WolfeNotes.com

Little Storm Damage to “Dangerous” Bulls Island Trees

Most Serious Threat to the Forest Remains DEP

Bulls Island - Central portion of Island. In rear, sycamores are tagged, I suspect for cutting. The invasives in foreground are part of DEP riverfront bulldozing that remains to be restored properly, despite USACE Order.

While most folks were doing their last minute Thanksgiving shopping today, I ducked out to Bulls Island to do a quick storm damage assessment and update.

On November 4, I walked Baldpate Mountain and will report on that as well in this post.

I)  Bulls Island

Unfortunately, I missed the last meeting of the D&R Canal Commission on Monday, November 19 – but sent in written comments (see below).

I am pleased to report that, despite near hurricane winds, the 6 acre area of the northern tip of Bulls Island covered by large mature forest and magnificent 200 year old sycamores- the area that DEP claimed was “dangerous” due to trees with rotting roots –  suffered little if any damage. I saw no downed trees. None.

As recently as September, DEP claimed:

Ragonese tells me “it’s a matter of the trees being dangerous; the root systems are bad. This incident that occurred brought to our attention an issue we did not know existed. If someone were to walk in the park and get hurt by a tree, I don’t know how we would be able to look them in the eye.” True, two more sycamores have fallen, though in forest area and toward the river. “If we don’t take these trees down now, they’re going to come down and fall,” he says.

If the root systems on those giant sycamores were rotting, one would assume that 60+ mph winds from “Superstorm Sandy” would have knocked them down.

But that didn’t happen. Those trees all held up just fine. This calls into question DEP’s assessment.

While I saw no downed trees in the northern portion, I did see a couple of downed trees in the central portion of the Island – that’s the area DEP recently also assessed and plans to cut even more trees (see below photo).

In the central portion, there were dozens of large healthy looking trees with orange tape around them, and a Bartlett Tree Service Crew was on site with equipment.  So I fear cutting could be imminent.

I saw 1 large old oak tree and 1 sycamore down – but the trunk of the sycamore snapped about 6 feet up, so the roots held up just fine.

small sycamore trunk snaps - roots held. Above photo shows oak down, including roots.

II)  Baldpate Mountain

I walked Baldpate on November 4.

While I didn’t see the entire forest, the good news is that the large majority of the towering tulips did just fine.

I did see about 20 downed trees (more oaks than anything else), but most were either diseased or knocked down like bowling pins as 1 large tree fell and took out others it hit as it fell.

diseased oak knocked down

III)  D&R Canal Commission Update

The D&R Canal Commission is exploring whether to update and amend the park Master Plan.

Gov. Christie has proposed to replace the entire Commission. That would not only be a huge loss of institutional knowledge and experience, but it would compromise the independence and integrity of the Commission.

I couldn’t make the meeting so I submitted written comments:

Dear Director Dooley – I am unable to attend today’s meeting but would like to provide the following  input to the Commissioners:

1. Please thank DEP Parks for the maintenance work along the trail just north of Bordentown. I appreciate the responsiveness.

2. I would like to reiterate my prior points on the Master Plan:

“I then rose to object and advise that the DAG failed to mention important planning powers to amend the Master Plan (“or portion thereof“) in lieu of a comprehensive update. This would enable a targeted planning effort on the future of Bull’s Island.

Here the applicable satutory language, in boldface:

13:13A-13. Master plan for physical development of park; review of State projects, permits.

13. a. The commission shall prepare, or cause to be prepared, and, after a public hearing, or public hearings, and pursuant to the provisions provided for in subsection 13 b. of this act, adopt a master plan or portion thereof for the physical development of the park, which plan may include proposals for various stages in the future development of the park, oramend the master plan.

As I wrote:

“The current D&R Canal State Park Master Plan is 23 years old, last updated and adopted in May 1989. The Master Plan provides an excellent historical overview, assessment of current conditions, and a vision for the Park’s future. The Plan explains the roles and responsibilities of the various agencies with involvement in the Park, and provides a resource inventory of the Park.

The Vision, principles, and objective adopted by the Plan (p. 31) are particularly important and relevant.

