WolfeNotes.com

Coming out of the Great Recession, we need full employment, not patched up neoliberalism.

I just read a superb essay Back to Full Employment by University of Massachusetts economics Professor Robert Pollin.

Pollin also is author of 2009 Reports (I have yet to read): The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy and “Green Prosperity“ which explore the broader economic benefits of large-scale investments in building a clean-energy economy in the United States.

But for now, I want to highlight the above chart from Pollin’s full employment piece, and urge readers to read Pollin’s entire essay for the broader context, some basic economic theory, and the political economy we’re operating within.

The above chart illustrates that the most cost effective jobs producing investments are education and green energy.

I find it just astonishing – and totally unacceptable – that these are exactly the 2 things that the national Republican Party and our NJ Governor Christie are slashing and attacking.

It is even worse that these same Republicans (and many corporate, Wall Street finance, and/or austerity Democrats, including Obama) are promoting more subsidies to fossil fuels, which is the least effective in producing jobs and by far the most destructive to the environment.

Here’s an excerpt from Pollin’s essay:

Creating Jobs: Education and Clean Energy
What kind of full-employment policy could work in our globalized age?

At its foundation, such a policy would channel more public and private investment in the United States toward those industries that efficiently generate an abundance of good domestic jobs. Using data I developed with colleagues at the Political Economy Research Institute (working directly from the industrial surveys and input-output tables of the U.S. Department of Commerce) we can ascertain the job-creating effects of spending in various sectors of the U.S. economy. Consider four possible areas of investment: education, the military, clean energy, and fossil-fuel energy. By a significant margin, education is the most effective source of job creation among these alternatives” roughly 29 jobs per $1 million in spending. Clean-energy investments are second, with about seventeen jobs per $1 million of spending. The U.S. military creates about twelve jobs, while spending within the fossil-fuel sector creates about five jobs per $1 million.

Governor Christie’s job killing Energy Master Plan proposal to rollback renewable energy goals, promote environmentally destructive fossil fuels, and expand subsidies and corporate welfare will be the focal point for this debate in NJ.

Public hearings will be held on  July 26 at NJIT in Newark; August 3 at the Statehouse in Trenton, and August 11 at Stockton College in Pomona.

ENGO’s must get out of their offices and organizational silos, and organize massive protests.

They must work with labor, green energy companies, small businesses, contractors, and community based groups to take the fight to the Governor on this – or kiss renewable energy goodbye.

More to follow on this.

Back in the Day - when technology was cutting edge and safe

Political Deal – Not “Best Professional Judgement” mandated by Clean Water Act

As a set up for today’s Clean Water Act permit hearing for the Oyster Creek Zombie nuke plant, I wrote a satirical post yesterday.

I contrasted the NY Times’ lame coverage of the US nuclear establishment with the hard hitting coverage of Japan after the Fukushima disaster.

Little did I know that the straw men I sarcastically assembled would come to life today in lovely Lacey Township, NJ.

Life is more absurd  than art ( watch this BBC documentary on the history of 20th Century technology – and especially episode 5 “A is for Atom“ for cultural meanings).

The hearing room was packed with about 75 partisan residents, organized and turned out by the Lacey Township Republican Committee chairman.

That local Republican Chairman not only was living proof of every fatal flaw in the Japanese nuclear culture exposed by the NY Times, but he openly bragged about supporting Exelon and the Oyster Creek nuclear plant for purely economic and blatently partisan political reasons.

Not to be outdone, the Mayor of neighboring Waretown said he would support Exelon, if he could just “get a piece of the action”.

Residents spoke of how great a neighbor Exelon was, one asked for another nuclear plant to be built at the site, and one said that the Oyster Creek plant actually improves the health of Barnegat bay and fisheries.

You see, Atlantic Coast migrating fish have learned to “take a left turn at Barnegat Bay” (no shit, this is a direct quote).

Exelon has discovered just how easy it is to buy local support when you spread a little money around town.

I testified that Christie DEP’s decision to reverse the prior December 2009 draft permit decision that cooling towers are the “Best Technology Available” (BTA) to protect the Barnegat Bay was transparently a political decision, that is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.

