insecticides, and fire retardants. One or more of these chemicals were found in 80 percent of the streams sampled. Half of the streams contained 7 or more of these chemicals, and about one-third of the streams contained 10 or more of these chemicals. This study is the first national-scale examination of these organic wastewater contaminants in streams and supports the USGS mission to assess the quantity and quality of the Nation’s water resources. A more complete analysis of these and other emerging water-quality issues is ongoing.”

Little is known about the potential health effects to humans or aquatic organisms exposed to the low levels of most of these chemicals or the mixtures commonly found in this study.
http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/FS-027-02/index.html

Instead of responding to an emerging problem DEP has known about for over 5 years, just last month DEP proposed new clean water permit regulations that totally ignore the problem. See: Clean Water Anyone? http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/04/clean_water_anyone.html

This is a particularly outrageous failure to act, because DEP regulations are renewed on 5 year cycles. That means this problem will remain unaddressed for at least 5 more years, unless the legislature mandates a new water quality monitoring and pollution control program for these chemicals.

If DEP were serious, they would have required a monitoring program to collect necessary data on the levels of these chemicals in wastewater effluent and ambient levels in NJ waters. After monitoring data is collected, regulatory standards are set. Permittees then would be required to upgrade pollution control treatment technology to reduce or remove these chemicals.

This is the way we have been solving water pollution problems under the Clean Water Act for more than 35 years.

It is easy to hold legislative dog and pony shows to create the mis-impression that you are solving a problem.

DEP regulations are where the rubber meets the road – and the silence on that lack of DEP resolve is deafening.

To see a similar case where DEP failed to act to protect wildlife from low levels of bio-accumulative toxics, see: NEW JERSEY WILL MISS WEDNESDAY’S WATER QUALITY DEADLINE — DEP’s Campbell Tells Chemical Industry He Will Bow on Toxic Standards
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=573

According to today’s Bergen Record:
“New Jersey officials released a second five-year plan for “controlling” cancer on Friday, saying that much has been accomplished but much remains to be done in a state with one of the highest rates of cancer in the nation.”
N.J. unveils 5-year plan for combating cancer
http://www.northjersey.com/news/18824564.html
I find it extremely curious that this coverage failed to mention environmental and occupational exposure to industrial chemicals – does the State’s Plan share this deficiency?
Compare that coverage to the Houston Chronicle’s investigative series on chemical pollution “In Harm’s Way”
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/01/what_they_dont_want_you_to_see.html
Or this statement by DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson, based upon expert testimony last month to the NJ Clean Air Council “Experts and Advocates: Pollution from Ports A High Cancer Risk to Urban NJ
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/04/experts_and_advocates_pollutio.html
Here are some incovenient truths I hope ther State’s Cancer Prevention plan considered:
NJ residents are bombarded – on a daily basis while at home, work and outdoors – by multiple exposures to known human chemical carcinogens in air, water, soil, and food:
1) NJ has statewide ambient air pollution levels for hazardous air pollutants that exceed EPA cancer benchmarks by hundreds or thousands of times (this data has been on the front page of the Record).
2) NJ drinking water across the state has been found to be contaminated with carcinogens, and hundreds of municipal and private wells have been shut down due to chemical contamination.
3) Soil and groundwater are tainted by carcinogens at 18,000 toxic waste sites; 114 Superfund sites (the most in the nation); hundreds of uncontrolled leaky landfills and dumps; and over 6,000 know groundwater pollution sites.
4) NJ has an industrial legacy, a large active petro-chemical industry sector, and is the nation’s most densely populated state. Occupational exposure to carcinogens is widespread in NJ workplaces.
5) A joint federal/state cancer cluster study in Tom’s River found that rare forms of childhood cancers in girls was both statistically and causally related to a toxic air pollutant released by a local industry.
I could go on, so I assume you get my drift.
But I see nothing in the story about the environment/toxic chemicals as a contributing cause of cancer (other than naturally occurring radon and sunlight).
What’s up with that?
Are environmental carcinogens addressed in the DoH’s 5 year plan?
Reader input welcome – I could not find a link to the State’s 5 Year Cancer Prevention Plan.