The Plan emphasizes the unique nature of a linear park. The Plan recognizes that despite the multi-uses of the Park, there is a special need for “serenity and separation from the man-made world”. To assure that serenity,  the Plan explicitly rejects compromising the protection of designated uses by competing uses.

The principles and strong sense of separation from man-made activities in the rural portions of the Park are core values. Of particular relevance to Bull’s Island debate is this principle:

“To the extent that it is practical, the Canal Park is an area that should be maintained in its natural state. […]”

We welcome a planning process that focuses on maintaining Bull’s Island in its natural state.

I urged the Commissioners to engage a planning process for Bull’s Island BEFORE departing “into that good night”.

The policy issue could be framed and planning methods defined for the next Commission. The policy issue would be whether to designate the northern tip as a Natural Area, as the southern portion of the Island currently is designated. The planning methods would focus on forest ecology and natural characteristics, including the tip of the Island’s importance in maintaining the structural integrity of the Canal as a water supply source.

I praised the current Master Plan, particularly the enlightened principle that “the park must retain a degree of serenity and separation from the man-made world” and the overall approach of the plan to advancing the various principles and objectives.

Typically, planners must weigh and balance competing or conflicting objectives. The Canal Master Plan is unusual in how it explicitly rejects this balancing framework in principle.

Principle: As a multi-use resource, each of the Canal Park’s primary roles must be given equal weight. 

The different roles of the canal – as a water supply system, a recreational site, history site, natural area, and means of enhancing urban areas – are not to be ranked in importance so that compromises can be made. Compromises do not have to be made at all; accommodation of equal importance of each use is the guide. (@ p.32 – emphases mine)

I advised the Commisioners that DEP’s proposed plan to cut trees to protect recreational users would compromise other critical Master Plan objectives and uses, including maintaining the Island as a natural area and protecting water supply, a clear violation of a core principle of the Plan which is to reject the notion of ranking and balancing and compromising objectives!

If the Commisioners would initiate a planning process, that would do damage control on the ultimate DEP plan for cutting trees and send a clear expectation and message to the new Commissioners: Don’t Mess With Bull’s Island!

Full post here: Thank you. Bill Wolfe, Director, NJ PEER

I urge readers who live in the area to please stay on top of the Bulls Island situation – because of my recent move to Bordentown, I am unable to get there as often. Don’t let the Bartlett Boys do any cutting!

Bartlett Crew on site at Bulls Island today - what were they doing there? File OPRA requests of DEP!

Oyster Creek nuclear plant – one of the nation’s oldest “Zombie Plants”

[Update below]

NJ Newsroom reports that “nuclear safety advocates” have made a “personal appeal” in a letter to Governor Christie regarding safety issues at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant.

Those “advocates” include the NJ Environmental Federation (NJEF).

The NJEF letter, ignoring all this, begins with gushing praise of Gov. Christie’s response to Superstorm Sandy:

As Governor, your leadership through Hurricane Sandy has been inspiring and your use of the bully pulpit quite effective. We write because you must employ that skill set again, right now, on a very urgent public safety matter explained below.

The NJEF letter credits “luck” with preventing a catastrophe:

Luckily, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station (OC) was shutdown for routine maintenance during Sandy and has not yet restarted. Since then, we have learned that the situation was intense with an elevated level of risk then and it remains so today.

Well, I call bullshit on all that (and see this for a real nuclear safety advocate). 

The risks NJEF mentions are real – including stuff like this:

Source: “Japanese Nuclear Accident And US Response” – NEI, Public hearing on (4/7/11 – Trenton)

There was no “luck” involved. And I don’t even recall even seeing NJEF folks at that hearing – or am I thinking of the NJPDES permit hearing in Lacey? –  but that is beside the point.

The point is, the Oyster Creek plant would have been closed permanently by now if the NJ Environmental Federation did not cut a political deal and use it as a pawn.

Dave Pringle, NJEF (R) meets with his friend, DEP Commissioner Martin (L)

The plant would have closed because the Corzine Administration DEP issued a permit that mandated installation of cooling towers to protect Barnegat Bay.