The DEP BTA decision also conflicts with and violates the Clean Water Act’s Section 316(b) mandate to protect the Bay and apply “Best Professional Judgement” (BPJ) based on factors of science, law, and engineering and environmental economics, not partisan or local politics.

The Clean Water Act requires DEP to protect the Bay, not the profits of Exelon or the host community economic benefits of Lacey Township.

I noted that the only material fact that had changed upon which DEP based this BTA reversal was the alleged plant closure date of 2019, instead of 2029 under the NRC license.

DEP used this 10 year payback period to conclude that the capital costs of installing cooling towers was economically infeasible and thus not BTA. 

But I noted that this fact that formed the sole basis of their new BTA determination was CREATED by the Governor’s political deal and Commissioner Martin’s ACO. 

This Christie/Martin political negotiation process with Exelon made a sham of the Clean Water  Act’s mandate to apply science, law, engineering based objective economic factors, and cost/benefit analysis.

My testimony was made easy, because I followed directly after the Exelon VP, whose testimony confirmed these facts for me.

I was attacked by residents for “picking on” a nuclear power plant.

When the corruption and lies are so bold and so transparent, its hard not to despair that we are doomed. [Note: there were some well meaning local residents who were either duped, ignorant, or in denial. One resident who opposed the plant asked to speak with me outside. They agreed with my testimony, but was intimidated and afraid to speak because they had kids in the school district.]

Oyster Creek nuclear power plant - one of the nation's oldest "Zombie Plants"

Don’t worry that “it could happen here“.

You should trust Exelon and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Oyster Creek plant  and be happy that we are blessed with a competent, dilligent, safety motivated public servant like Bob Martin:

“We have a commitment from Exelon to continue to operate the nuclear plant in a safe and responsible manner until its closure.” [DEP Commissioner Bob Martin]

Everything’s exceptional and different in the good ole USA – no corrupt lobbying, no myths and no propaganda here -we have strict regulation.

So we doubt that the NY Times will train its powerful journalistic guns on the US nuclear industry and folks like Martin, instead of Japan, who they’ve hammered with stuff like this:

Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.

The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. …

Japan’s government has concentrated its propaganda and educational efforts on creating such national beliefs in the past, most notably during World War II. The push for nuclear power underpinned postwar Japan’s focus on economic growth and its dream of greater energy independence

And of course US regulators like Martin don’t behave like the NY Times tells us Japanese officials do in: Japanese Officials Ignored or Concealed Dangers  and would never do something as dumb as this:

TOKYO — Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.

And Lacey Township officials and residents have their priorities right. They care first and foremost about the health of their families.

They are fiercely independent and care deeply about safety, not just money and local tax revenues, as the NY Times reports is the priority in Japan: In Japan, a Culture That Promotes Nuclear Dependency

As Kashima’s story suggests, Tokyo has been able to essentially buy the support, or at least the silent acquiescence, of communities by showering them with generous subsidies, payouts and jobs. In 2009 alone, Tokyo gave $1.15 billion for public works projects to communities that have electric plants, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Experts say the majority of that money goes to communities near nuclear plants.

And of course, the US protects whistleblowers like Dennis Zannoni, not like Japan, as the NY Times tells us about Japan’s “culture of complicity“:

In 2000, Kei Sugaoka, a Japanese-American nuclear inspector who had done work for General Electric at Daiichi, told Japan’s main nuclear regulator about a cracked steam dryer that he believed was being concealed. If exposed, the revelations could have forced the operator, Tokyo Electric Power, to do what utilities least want to do: undertake costly repairs.

What happened next was an example, critics have since said, of the collusive ties that bind the nation’s nuclear power companies, regulators and politicians.

Despite a new law shielding whistle-blowers, the regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, divulged Mr. Sugaoka’s identity to Tokyo Electric, effectively blackballing him from the industry.

So, think about all that and speak out at today’s hearing.

Today,  NJDEP will hold a public hearing on the draft water permit that rescinds a prior requirement to install cooling towers and lets Oyster Creek off the hook, allowing 10 more years of slaughter of billions of aquatic plants and animal life that are vital to ecological health of the Bay and fisheries.

