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Tent City, survivors of Paradise Lost – Visual Metaphor of our times
(Source: Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Sorry, I lack the words. My thoughts are a jumble of ideas, visual images, and absurd metaphors. [Update: 11/19/18 – NY Times takes a tepid look, notes reliance on “the kindness of strangers”]

And I thought we were all merely Climate Refugees and that the Dust Bowl was an apt metaphor. Looks like I undershot by orders of magnitude, not imagining incineration by wildfire.

After having been on the road now for 18 months, one thing I am sure of and can assure you is that there is far more dignity in individual roadside truck camping than in a degrading mass stranding in a Walmart parking lot with elderly and infirm people suffering with little organized government response.

I’m having a really tough time getting my head around the surreal reality of a place called Paradise (as in “Lost” and “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”) incinerated by a wildfire called “Camp Fire” (why not “Wire Fire” for the real PG&E’s cause?) and the mostly old and infirm survivors holed up in a Walmart parking lot, passively and gladly accepting charity from private citizens, while government seems AWOL and having a tough time with basics, like keeping track of people (e.g. the missing list just underwent a 5 fold expansion).

Not surprisingly, there is little media reporting of the climate chaos causes of the fire – a striking contrast with the feeding frenzy on Trump’s “mismanagement” tweets and the myths about “excessive fuels buildup”,  the need for”forest thinning” and blaming radical environmentalists for blocking “forest management” (logging) (Sect. Interior Zinke even called enviro’s “terrorists”.).

And there’s been no coverage of the liability bailout of PG&E just so recently passed by the Democratic Party controlled Californian Legislature and signed into law by “progressive” Gov. Jerry Brown

BBC reported this morning a surprising lack of anger or resentment, just positivity.

Glad I absorb this suffering exclusively on the radio, and have not been exposed to what must be barbaric Tee Vee visuals.

The visual metaphors I am imagining are an absurd melange of people stranded on NoLA rooftops to old folks hunkered down in tents at Walmart.

How sick can it get? Welcome to Walmart Nation (TM)

Am I the only one that imagines these continuities? Is it Surrealism or DADA?

Will we perish by a Bang, or a Walmart whimper? (Cascade’s wilderness fire)

On the positive side, good on all those kids pushing Pelosi – and now Frank Pallone – for a Green New Deal.

Keep Hope Alive!

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. ~~~ Audre Lorde

[Update below]

Today, NJ Spotlight reports that Despite Superstorm Sandy, Building in Risky Flood Zones Continues Unabated:

Superstorm Sandy wiped out thousands of homes at the Jersey Shore, but the increasing threat of devastating coastal storms like it has hardly deterred building in areas most at risk of chronic flooding as sea levels rise from climate change, according to a new analysis.

Confirming exactly the troubling Foundation driven news sourcing I wrote about just yesterday, Spotlight quotes sources from Foundation funded groups American Littoral Society and NJ Future:

“Overall, we only are half-paying attention to the lessons of Sandy,’’ said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal advocacy group. “For the most part, the decision was to stay put and live with the risk. We simply don’t want to face up to the actual degree of risk of building along the Shore.’’ …

“We haven’t gotten the message,’’ said David Kutner, planning manager for New Jersey Future, a smart-growth organization. “We have this cultural and unchangeable connection to the Jersey Shore. The threats to properties are enormous. It is going take some time to get to the point where we can’t keep building at the same intensity at the Shore.’’

Notice how Dillingham of ALS and Kutner of NJF both deploy the word “we”. We my ass!

Note how Dillingham uses the passive voice, as if there were no decisionmaker and government policy had no role in those irresponsible decisions: “the decision was to stay put and live with the risk“. Whose decisions?

That kind of evasive disingenuous rhetoric is no accident.

It is designed to obscure their own failed involvement in the problem and to dodge tough political accountability that might threaten their organization’s funding.

Specifically, both ALS and NJF not only failed to hold the Christie administration accountable for the policies that denied climate change and led to even more development in risky flood prone areas, both groups also received funding from the Christie administration to promote ineffective voluntary local “coastal resilience’ projects. (A Sham Charade identical in design to DEP’s outsourced, voluntary, private, grant fueled “Sustainable NJ” program)

(ALS’ most recent financial statement shows they received over $1.2 million in government grants, more than 20 TIMES the revenue they got from members. That is NOT an indicator of a democratic organization. No wonder ALS never bites the government hand that feeds them. ALS ED Dillingham was paid almost $117,000, which likely puts him in second place in the career compensation money game behind NJ Audubon CEO Eric Stiles, who brought down $126,000 in salary alone. The private sector corporate careerist greed is manifest in the Foundation world too. )

Those local, voluntary and politically safe “resilience” projects have failed miserably, as the Spotlight story and Report document.