Exelon publicly stated that they would close the plant if they were required to install costly cooling towers. They would close despite a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval that allowed them to operate another 20 years because it was not cost effective to retrofit the plant with costly cooling towers.

But Gov. Christie, bowing to Exelon’s profits and concerns expressed by Republican local officials regarding job loss and impacts on the local tax base, revoked the Corzine DEP permit and cut a deal with Exelon to allow the plant to operate 10 more years.

I called that deal a “horrible precedent” (12/21/10 Asbury Park Press) ( a conclusion publicly disputed by the attorney on the NJEF NRC petition, who supported the Christie deal he now so conveniently ignores).

This was all part of a back room deal with the NJ Environmental Federation (NJEF) – who were duped by Christie.

NJEF agreed to endorse the Gov. and praise him publicly for negotiating a 10 year closure deal, purportedly 10 years prior to the 20 year NRC allowed (but they somehow ignored the Corzine DEP permit closure).

NJEF then cynically used the Exelon deal and Christie endorsement opportunistically to extract other pet projects from the Gov. (what Republican Presidential candidate Romney called “gifts”).

Are we now supposed to forget all this?

For NJEF to now call on Gov. Christie to address plant safety issue reeks. The letter and press release are nothing more than another disgusting stunt.

Over a week ago, Exelon publicly announced a willingess to close the plant:

Exelon Corp. (EXC), the largest U.S. nuclear plant operator, would consider closing its Oyster Creek station before the plant’s planned 2019 decommissioning, Chief Executive Officer Christopher Crane said.

Exelon would accelerate plans to close Oyster Creek in Forked River, New Jersey, if it faced unexpected new capital costs at a time when depressed power prices and cheap renewable energy are squeezing nuclear generation margins, Crane said in an interview yesterday.

(Exelon was reacting to and putting lipstick on the pig of a new round of post Sandy NRC inspections and problems at the plant).

So the NJEF petition to the NRC seeking closure due to Sandy is a transparent attempt to take credit for influencing a corporate decsion alreasdy made. Disgusting in light of the history.

(and I can imagine this news headline:  NJEF praises Christie and then takes credit for the closure as the next step in this disgusting charade).

It’s like the boy who killed his parents pleading to the judge for mercy as an orphan.

Ms. Trauro of NJEF and the other signatories to that letter should take a long hard look in the mirror.

This is Hope Creek, NOT Oyster Creek – provided only to illustrate flood/storm surge risks

Update – of course, we would not want to forget this curious development – I wonder why DEP cancelled that public hearing?:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE                           Contact: Lawrence Ragonese (609) 292-2994
November 1, 2012                                                   Lawrence Hajna       (609) 984-1795
Bob Considine         ( 609) 984-1795

MEDIA ADVISORY
***November 1, 2012***

DEP ANNOUNCES POSTPONEMENT OF NOV. 5 OYSTER CREEK SAFETY ADVISORY PANEL MEETING

TRENTON – The Department of Environmental Protection is announcing the postponement of an Oyster Creek Safety Advisory Panel public meeting scheduled for Monday, Nov. 5, due to Hurricane Sandy.

The meeting, which was to take place at the Ocean County Administration Building in Toms River, will be rescheduled at a later date.

Cognitive Dissonance:

We’re Facing Climate Catastrophe –

But Don’t Worry, Voluntary Market Incentives & Individual Virtue Will Do

But when you hold up a supposed emergency and actually don’t ask anything of people, anything major, they actually think you might be lying, that it might not really be an emergency after all.  Naomi Klein

Sunday night provided – back to back no less – two of the most important public affairs broadcasts I can recall.

Yesterday, I wrote about Ken Burns’ PBS TV documentary and Donald Worster’s book Dust Bowl  (see: We’re All Okies Now).

While Burns’ documentary can be seen as an important historical metaphor, there was an even more important message just prior to it, on Bill Moyers’ show.

Moyers interviewed Naomi Klein (watch it!).

Please watch the entire interview, because Klein did a superb job of discussing her work and explaining both the Shock Doctrine and the current Do The Math tour.

