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Assembly Committee Focused on Subsidies To Gas Stations, Not Drinking Water

At the height of the storm, 94 wastewater treatment systems suffered failures or disruptions, …

The vast majority of New Jersey’s community water supply systems were impacted: 427 of 604 community water systems experienced power loss during the event. As a direct result of the service interruptions, 362,334 New Jersey residents were placed under a boil water advisory. ~~~ Gov. Christie’s Sandy Recovery Action Plan 3/12/13

The Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee met today.

Getting ahead of myself for a moment, normally, very few bills released from Committee’s get any attention from the media – but amazingly, today this Committee got not one, but two news stories, both of which miss the most important issue: see:

• N.J. Assembly committee approves bill to help gas stations install generators and
• Bill allowing towns to use surplus snow removal funds for debris removal clears committee (a bill Dems should have used to illustrate the folly of Gov. Christie 2% cap, but didn’t)

[and the wrongheaded, cosmetic, and ineffective bill (A3928) about reservoir lowering to prevent flooding got no press coverage, but did have the Chair waiting and searching the halls for Jeff Tittel. Jeff forgot to mention the Christie/Martin stunt on this, to create a false appearance of preventive steps prior to Sandy landfall.]

But, lets get back to my story.

Frankly, I never heard of this Committee despite the fact that they have oversight and jurisdiction over State Hazard planning and preparation, an issue I’ve been working on for some time.

This morning I noted that the Committee’s agenda included bills related to Sandy, so I thought I’d show up and try to brief the Committee on issues I’ve been trying to get some focus on.

One would think that the Democratic Legislature would be looking for issues to engage the Governor on, particularly in the wake of last week’s AshBritt oversight hearing and a day after the release of the Governor’s $1.8 billion Sandy Recovery Plan, for which the Committee has oversight.

During his opening remarks at last week’s AshBritt hearing, Senate Chairman Gordon stated that he was interested in reforming state hazard mitigation and emergency preparedness planning.

Picking up on Senator Gordon’s lead, I signed up testify on a bill, A3625. That bill would require  emergency operations plans in certain senior occupied buildings:

to prepare for any possible loss of essential services, such as adequate heat, water, hot water, electricity, gas, or telephone service, and any other substantial disruption to daily living that could result during an emergency.

Sandy knocked out power, and seniors were trapped in high rise buildings that lost elevators.

I figured I’d explain to the Committee that the bill was very similar to the problems experienced by water and sewer plants that lost power and lacked emergency plans and adequate back up power systems.

I was wrong –

Although the Committee had time for testimony and questions about Gov. Christie’s Proclamation of March as “Red Cross Month”, Chairwoman Quiajano wanted to hear nothing about all that and took the unusual move to exercise the power of the chair to shut me down immediately as testifying “off the bill”.

I have no patience for such narrow minded petulant exercises of raw political power, which prompted me firing off this letter, something an access driven lobbyist would never do:

Chairwoman Quijano:

Respectfully, despite begging the Committee’s indulgence and explaining the nature of unique and exigent circumstances, it was unfortunate that I was not allowed to bring the following issues to your attention that warrant the Committee’s oversight.

I’ve been testifying on legislation for over 25 years, and that was the first time I can recall being asked to stand down while attempting to deliver important testimony.

Below is what I was trying to bring to your attention in the context of A3625, regarding very similar problems that the bill seeks to address regarding critical failures due to lack of emergency preparedness and back up power systems:

1. The Assembly Homeland Security and State PreparednessCommittee is the Committee of jurisdiction over state emergency preparedness planning.

2. The Governor’s Sandy Recovery “Action Plan” was released yesterday directly relates to State Preparedness subject matter and important policy considerations under the jurisdiction of the Committee.

There is a limited 7 day public review and comment period on the Governor’s Action Plan which ends on March 19 . There have been no legislative oversight or public hearings on that plan.

3.  For the first time in a public document, the Governor’s Action plan documents that there was massive failures at wastewater treatment and water supply infrastructure across the state due to lack of preparedness planning:

“At the height of the storm, 94 wastewater treatment systems suffered failures or disruptions, including inadequate treatment, broken sewer mains, and other operational issues. The loss of electrical power rendered many water systems unable to maintain service. Even at plants where backup generation was available, the disruption of the petroleum production and delivery system caused generator fuel supplies to be limited.

The vast majority of New Jersey’s community water supply systems were impacted: 427 of 604 community water systems experienced power loss during the event. As a direct result of the service interruptions, 362,334 New Jersey residents were placed under a boil water advisory. One month after Superstorm Sandy made landfall, eight drinking water systems in Ocean County, serving approximately 10,000 households, were still subject to a boil water advisory. “

Those were largely preventable and are completely unacceptable conditions that must never be allowed to occur again.

However, the Governor’s Action plan does not propose any funding or outline and reforms to address these critical failures.

4.  NJ DEP NJPDES regulations (@ NJAC 7:14A-6.12) specify limited emergency planning provisions for certain wastewater treatment facilities, including back up power provision. These are not mandatory enforceable permit conditions and DEP has lax oversight of these important functions.

5. NJ DEP Water Supply Planning regulations (@ NJAC 7:10-2.3 Plan for provision of potable water in emergencies)

task NJ DEP with the responsibility to develop emergency plans for public water supply systems across the state.

On January 24, 2013, DEP denied my OPRA request for these emergency plans that are mandated by DEP’s own regulations.