In exchange for that Christie administration funding, ALS and NJ Future distracted the press and the public from Christie’s policy failures (e.g. provided political cover) and undermined more effective DEP Statewide regulatory solutions and new legislation to create a regional Coastal Commission.

I don’t know who Dillingham and Kutner are referring to as “we”. Not me. We called out Christie “rebuild madness” from day 1. (see:

• Christie Abdication: DEP Commissioner Martin Waives Rules for Rebuilding Wiped Out Infrastructure
• Rutgers Sea Level Rise Maps Being Ignored by DEP
• Legislators Go All in With Gov. Christie On Sandy Rebuild Madness
• “Strategic Adjustment” – Or Rebuild Madness?
• The Deafness Before the Storm

Also compare how we speak about these issues in prior Spotlight stories:

• NJ Spotlight: “State Agency Waiver Environmental Rules to Speed Rebuilding After Storm – Environmentalists argue that rebuilding without planning invites further disasters
  

“Restoring basic public infrastructure will be a critical first step toward the recovery of our cities and towns,’’ [DEP Commissioner] Martin said. “For emergency repairs, we cannot let bureaucracy get in the way. Red tape should not and will not hold up this vital work.’’ […]

“The [Martin] order amounts to a total abdication of DEP’s responsibility to supervise responsible planning and environmentally sound permitting of critical public infrastructure,’’ said Bill Wolfe, director of the New Jersey chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a public watchdog group

ALS & NJF Provide A Classic Example of The “Elite Charade”

Writer Anand Giridharadas’ groundbreaking investigative book “Winners Take All – The Elite Charade of Changing the World” documents how elite philanthropists and private foundations have hijacked real social change and engaged in a corrupt enterprise.

I wrote a post back in August, based only on a radio interview, see: “The Elite Charade” – Philanthropic Foundation Fail. I’ve since read the book.

Elites engage in this charade by avoiding conflict or taking personal or career risks, and not calling for sacrifices like increased taxes, lower corporate profits, or more regulation. Elites evade politics and efforts to hold corporations accountable.

Instead, they push fake self serving private market based “win-win” solutions to public policy problems. The fake solutions not only fail, but at the same time they undermine democracy, constrain and replace government’s role, and perpetuate their elite advantage by locking in the status quo. Welcome to “MarketWorld”.

He writes:

when elites assume leadership of social change, they are able to reshape what social change is — above all, to present it as something that should never threaten winners.

Ironically and hypocritically, the same elites that create social problems by hoarding wealth, increasing inequality, and attacking government regulatory intervention and redistribution policies, feel that they are best suited to solve the very problems they create:

when elites put themselves in the vanguard of social change, it not only fails to make things better, but also serves to keep things as they are. [That] takes the edge off some of the public’s anger at being excluded from [economic] progress. It improves the image of the winners. With its private and voluntary half measures, it crowds out public solutions that would solve problems for everyone…. We should recall Oscar Wilde’s words about such elite helpfulness being “not a solution” but “an aggravation of the difficulty…. Just as the worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, so in the present state of things ..the people who do the most harm are the people who try to do most good.”

The late emminent Princeton University political theorist Sheldon Wolin predicted all this is his classic early 1980’s essay written just after the Reagan administration assumed power: “The New Public Philosophy”:

News coverage of drinking water risks is highly misleading

Risks of hundreds of unregulated chemicals and role of Dupont ignored

Murphy DEP gets false praise and a huge pass on longstanding regulatory failures

Let’s hope that one of the “expert” panelists at the upcoming NJ Spotlight PFAS Roundtable raises these issues.

Part 1: Troubling Linkage of News, Roundtables, and Sponsors

NJ Spotlight just announced another “Roundtable”, which will focus on the class of toxic chemical compounds dubbed “PFAS” (see registration information)

Join NJ Spotlight as we bring together experts to discuss the public health and policy challenges presented by PFAS, a class of chemicals that is linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Following a disturbing pattern, the Roundtable (free this time), follows a series of Spotlight news reports on the risks of PFAS, thereby linking news coverage of an issue to “by invitation” “expert” policy roundtables. This approach obliterates traditional lines of journalism and public policy development.