I am a huge fan or Klein’s work and assume readers are familiar with her arguments, so won’t go into them here. Instead, I will focus on just one key point she made – and attempt to connect the dots to relate it to her point about the decline in public opinion.

I don’t want this point to get lost in the larger argument – and it directly relates to what I wrote about yesterday regarding the Senate Environment Committee hearing: my frustration with the status quo in Trenton, where the discussion is mired in denial and continuing subsidies to cars and fossil fuels (and based on “domestic energy security”).

First, on the issue of public opinion:

BILL MOYERS: President Obama managed to avoid the subject all through the campaign and he hasn’t exactly been leading the way.

NAOMI KLEIN: He has not been leading the way. And in fact, you know, he spent a lot of time on the campaign bragging about how much pipeline he’s laid down and this ridiculous notion of an all of the above energy strategy, as if you can, you know, develop solar and wind alongside more coal, you know, more oil, more natural gas, and it’s all going to work out in the end.

No, it doesn’t add up. And, you know, I think personally, I think the environmental movement has been a little too close to Obama. And, you know, we learned, for instance, recently, about a meeting that took place shortly after Obama was elected where the message that all these big green groups got was, “We don’t want to talk about climate change. We want to talk about green jobs and energy security.” And a lot of these big green groups played along. […]

BILL MOYERS: Well, I understand that but we’re so complacent about climate change. A new study shows that while the number of people who believe it’s happening has increased by, say, three percentage points over the last year, the number of people who don’t think it is human caused has dropped.

NAOMI KLEIN: It has dropped dramatically. I mean, the statistics on this are quite incredible. 2007, according to a Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans believed that climate change was real, that it was human caused. And by last year, that number went down to 44 percent. 71 percent to 44 percent, that is an unbelievable drop in belief. But then you look at the coverage that the issue’s received in the media. And it’s also dropped dramatically from that high point. 2007, you know, this was this moment where, you know, Hollywood was on board. “Vanity Fair” launched their annual green issue.

What explains this incredible decline?

Klein goes on to attribute the factors that caused this “incredible” decline in public opinion to elite top down communication, a decline in media coverage, and the power of the energy industry lobby and their propaganda campaign. All true, no doubt.

But, I think more is at play in the decline of public opinion. Something to do with the messenger, as much as the message.

Although Klein does NOT connect the dots between the drop in public opinion and the behavior of environmental groups, she certainly implies it (e.g. “environmental movement too close to Obama”).

I think Klein suggests just what that might be additional factors contributing to this decline as the final point of the interview:

BILL MOYERS: You wrote recently that climate change can be a historic moment to usher in the next great wave of progressive change.

NAOMI KLEIN: It can be and it must be. I mean, it’s our only chance. I believe it’s the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. And we’ve been kidding ourselves about what it’s going to take to get our emissions down to the extent that they need to go down. I mean, you talk about 80 percent lowering emissions. I mean, that is such a huge shift.

And I think that’s part of the way in which, and I don’t mean to beat up on the big environmental groups, because they do fantastic work. But I think that part of the reason why public opinion on this issue has been so shaky is that it doesn’t really add up to say to the public, you know, “This is a huge problem. It’s Armageddon.” You know, you have “Inconvenient Truth.” You scare the hell out of people. But then you say, “Well, the solution can be very minor. You can change your light bulb. And we’ll have this complicated piece of legislation called cap and trade that you don’t really understand, but that basically means that companies here can keep on polluting, but they’re going to trade their carbon emissions. And, you know, somebody else is going to plant trees on the other side of the planet and they’ll get credits.”

And people look at that going, “Okay, if this was a crisis, wouldn’t be we be responding more aggressively? So wouldn’t we be responding in a way that you have, we’ve responded in the past during war times, where there’s been, you know, that kind of a collective sense of shared responsibility?” Because I think when we really do feel that sense of urgency about an issue, and I believe we should feel it about climate change, we are willing to sacrifice. We have shown that in the past. But when you hold up a supposed emergency and actually don’t ask anything of people, anything major, they actually think you might be lying, that it might not really be an emergency after all. So if this is an emergency, we have to act like it. And yeah, it is a fundamental challenge. But the good news is, you know, we get to have a future for our kids.