A two-session public hearing on the draft permit will be held on July 7, from 1-4 p.m. and from 7-9 p.m., at the Lacey Township Municipal Building, Lacey Road, in Lacey Township.

Written comments on the draft document must be submitted in writing to Pilar Patterson, Chief, or Attention: Comments on Public Notice NJ0005550, Mail Code 401-02B, Bureau of Surface Water Permitting, P.O. Box 420, Trenton, NJ 08625 by August 1, 2011

My views are clear. According to the the December 21, 2010 Asbury Park Press story: “Critics Blast Agreement That Avoids Cooling Towers At Oyster Creek”

Allowing the Oyster Creek nuclear reactor to operate through 2019 without cooling towers will undermine efforts to reduce fish losses and thermal impacts at other power stations and could conflict with forthcoming federal rules for cooling towers, critics contend. …

The result “is a horrible precedent, reversing the draft NJPDES permit’s best available technology determination,” said Bill Wolfe of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a former DEP employee and agency critic.

Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun
I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come
Watching the ships roll in
And then I watch ’em roll away again, yeah

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Wastin’ time (~~~ “Dock of the Bay“  (1968)  Otis Redding (listen))

In what looks like good news, US EPA Region 2 has weighed in in support of a TMDL on Barnegat Bay (see today’s Asbury Park Press story by Kirk Moore: EPA region shief says bay nutrient limit possible in three years).

I have not read EPA Regional Administrator Enck’s letter and don’t know if it pulls any regulatory triggers or threatens to withhold federal funds or is merely a warning [Update: here is the EPA letter h/t Jeff Tittel – it doesn’t really do anything], but we’ve been recommending that EPA step in to enforce the Clean Water Act’s TMDL requirements for many months, most recently, last week:

“We have argued for a Clean Water ActTotal Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) as the vehicle to address the Bay’s ecological collapse.

But Governor Christie vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature that would have mandated a TMDL for the Bay.

We have called on EPA to mandate a TMDL, given NJ’s continuing gross violation of the Clean Water Act and prior TMDL commitments with EPA.

We believe there are many reasons why this science based TMDL regulatory stick is preferable to the current Barnegat Bay Partnership locally driven management model and Christie Administration’s voluntary SAMP approach.

But despite EPA’s intervention, DEP still remains in denial on the TMDL issue and is politically defending the Governor’s veto of the TMDL bill.

DEP  remains opposed to a TMDL on the Bay. DEP testified in opposition to the TMDL bill as it moved through the Legislature. We’ve explained that the reason is grounded in Governor Christie’s ideological opposition to regulatory tools, not in science or law.

Worse, given the EPA letter, DEP now is attempting to shift the focus to EPA’s denial of NJ’s funding request, instead of where it belongs: on NJ DEP’s failure to comply with the Clean Water Act which has allowed the Bay to deteriorate to the point of ecological collapse.

And once again, the DEP press office is caught spinning the science.

Usually reliable Tom Johnson’s NJ Spotlight story leads with the EPA funding denial instead of the real issue, which is EPA TMDL support. But aside from downplaying the more significant federal EPA Clean Water Act oversight story, DEP is quoted with this whopper:

“We need more science and data before we decide whether a TMDL is needed,” Ragonese said.

The DEP Press Office needs to get out more often and talk with the scientists instead of parroting Commissioner Martin’s spin. Some old news:

• “We’ve actually reached a critical threshold where action is required to protect the bay” said Michael DeLuca, the senior associate director of Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Science. “Now it is clearly time to act.” (Star Ledger; 7/31/09)
• “We have the data already. We’ve had it for years,” said Michael Kennish, a research professor who heads Rutgers University efforts to study Barnegat Bay’s pollution problems. “We know what the problems are. We need to have big stuff done, mandates and requirements imposed by DEP.” [Asbury Park Press. 8/6/2010]

More recently, DEP’s own Science Advisory Board just recommended a TMDL for the Bay and coastal plain streams.

The DEP SAB findings explicity supported the TMDL approach for Barnegat Bay and coastal plain streams.

