WolfeNotes.com

Earlier this week, we wrote about EPA’s proposed weak approach to regulating toxic coal ash (see: EPA Caves on Coal Ash).

In that post, we suggested that the Obama White House may have intervened to reverse the recommendations of EPA scientist’s and strong arm the EPA Administrator, a widespread abuse under the Bush Administration that was condemned by scientists and national environmental groups.

[reporters] asked about the role of Obama adviser Cass Sunstein, head of the Office and Management Budget Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs . EPA submitted a draft rule in October 2009 for Sunstein’s review. Some have said that he was pressuring EPA to weaken and delay the rule via OIRA’s regulatory review and cost benefit analysis. EPA refused to answer questions about OIRA’s role and how the October version differed from  today’s proposal (particularly about whether the October draft included an EPA preference). That silence basically confirms the suspicion that the EPA science was politically over-ruled by Obama’s OMB acting though OIRA based on economic considerations.

Before Jackson joined the Obama administration, we criticized her as lacking independence as Commissioner of the NJ DEP, where she showed a pattern of politicizing environmental decisions and an inability to resist political pressure (see: WHY LISA JACKSON SHOULD NOT RUN EPA):

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, … If past is prologue, one cannot reasonably expect meaningful change if she is appointed to lead EPA.

Our criticism and suspicions have been confirmed by a beltway news outlet, who just reported that the White House did intervene and over-rule EPA scientists. According to E&E News:

COAL: EPA backed off ‘hazardous’ label for ash after White House review (05/07/2010)
Patrick Reis, E&E reporter

U.S. EPA’s proposed regulation of coal ash as a hazardous waste was changed at the White House to give equal standing to an alternative favored by the coal industry and coal-burning electric utilities.

The Obama administration is now considering two competing rules for regulating the ash that contains toxins that include arsenic, lead and mercury. The first would set binding federal disposal requirements for the ash, and the second would label the ash nonhazardous and leave enforcement to the states (E&ENews PM, May 4).

EPA released the two-headed proposal Tuesday for public comments.

But there was just one rule proposal that EPA sent to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget last October and that would have labeled coal ash a hazardous waste, documents released yesterday show. EPA said then that compliance with the hazardous-waste regulations would be more expensive but that costs would be outweighed by health and environmental benefits.

EPA wrote then that “maintaining a [nonhazardous] approach would not be protective of human and the environment.”

What changed in the six months that the proposal was in OMB’s hands? Says EPA: Its administrator, Lisa Jackson, changed her mind about the hazardous-waste designation.

“After extensive discussions, the Administrator decided that both the [hazardous and nonhazardous] options merited consideration for addressing the formidable challenge of safely managing coal ash disposal,” EPA said in a statement.

In its deliberations on the rule, OMB had more than 40 meetings with stakeholders, 30 with industry groups and at least 12 with environmental and public health groups, according to office’s records. OMB declined to comment on the matter, referring questions to EPA.

Proponents of the hazardous designation say Jackson was bullied away from the agency’s original proposal by industry lobbyists and OMB economists.

“OMB is substituting its judgment for the judgment of the EPA administrator, and that’s not the way this is supposed to work,” said Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform and a professor at the University of Maryland Law School. “Lisa Jackson is accountable for environmental protection and that she could be overruled by a bunch of economists in the basement of the executive office tells us that this process is frighteningly dysfunctional.”

Environmentalists have been pressing EPA for the hazardous designation for years, but the campaign gained momentum 16 months ago when a wet storage pond at a Kingston, Tenn., power plant failed, spilling about 1 billion gallons of sludge into surrounding lands and rivers. Even when the ponds do not fail, they can leach toxic concentrations of heavy metals into water supplies, said Lisa Evans, an attorney with the nonprofit Earthjustice.

Under the hazardous option EPA proposed Tuesday, such ponds would be phased out over five years. The nonhazardous alternative would allow new wet storage ponds to be built but require new safety measures and pollution monitoring devices.

Utilities and companies that sell coal ash for recycling as a building material argue that a hazardous designation overstates the health risks from coal ash and would unnecessarily impose new storage costs. They also say it would stigmatize building materials that use recycled coal ash and send more of the waste to landfills (Greenwire, Jan. 13).

The changes to EPA’s proposal during the OMB review suggest the regulatory-review process worked properly, said Jim Roewer, executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group.

Both environmental groups and affected business had an opportunity to share their views, Roewer said. The number of meetings with industry groups should not be seen as “undue influence” but rather the result of the high number of companies affected by coal ash rules, he said.

The review process “does open the opportunity for interested stakeholders to present their views so that EPA or whatever federal agency is developing a rule can get as much information as possible,” Roewer said. “To say this is a bad thing for public policy seems like a strange argument.”

We have been writing about the dangers of cost benefit analysis as an industry backed tool to weaken regulatory protections and undermine science based air, water, and public health and safety standards.

We also have tried to explain how the new Christie Regulatory Czar and closed door “stakeholder” meetings are an abuse of Executive Power.

