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Billions of Gallons of Raw Sewage Discharged to NJ Waters With No Enforcement Response

Jim O’neill at the Bergen Record wrote a good story today on water pollution problems from combined sewer overflows, see:  Staggering cost of repairs allows sewage to foul N.J. waterways

I encourage you to read the whole thing, but, because I’ve been writing about DEP’s failure to address severe infrastructure deficit problems for some time,  I want to make a few quick points on it:

1. NY/NJ Baykeeper deserves huge credit for all their great work on CSO’s and for  taking action by suing DEP.

2. The Record story left out a significant reason for the Christie DEP’s lame response:

To spur local governments to tackle the issue, the Christie administration plans to make partial loan forgiveness available. “We are looking to incentivize right conduct rather than mandate it,” Siekerka said.

CSO’s are a longstanding problem that has been ignored for a long time by DEP under Republican and Democratic governors.

But Governor Christie has made the historic failed DEP response far worse and basically barred the door to any real solution.

The Christie DEP has simply surrendered its enforcement stick. They have only carrots in the toolbox.

And Gov. Christie established a policy prohibiting unfunded state mandates on local government under Christie’s Executive Order #4

There is no reason why DEP enforcement could not be used to force towns to take low/no interest loans from the NJ Environmental Infrastructure Trust to begin to remedy these infrastructure problems. The impact on ratepayers would not be significant.

Only Christie policy is stopping that from happening.

And EPA Region 2 could pull the enforcement trigger as well under their Clean Water Act authority, so EPA Region 2 Administrator Enck got a pass in the story as well as Christie policy.

3. As is typical with environmental news stories, the issue of costs is emphasized.

But, those costs fail to consider the huge costs of inaction and the costs are not provided in a meaningful context of the benefits achieved or the real impact of those who would pay the costs.

Would you be wiling to pay $1 a day for clean water? (that’s less than a cup of coffee these days).

This is extremely biased reporting and it is the norm in journalism.

4.  The story closes with a quote by Senator Smith, Chair of the Environment Committee.

Smith likes to say “elections have consequences.”

He’s right – and lack of legislative oversight of Gov. Christie ideology and DEP’s performance has consequences too.

 

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