Let’s repeat that very, very important observation, lest we continue kidding ourselves:

But when you hold up a supposed emergency and actually don’t ask anything of people, anything major, they actually think you might be lying, that it might not really be an emergency after all.

In The Wake of Sandy Devastation, It’s Business As Usual In Trenton

Subsidies for Fossil Fueled Cars on the Turnpike

Dust Bowl refugees - with Climate Change, there's nowhere left to run to.

Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.  ~~~ Economist Milton Friedman

The Senate Environment Committee met today, their first meeting after “Super Storm Sandy” struck.

Silly me, I was expecting some kind of opening statement by the Chairman and a pledge to finally recognize the significance of the storm as another “extreme weather event” that will force real change in energy, transportation, and coastal land use management policies.

I figured the Chair would clear the deck: table all the bills previously scheduled and dedicate the session to an adult conversation (or at least mention and brief the public on the plan for Senate President Sweeney’s public hearings).

I was wrong – there was no epiphany, no context, no discussion of upcoming shore hearings, and the agenda included bills to subsidize natural gas and diesel vehicles.

[Update – NJ Spotlight story: Senate Panel Wants to Steer Alternative Vehicles Into Fast Lane – end]

I had planned to testify briefly and use Ken Burns’ most recent documentary “The Dust Bowl” as metaphor – particularly since PBS ran Part I last night.

But, the Chairman stole my thunder, in his introduction of the new Farm Bureau President.

In a friendly colloqui, Chairman Smith urged the new Farm Bureau President and others to watch Burns’ documentary, which Smith emphasized was about “the greatest man made environmental disaster in history”.

However, it appeared that the new Farm Bureau President and Chairman Smith viewed the Dust bowl as primarily an agricultural problem.

But the implications of the Dustbowl have much broader economic, technological, ecological and social root causes and lessons to be learned –  there are broad parallels as the Dust Bowl becomes a surprisingly apt metaphor for our current global warming and climate change crisis.

Ken Burns’ documentary is based significantly on environmental historian Donald Worster’s classic book, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930’s.

[Compare Burns’ human interested oriented and apolitical work with a more analytical and political documentary produced at the time in 1937: The Plow That Broke The Plains

And while you’re at it, watch another superb documentary about flooding, from 1938, when government felt responsible for educating the public and responding to a crisis:  The River. Note how history, economics, working class labor interests, and environmental issues are interwoven into a coherent narrative and government policy response. This wholistic perspective has been totally lost by environmental groups, government, and media.]

The first 15 minutes of the Burns documentary interview Worster and summarize his key observations. But unfortunately, those conclusions were lost in the following 90 minutes, due to the emphasis on the human interest angles on the catastrophe.

So let me excerpt the key contours of Worster’s work and let readers draw their own conclusions about the implications for today’s global warming crisis.

Worster prefaces the introduction with a quote by Marx:

All progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the laborer, but of robbing the soil.

Worster then introduces his argument  (and keep in mind the fundamental inability of this country to face up to limits to growth – even in the face of extreme weather – the tawdry commercial boosterism and greed of the current 1%, Wall Street driven, “drill baby drill”, fracking, domestic oil and gas gold rush, and shore rebuild mentality in mind):

The Dust Bowl was the darkest moment in the 20th century life of the southern plains. The name suggests a place – a region whose borders are as inexact and shifting as a sand dune. But it was also an event of national, even planetary, significance. A widely respected authority on world food problems, George Borgstrom, has ranked the creation of the Dust Bowl as one the three worst ecological blunders in history. The other two are the deforestation of China’s uplands about 3000 B.C., which produced centuries of  silting and flooding, and the destruction of Mediterranean vegetation by livestock, which left once fertile lands eroded and impoverished. Unlike either of those events, however, the Dust Bowl took only 50 years to accomplish. It can not be blamed on illiteracy or overpopulation or social disorder. It came about because the culture was operating in precisely the way it was supposed to. Americans blazed their way across a richly endowed continent with a ruthless, devastating efficiency unmatched by any people anywhere. When the white men came to the plains, they talked expansively of “busting” and “breaking” the land. And that is exactly what they did. Some environmental catastrophe’s are nature’s work, others are the slowly accumulating effects of ignorance or poverty. The Dust Bowl, in contrast, was the inevitable outcome of a culture that deliberately, self-consciously, set itself the task of dominating and exploiting the land for all it was worth.