The Obama WH intervention to kill strong coal ash regulation via cost benefit analysis and closed door industry meetings is exactly the process the Christie Administration has created in Executive Order #2 and the new Regulatory Czar, Kim Guadagno.

That process already killed a DEP proposed drinking water standard and rollbacks of more than a dozen major DEP rules are underway. – including the Highlands Septic Density standards.

We can expect a lot more rollbacks, unless the public is made aware of what is going on and begins to oppose the rollbacks, before they become fate accompli.

This Washington Post story really is disgusting – U.S. exempted BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study.

The Interior Department exempted BP’s calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.

The decision by the department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP’s lease at Deepwater Horizon a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 — and BP’s lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions — show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf. …

Kiern Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.

Agency a ‘rubber stamp’

“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.

BP has lobbied the White House Council on Environmental Quality — which provides NEPA guidance for all federal agencies– to provide categorical exemptions more often. In an April 9 letter, BP America’s senior federal affairs director, Margaret D. Laney, wrote to the council that such exemptions should be used in situations where environmental damage is likely to be “minimal or non-existent.” An expansion in these waivers would help “avoid unnecessary paperwork and time delays,” she added.

Aha – gotta cut all that bureaucratic Red Tape paperwork and promote economic development!

But don’t think that the same thing is not happening right here in NJ. Governor Christie’s Executive Order #2 mandates it:

1. For immediate relief from regulatory burdens, State agencies shall:

[a-b]

c. Adopt rules for waivers which recognize that rules can be conflicting or unduly burdensome and shall adopt regulations that allow for waivers from the strict compliance with agency regulations

d. Employ the use of cost/benefit analyses, as well as scientific and economic research from other jurisdictions, including but not limited to the federal government when conducting an economic impact analysis on a proposed rule.

Making matters even more absurd, DEP Commissioner Martin has formed a secret hand picked “stakeholder” group to discuss such waivers and regulatory relief. Worse, environmental groups have not denounced him or the Governor for it and are instead PARTICIPATING and thereby giving this sham an air of legitimacy!

A friend just passed on a Proclamation by “Our Good Governor” (TM) that May 3-7 is “Air Quality Awareness Week”

A couple of things immediately are called to mind.

First of all, the DEP claim that the Clean Air Council “supported the Governor with a Resolution” as stated on the DEP website is flat out false

You can read the Clean Air Council’s March 10 Resolution for yourself and note that it does not even mention “Our Good Governor” (TM) and is limited to supporting the National effort.

Shame on DEP for attempting to imply that the Clean Air Council supports “Our Good Governor”(TM) and politicizing the scientific work of the Clean Air Council.

Secondly, ironically, the NJ Clean Air Council held its annual hearing on April 14 and there was much testimony that was critical of DEP and why DEP needed  to a lot more to improve its regulation of hazardous air pollutants (like volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), fine particulates, and ozone. (see this as well – and this for the unjust and disparate impacts on urban NJ) .

Shame on DEP for not informing the public that NJ fails to meet federal air quality standards for ozone, fine particulates, and hazardous cancer causing air pollutants. DEP failed to mention that there is serious unfinished business and ongoing major health risks caused by air pollution, particularly for risks to children and poor and minority populations of urban NJ.

Third, despite “Our Good Governor’s (TM) Proclamation Obfuscation, Christie policy has jeopardized a DEP proposed clean air rule to restrict sulfur content in fuels.

And fourth, the spinmeisters at DEP who champion “Our Good Governor” (TM), fail to note that 90% of most people’s time is spent indoors, and that indoor air quality is at risk from the migration of chemicals into buildings, know as vapor intrusion.

It is pathetic when DEP spin is so over the top and divorced from facts.

DEP needs to stop spinning to defend “Our Good Governor’s (TM)” rollbacks and start working to improve protections of public health and the environment.