As we wrote last week, the SAB Report found:

“The most sensitive receptors for for excess nitrate are likely to be estuaries and low nutrient coastal plain streams. Given the nature of estuaries, a load-based regulatory approach (TMDL type approach) would make the most sense. Such an approach, furthermore, would be based on total nitrogen, not nitrate alone. (@ page 8)

So now even Commissioner Martin’s own hand picked SAB agrees with what we’ve said all along: that a “regulatory approach (TMDL type approach) would make the most sense” to address nitrogen eutrophication in estuaries and coastal plain streams.

But curiously, in Tom Johnson’s article, Willie DeCamp of Save Barnegat Bay blasts DEP Commissioner Martin and rants against “bureaucrats”:

“It is a disgrace that six months into the process, the commissioner does not even know that by far the largest vector of nitrogen into Barnegat Bay is air pollution,” said Willie DeCamp of Save Barnegat Bay. “The Governor’s ten points are silent on air pollution. Save Barnegat Bay came to the event wanting to constructively and interactively address that fatal flaw.”

“If Commissioner Martin can’t listen to what the public has to say, Barnegat Bay can never be saved,” DeCamp said. “You can’t do the whole thing with bureaucrats. Air pollution will not go away by being ignored.”

As a harsh critic of Martin, I have no problem with that. I too blasted Martin for spinning as did the Asbury Park Press editorial board for frustrating public comment. But, in fairness, the criticism must be fact based.

So, I question on what basis (data) Decamp claims that atmospheric deposition (air pollution) is “by far” the largest source of nitrogen to the Bay.

The data I’ve seen does NOT support that statement. Just the opposite: atmospheric deposition is the smallest source, and perhaps the relatively least able to be managed cost effectively because years of effort and billions of dollars have already been invested in NOx air pollution controls, so the low hanging fruit has been picked.

The total nitrogen loadings and relative source contributions are what a TMDL is supposed to derive. That work has not been done yet.

However, a December 7, 2009 USGS study estimated that total nitrogen loadings for the Bay are 650,000 kg/year, with only 22% from atmospheric deposition, 66% from surface water, and 12% from groundwater.

Furthermore, directly on point, that study found:

This new loading estimate was compared to a previously published estimate produced by using a similar methodology but lesss current data through 1997.  Findings of the present study include a substantially lower estimate of atmospheric deposition of nitrogen to the estuary compared to the previous estimate. The study results also offer further support of the relation btween land use and nitrogen levels, and indicate that the Toms and Metedeconk river basins account for more than 60% of the nitogen load to the estuary from surface-water discharge.

The TMDL is the best tool in the toolkit for restoring water quality.

The TMDL’s scientific findings and enforceable numeric nitrogen loading restrictions can be incorporated in and implemented in DEP land use and water regulatory programs:

• CAFRA (to restrict impervious cover, preserve vegetation, and reduce the number, size and rollback current high impervious cover limits in centers)
• wastewater planning (to limit wastewater flow capacity and restrict extensions of sewers in environmentally sensitive lands, limit septic density, better manage septic systems, and assess aging infrastructure for leaks);
• stream buffers (by mandating 300 foot buffers on all streams as non-point pollution BMPs)
• NJPDES (by requiring sewer authorities to upgrade treatment, resuse, and reinject clean highly treated wastewater to replenish aquifers);
• water allocation (to mandate water conservation, cap or lower existing water allocation permits, and restrict future allocations to address loss of freshwater inputs to the Bay, loss of flow in coastal streams, salt water intrusion into aquifers, and adverse wildlife and wetlands effects associated with over-pumping and over-allocation of freshwater);
• stormwater management (by providing a scientific and regulatory stick to drive upgrades of existing stormwater impoundments and limit future ones, and force new development to reduce imperviousness and better manage stormwater).

The local advocates need to get with the Clean Water Act’s TMDL program, focus criticism on DEP Commissioner Martin and not DEP staffers, and not blast people on false grounds and mislead the public about the science.

Today’s Bergen Record is running an AP story about new asbestos problems in Libby, Montana (New Danger Found in Asbestos Town in Montana)

Looks like again, EPA failed to do their job – looks like they covered up the problem and failed to act until the press started doing investigative work (hint to NJ press corps!)