The Dust Bowl came into being during the 1930’s, … the age of the Great Depression. Coincidence, some might say, that the two traumas should come at the same time. Few who have written on either affair have noticed any connection between them. My argument, however, is that there was in fact a close link between the Dust Bowl and the Depression – that the same society produced them both, and for similar reasons. Both events revealed fundamental weaknesses in the tradtional culture of America, the one in ecological terms, the other in economic. Both offered a reason, and an opportunity, for substantial reform of that culture.

That the thirties were a time of great crisis in American, indeed world, capitalism has long been an obvious fact. The Dust Bowl, I believe, was part of that same crisis. It came about because the expansionary energy of the US had finally encountered a volatile, marginal land, destroying the delicate ecological balance that had evolved there. We speak of farmers and plows on the plains and the damage they did, but the language is inadequate. What brought them to the region was a social system, a set of values, an economic order. There is no word that so fully sums up those elements as “capitalism”. … Capitalism, it is my contention, has been the decisive factor in this nation’s use of nature. To understand that use more fully we must explain how and why the Dust Bowl happened, just as we have analyzed our financial and industrial development in the light of the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing factory shutdowns.

There is no way to attach a neat, simple meaning to a phenomenon as large and changeable as capitalism. Even in the industrial period of the last 200 years it has worn many faces and forms. The words we associate with it are clues to its elusive breadth: private property, business, laissez-faire, profit motive, the pursuit of self-interest, free enterprise, an open marketplace, the bourgeoisie. For Adam Smith it was an economic system loosed from the shackles of feudalism – a “natural liberty” to make, buy, and sell things. For Karl Marx it was a viscious class order in which a few owned the means of production and the rest sold their labor to stay alive. For Max Weber capitalism was a “spirit” that emphasized hard work, accumulation, and economic rationality. America, the nation most thoroughly dominated by business institutions and drives, shows a similar diversity of meaning – a fur trapper going up the Missouri, a railroad executive selling stock, a wheat farmer buying more land, an archetypical factory owner hiring and firing workers. In the 1930’s capitalism in Henry Ford’s automobile empire meant one thing – a pattern of investment and credit, organization of people and resources – but on the Great Plains it meant something slightly different, perhaps more primitive, albeit strongly influenced by Ford’s machines and production methods. Capitalism is, in other words, a complex economic culture.  It is a mode of production that is constantly evolving in many particulars and varying from country to country, from region to region, from decade to decade. But it maintains a recognizable identity all the same: a core of values and assumptions more permanent than these outer forms – an enduring ethos, we will call it here, that gives the economic culture continuity.

The land in this culture, as in any other is perceived and used in certain, approved ways; there are, in other words, ecological values taught by the capitalist ethos.  We may sum them up in three maxims.

1. Nature must be seen as capital. It is a set of economic assets that can become a source of profit or advantage, a means to make more wealth. Trees, wildlife, minerals, water, and the soil are all commodities that can either be developed or carried as they are to the marketplace. A business culture attaches no other values to nature than this; the non-human world is desanctified and demystified as a consequence. Its functional interdependencies are also discounted in the economic calculus.

2. Man has a right, even an obligation, to use this capital for constant self advancement.  Capitalism is an intensely maximizing culture, always seeking to get more out of the natural resources of the world than it did yesterday. The highest economic rewards go to those who have done the most to extract from nature all it can yield. Private acquisitiveness and accumulation are unlimited ideals, impossible to satisfy once and for all.

3. The social order should permit and encourage this continual increase of personal wealth. It should be free individuals (and corporations as collective individuals) from encumbrances on their aggressive use of nature, teach young people the proper behavior, and protect the successful from losing what they have gained. In pure capitalism, the self as an economic being is not only all-important, but autonomous and irresponsible. The community exists to help individuals get ahead and to absorb the environmental costs. […]

… There may be many reasons why people misuse their land. But the American Dust Bowl of the thirties suggests that a capitalist-based society has a greater resource hunger than others, greater eagerness to take risks, and less capacity for restraint.