“Cry Havoc” and let slip the Dogs of War.

~~~ William Shakespeare (Julius Ceaser,1601)

[Update 5/14/10] – I used the Bard as metaphor for the Christie regime – in a superb story on the same issue  Christie Cuts Leave Small Solar Businesses Out in the Cold , veteran reporter Tom Johnson finds “panic in the streets”:

Panic in the Streets’

“There’s panic in the streets,” said Lyle Rawlings, president of Advanced Solar Products in Flemington and president of the trade group. It was evident when the Office of Clean Energy opened the program up for new applications on May 3 at Conservation Services Group offices in Iselin. “People were waiting up to four hours and some of them didn’t get approval,” he said.]

The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare’s parlance ‘the dogs of war’) to pillage and chaos.

Shakespeare was well aware of the use of the meaning of havoc and he used ‘cry havoc’ in several of his plays. The ‘cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’ form of the phrase is from his Julius Caesar, 1601. After Caesar’s murder Anthony regrets the course he has taken and predicts that war is sure to follow.

ANTONY:
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Governor Christie has let slip the dogs of war – and they are tearing the policy fabric in pillage and chaos.

Governor Christie is feeding and encouraging those dogs.

Today, the Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities Committee heard the same old story from the same old dogs of pollution.

Rick Thigpen, PSEG Public Affairs. Look closely and see the wind turbine on his lapel – it should have been a nuclear containment building, as PSEG is seeking to build another nuclear power plant in South Jersey. He claimed the energy plans “must include new nuclear power”.

Those dogs see growing electric demand. They want more nuclear power and more in state power plants. They want subsidies for businesses. They want more monopoly utility profits. The want more gas pipelines and more electric power-lines to import more cheap dirty coal power. They misrepresent the economics of efficiency and renewable energy. They dismiss public concerns about global warming. They ignore the explosive growth in demand for alternative energy (wind and solar). They want to perpetuate current huge subsidies for fossil fuels. They deny extremely high environmental and public health costs caused by the pollution from fossil fuels, virtually none of which are reflected in the price of fossil based energy electric rates (cheap imported dirty coal).

In other words, these men are dinosaurs – yet they rule the Christie administration’s energy and environmental policy apparatus.

Christie diverted over $300 million in energy efficiency and renewable energy money to pay for tax cuts for wealthy individuals and greedy corporations. (another act of hypocrisy, given last year’s criticism, reported by the Press of Atlantic City : GOP critical of diversions from Clean Energy Fund

TRENTON – Republican lawmakers said Wednesday they are outraged that New Jersey will pay its utility bills with $30 million set aside for the development of clean energy in the state.

The money, from the state’s Clean Energy Fund, is one of several items funded by the Societal Benefits Charge on most consumer’s natural gas and electric bills. The Press of Atlantic City first reported the diversion Tuesday.

“If money is being diverted from the Clean Energy Fund to pay the electric bill in Trenton, then the governor is not only undermining our economic development efforts here in Atlantic County, but he is further demonstrating how badly he has run our state,” Atlantic County Freeholder Chairman Jim Curcio said in a statement.

Christie’s DEP budget zero’s the DEP Office of Climate Change, despite DEP’s December 24, 2009 release of an extremely ambitious plan to implement the green house gas reductions mandated by the 2007 Global Warming Response Act. Yet curiously, DEP was not asked to testify today about how the Christie cuts would impact their efforts to implement the GWRA Plan.

Christie also demanded a 90 day review to reassess the BPU Energy Master Plan, in light of new economic realities and his cost benefit analysis and pro-business policies. The Energy Master Plan provides the electric sector strategy, policies, and programs to meet NJ’s energy efficiency, renewable energy, green house gas reduction, and green job goals (just a slight contradiction with the crap they were selling last July).

To start today’s hearing, Joe Sullivan, who described himself as the “BPU Ombudsman” testified on behalf of the Christie Administration to explain the objectives of the Governor’s 90 day reassessment (that sure is a curious role for an “ombudsman“).

Despite Sullivan’s repeated attempts to downplay the policy significance of the Christie review by using euphemisms like “recalibrate” the plan in light of new “inputs”, there is no other way to describe what’s going on other than an all out attempt to gut the EMP by elevating short term and fatally flawed economic indicators above long term policy objectives (like the short term drops in spot market prices for oil and natural gas).

You see Joe, when a plan is based on modeled projections, you can’t simply tweak the “inputs” without fundamentally changing the outputs.

As even the industry folks testified, you are faced with a choice of higher energy costs or supporting current policy to meet energy efficiency, renewable energy and green house gas reduction environmental goals. We already know where the Governor will go on this question and the blind dogs just urged him on today.

Sullivan even conceded the point in response to a question by Chairman Chivukula. The chairman specifically asked whether the Christie reassessment would seek to alter current energy efficiency and renewable energy goals (i.e. 20% energy efficiency and 30% renewable energy by 2020).

Sullivan replied that financial analysis is part of their job to implement the Governor’s cost benefit policies.

So, the die is cast.

And the dogs are lose.

But don’t say we didn’t tell you what it all means.

Today’s Washington Post story “BP is getting more political, and that may help weather oil-spill storm”, reports that Christie Whitman has joined a notorious group of beltway scumbags lobbying for Gulf oil polluter BP:

BP America, the company’s U.S. affiliate, has a special “external advisory council” that includes former House majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.); two former GOP senators, Warren Rudman (N.H.) and Alan K. Simpson (Wyo.); Christine Todd Whitman, an Environmental Protection Agency administrator under George W. Bush; and Jamie S. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general during Bill Clinton‘s administration, according to BP records. Leon Panetta, President Obama’s CIA director, also served on the council before taking his intelligence post.

And we thought it was disgusting when Whitman became a shill for the nuclear industry:

Nuclear spin

Still, Christie Whitman is a PR asset for the nuclear industry. She’s a major political figure widely seen as a moderate. She was the first (and only, to date) woman governor of New Jersey, who ascended to the national stage by responding to President Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address and co-chairing the 1996 Republican National Convention with then-Governor George W. Bush.

Moreover, Whitman has worked hard to obscure her spotty environmental record. Even as she was dismantling New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, “She would ride her bicycle, she would horseback ride, and she would do a lot of public events around open space preservation,” Bill Wolfe told PR Watch. “So, the public perception of her was very favorable on the environment.”