The AP story reports:

An Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has known for at least three years that the wood piles were contaminated with an unknown level of asbestos, even as Libby residents hauled truckload after truckload of the material away from the site and placed it in yards, in city parks, outside schools and at the local cemetery. The Environmental Protection Agency did not stop the removal of the material until the AP began investigating in early March.

In addition to Libby, I doubt many people are aware that cancer causing asbestos mined in Libby is present in the attics and walls of thousands of homes across the country – and in gardens too.

Asbestos from Libby is found in insulation and garden products used in thousands of homes. The asbestos containing product is vermiculite, sometimes called Zonolite.

A big part of the problem stems from a huge regulatory loophole that is exploited for many bulk products that incorporate (under the Orwellian termed “beneficial reuse“) industrial toxic wastes, like contaminated soils, coal and power plant sludges and residuals, and many other industrial wastes which are used to manufacture everything from concrete and wallboard to cosmetics. The AP story nails this loophole:

Local officials estimate that 1,000 tons were used in landscaping and for erosion control in Libby. Over the past decade, as much as 15,000 tons were sold and hauled out of town to destinations unknown, according to the economic development official who was selling it.

The EPA is now scrambling to gauge the public health risk and is preparing to issue guidelines about how residents should handle the wood, including warnings not to move or work with the material when it’s dry to avoid stirring up asbestos. But the agency has decided it won’t track down where the chips went, saying it no longer has jurisdiction because the material is now classified as a commercial product.

Back in 2000 or so, EPA began to investigate asbestos and related vermiculite problems, after a large number of asbestos related deaths in Libby forced their hand.

As part of the EPA investigation of the practices of WR Grace in Libby, a large zonolite plant was discovered in Trenton, NJ. I recall that the Trenton WR Grace site was found to have 15,000 cubic yards of high level asbestos illegally disposed on site.

The WR Grace Company certified – and the NJ DEP had rubber stamped the company’s false certification – that the site was clean. But EPA later had to intervene and remove the asbestos.

That case was one of the failed DEP cleanup scandals we testifed about way back in 2006. As the Bergen Record then wrote:

“W.R. Grace & Co. closed its insulation factory in the heart of Hamilton Township 12 years ago and gave the site a clean bill of health.

Under new environmental cleanup rules designed to speed the reuse of industrial sites, state [DEP] regulators took the company’s word, never testing an ounce of the property outside of Trenton.

But there was contamination — lots of it. Last year, town officials learned Grace had left behind 15,000 tons of soil riddled with extraordinarily high levels of asbestos.
[…]
“The new poster child for the system’s failings is Hamilton, where asbestos isn’t the only problem.

Last month, town officials were told that crushed concrete used as a roadbed at a planned housing development was tainted with cancer-causing PCBs. The concrete came from the demolition of the old Ford assembly plant in Edison. Adding to the insult, the state [DEP] had known about the pollution since September but failed to notify locals for six months.

State and federal officials have opened criminal probes of both the asbestos and PCB incidents.”

The Legislature held oversight hearings and the NJ Attorney General launched a criminal investigation. But I don’t know what – if anything – became of that investigation.

During Whitman’s EPA tenure, EPA basically swept the national vermiculite problem under the rug. Worse, the Whitman EPA failed to respond aggressively in Libby, and refused to declare a public health emergency there. Corporate polluter WR Grace was never fully held accountable for the hundreds of deaths they caused.

To gauge the national vermiculite risks, EPA did a “pilot” study of just 6 homes in Vermont. The risk assessment in that study did not quantify cancer risks, and called for additional research. But I don’t think EPA ever did a followup national study – move on, no problem here – thus the extent of the problem is largely unknown.

So, for homeowners, citizens, and any enterprising reporters out there, here is some information:

• EPA Vermont study fact sheet
• EPA vermiculite technical study page
• EPA Vermiculite page:

Sorry, I didn’t follow this issue closely and am not up to speed, but this red flag from the EPA “pilot” study on vermiculite risks in Vermont homes should raise major concerns (basically, EPA is covering up known cancer risks – letting WR Grace off the hook):