The implications of this should be obvious, though it is not my intention here to spell out detailed remedies or even dwell at length on the contemporary situation. Many have assumed that the New Deal found a sufficient cure for the excesses of free enterprise. From a ecological point of view that confidence seems grossly misplaced, if the evidence of the last several decades counts for anything.

American is still, at heart, a business-oriented society; its farming has evolved even further toward the Henry Ford example of using machinery and mass production to make more and more profits. We are still naively sure that science and technique will heal the wounds and sores we leave on the earth, when in fact those wounds are more numerous and more malignant than ever. Perhaps we will never be at perfect peace with the natural order of this continent, perhaps we would not be interesting if we were. But we could give it a better try.

DEP Commissioner Martin & Spokesman Larry Rangonese Should Resign – or Be Fired

Damage from 1962 Coastal Storm - De ja vu all over again?

After his dumb remarks on “No DEP role in rebuilding the Shore”, DEP spokesman Larry Rangonese should have been fired by now.

But, in fairness to Larry, he was only following the lead of his Boss, Commissioner Martin.

So both should step down – or be fired.

And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

The Asbury Park Press editorial board must be reading Wolfenotes –

They restated the exact quotes and issues we have written about repeatedly – they even specifically named Rangonese and criticized his remarks and his Boss’ policy (watch Huffington post Live panel “Zoned for destruction” which focused on this).

The APP editorial was on point and pushing accountability:

State must lead on rebuilding

 

“… Particularly troubling are Christie’s ambiguous comments about the state’s role in determining how and where coastal towns can rebuild. We can only hope that remarks about its role by Larry Ragonese, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, do not reflect Christie’s thinking. 

“People who live along the shore always live with a risk, and they know that,” Ragonese told Huffington Post. “We at the state are not going to tell these towns you can or cannot rebuild, but we will work with them to make sure that whatever comes back will be done in as smart or protective a fashion as possible.”

It’s also troubling that Ragonese’s boss, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin, early on signaled that he believed his job was not only to protect the environment, but to help stimulate the economy.

The DEP’s job, first and foremost, should be protecting life and property. That job should not be compromised by economic or political pressures. Hopefully, Sandy will have served to underscore that point.”

Hear Hear!

[Excerpt of transcript of 11/12/12 HuffPost Live panel: “Zoned for destruction”

(HuffPo reporter) Chris Kirkham – at time 22:30

So, I think the question really becomes: “Is that the role of the state?”

And I feel that in talking with the State Department of Environmental Protection over the past few weeks, they feel that they do not have a role in dictating where people should rebuild or whether they should rebuild.

Bill Wolfe, NJ PEER

They’re just completely wrong on that. I think that’s got to get some focus.

Larry Rangonese’s comments in your story – that it’s not their role – he’s said that multiple times.

It is their role, both under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act, which makes coastal planning and management a State function, and NJ has a State law called the “Coastal Area Facility Review Act” (CAFRA) which regulates development in the coastal zone.

And there are State programs to regulate infrastructure – where the water and sewer lines go.

The State has a legal and moral responsibility here, that this administration, for purely ideological reasons, is just rejecting.

And that’s why I’ve called for – and will testify before the State Planning Commission hearings tomorrow on adopting the State Plan – that to move forward, it’s going to take a legislative response because this administration is intransigent.

And it’s going to take the formation of a new institution. I’m calling for a Coastal Commission. The idea of a Coastal Commission was discussed during the Kean Administration, in the 80’s.

So, it’s [a Coastal Commission] a place to bring in all these disparate perspectives on the problem and come up with some rational planning based solutions, that you’re never going to get under the current Administration of Governor Christie.

Those statements from the DEP press office, I’m so glad that you put them in the story, because they are an illustration of the problem.

[Update – and here’s what the law professors network and rest of the country are seeing and reading: Hey, Chris Christie: Don’t Rebuild in Harm’s Way

Photograph by Mike Groll