WolfeNotes.com

Bill WolfeLisa Jackson, former Commissioner of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection.

The US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on Lisa Jackson as US EPA Administrator next week.
Below are 10 questions Senators should ask about Jackson’s record in NJ, prepared by our Washington DC friends at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Full documentation to support the facts in the questions can be found as links to this press release – scroll down to read the questions. PEER is making the named DEP employee sources available to media for interviews):
TEN QUESTIONS THE SENATE SHOULD ASK LISA JACKSON — Committee Urged to Scrutinize Jackson’s Actions and Decisions in New Jersey
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1147

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Lisa Jackson testifies at Senate confirmation hearing

WHY LISA JACKSON SHOULD NOT RUN EPA —

Disastrous Record in New Jersey Bodes Ill for Reforming EPA

Washington, DC —

The track record compiled by Lisa P. Jackson as Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection should disqualify her from serving as the next head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In many instances, Jackson embraced policies at DEP echoing the very practices at the Bush EPA which Senator Barack Obama condemned during the presidential campaign.

DEP employees describe Ms. Jackson as employing a highly politicized approach to decision-making that resulted in suppression of scientific information, issuance of gag orders and threats against professional staff members who dared to voice concerns. These reports raise troubling questions about her fitness to run an agency of much greater size and complexity. Among concerns PEER points to are –

• Cases in which public health was endangered due to DEP malfeasance, including one case involving a day-care center in a former thermometer factory in which DEP failed to warn parents or workers for months about mercury contamination;
• Rising levels of water pollution, contamination of drinking water supplies and poisoning of wildlife with no cogent state response; and
• The state hazardous waste clean-up program under Ms. Jackson was so mismanaged that the Bush EPA had to step in and assume control of several Superfund sites.

“While Ms. Jackson has a compelling biography, little of what occurred during her 31-month tenure commends her for promotion,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Under her watch, New Jersey’s environment only got dirtier, incredible as that may seem.”
In one of her first acts, Jackson appointed the lobbyist for the New Jersey Builders Association as her Assistant Commissioner to oversee critical water quality and land use permits. Jackson later convened an industry-dominated task force to rewrite DEP policies and relaxed pollution enforcement through policies more business-friendly than those under Gov. Christie Whitman. Relying on closed-door deal-making with regulated industry executives and lobbyists, Ms. Jackson produced decisions, such as –

• Invoking “executive privilege”to block a request filed by PEER under the state Open Public Records Act for a copy of her schedule and sign-in logs;
• Pushing to privatize pollution control through outsourcing of toxic clean-ups to industry;
• Abolishing the DEP Division of Science & Research after it produced damning reports on continuing contamination following state-supervised clean-ups.

“In our experience, Lisa Jackson is cut out of the same professional cloth as the current administrator, Stephen Johnson – a pliant technocrat who will follow orders,” Ruch added. “If past is prologue, one cannot reasonably expect meaningful change if she is appointed to lead EPA.”
The one area where Ms. Jackson claims national leadership is the state climate change program but PEER contends that examination of her record yields paltry results –

• DEP failed to meet its first major statutory milestone in implementing the emission reduction goals of the highly touted Global Warming Response Act. A June 30th legal deadline for producing a plan identifying the legislative and regulatory “measures necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” still has not been met. At the same time, Ms. Jackson supported and Gov. Jon Corzine signed “The Permit Extension Act”which exempts thousands of projects from any new energy conservation, efficiency or requirements for solar heating or renewable energy;
• New Jersey missed the historic first auction of greenhouse gas pollution allowances under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, this September because DEP was unable to adopt regulations to implement the pollution trading program that underpinned the auction; and
• Jackson proposed a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that will do little to combat global warming because it sets emissions caps above current levels and contains numerous complex offsets and loopholes that undercut its effectiveness.

“Given what actually transpired in New Jersey, putting Ms. Jackson in a key position for guiding a national global warming effort would be imprudent,” Ruch concluded. “The Obama transition should take a little more time to find the right choice for this critical job.”

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Read the PEER letter to President-elect Obama opposing Jackson

Look at a menu of eco-fiascos under Ms. Jackson

Public Praise contrasts sharply with private criticisms
In the run-up to next week’s US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee confirmation hearing of Obama nominee Lisa Jackson as US EPA Administrator, former Jersey Girl Kate Sheppard has written an in depth piece for Grist, the national journal of the environmental movement.
The piece paints a pathetic picture of NJ environmental politics:
The Lisa of our concerns
N.J. enviros deeply divided over record of Obama’s EPA nominee
Kate Sheppard – 05 Jan 2009
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/5/8314/64771
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Bill WolfeLisa Jackson whispers in Governor Jon Corzine’s ear – April 2008.
Sierra Club has called Corzine “the worst environmental governor ever”
Jackson resigned as DEP Commissioner to become Corzine’s Chief of Staff.

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Lisa Jackson’s DEP ignored scientists’ warnings to regulate a chemical that is poisoning drinking water supplies of millions of people
[Update: this smoking gun confirms that the problem is worse than I initially suggested. Back on November 2005, DEP pledged:
"The DEP anticipates proposing a regulation reflecting the recommendation prior to January 31, 2006"
http://www.newjersey.gov/dep/watersupply/perchlorate.htm
This shows that Jackson affirmatively abandoned Commissioner Campbell's plan to regulate based on NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute recommendation.]
Earlier this year, the Bush EPA was correctly denounced for bowing to political pressure, rejecting scientists’ recommendations, and deciding not to regulate the chemical perchlorate, a persistent potential carcinogen found in drinking water supplies across the country, including right here in New Jersey. According to a Washington Post story that sparked public outcry:
EPA Unlikely to Limit Perchlorate in Tap Water
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2008
“The Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from the White House and the Pentagon, is poised to rule as early as today that it will not set a drinking-water safety standard for perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and young children across the nation.
According to a near-final document obtained by The Washington Post, the EPA’s “preliminary regulatory determination” — which was extensively edited by White House officials — marks the final step in a six-year-old battle between career EPA scientists who advocate regulating the chemical and White House and Pentagon officials who oppose it. The document estimates that up to 16.6 million Americans are exposed to perchlorate at a level many scientists consider unsafe; independent researchers, using federal and state data, put the number at 20 million to 40 million
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092102352.html
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We start the New Year with a bang – Here’s an excerpt of a devastating Keynote address earlier this year by Chris Hedges, Pulitzer prize winning former NY Times reporter -
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 29, 1938, sen[t] a message to Congress titled “Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power.” In it, he wrote:
‘The first truth is that the liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way to sustain an acceptable standard of living.’
A challenge to the Obama administration – read the full text on the flip:

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