Of course these news – roundtable issue linkages tend to: 1) define the salient issues, 2) delimit the causes of the problem, 3) target the good guys and bad guys, 4) flesh out the scope of feasible solutions, and 5) limit the voices and perspectives of those qualified to participate in the discussion and advocate credible science based policy solutions.

In effect, NJ Spotlight is assuming the role of “honest broker” and “gatekeeper” in a way that shapes public perception and government’s role and responsibility.

Those are awesome powers – far beyond traditional journalism’s package of news reporting and editorial advocacy.

At worst, when those powers are combined with private elite foundation funding, they become anti-democratic, fundraising oriented, and essentially usurp governmental obligations (see: “Elite Charade”).

Spotlight’s tendency to cover issue – roundtable topics that impact their financial sponsors creates a tension, if not a public appearance of conflicts of interest.

Similarly, NJ Spotlight’s tendency to invite “expert” panelists – almost always moderate “safe” voices that do not threaten corporate interests or criticize government or powerful politicians – that are employed by environmental organizations that are funded by the same Spotlight Foundation sponsors is deeply anti-democratic, biased and creates an appearance of a self serving form of pay-to-play journalism.

This entire approach displaces and undermines effective government regulation, while tending to limit policy solutions to private, voluntary, market based tools and “win-win” “feel good measures” (e.g. see: NJ Spotlight Drinks Penn Foundation Kool-Aid)

For example, Wm. Penn and Dodge Foundation fund NJ environmental groups that work on issues and share a moderate, market oriented – as opposed to government regulation – perspective. Individuals from those organizations get quoted in NJ Spotlight stories and then invited to appear as “expert” panelists.

The most recent PFAS Roundtable is a good example of these flaws.

Part 2: Good News On PFAS Highly Misleading

As NJ Spotlight has written several times, the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute (DWQI) recently made scientific recommendations and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)  adopted what are known as “Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL’s) to regulate some previously unregulated PFAS compounds in drinking water.

No doubt, that is good news – but an exclusive narrow focus on PFAS creates a highly misleading and false impression that the DWQI and DEP are aggressively protecting public health with strict regulatory standards.

Part 3: 500 Unregulated Chemicals Ignored

For context that exposes this falsehood, consider that in April 2010, DEP issued a scientific Report that found that there are over 500 unregulated chemicals in NJ drinking water, and that there are currently available treatment technologies to remove these chemicals at low cost, see:

Court Rejects DEP Privatization of Radon Protections

Court Blocks DEP Enforcement of “Guidance” Documents

Decision Has Huge Implications For Many Privatized Programs, Including Toxic Vapor Mitigation

NJ Spotlight reports today that a NJ Appellate Court decision rejected the Christie DEP’s policy of privatization of regulatory responsibilities, with respect to radon gas mitigation systems, see:

COURT FAULTS DEP IN CHANGES TO RADON RULES

A state appeals court has faulted the Department of Environmental Protection for improperly revising rules on how it oversees companies that test for radon in homes, finding that, in essence, the DEP handed over some of its regulatory functions to firms it oversees. …

Delegating regulatory functions

“In effect, what the DEP appears to be doing, is to delegate its own regulatory functions to a private entity as, in effect, a junior partner,’’ (sic – the Court actually wrote “junior regulator”) the court said. “That delegation of a regulatory responsibility is not permissible under the law. …

Absent statutory authority, there can be no such delegation. ‘This is especially true when the agency attempts to subdelegate to a private person or entity, since such person or entity is not subject to public accountability.'” (citations omitted)).’’

Importantly, the Spotlight story failed to explain that the Court, in applying the NJ Supreme Court’s “Metromedia” decision, also rejected DEP’s enforcement of a “Guidance Document” in the absence of rule making. The Appellate Court wrote:

I’ve explained and applied that doctrine and recently written about how the DEP’s forest “stewardship” program violates the NJ Supreme Court’s  Metromedia doctrine, (hit link for that).

Perhaps most significantly, as I’ve written here several times, the Christie DEP has outsourced Climate Change Mitigation (i.e. GHG emissions reductions) and Adaptation programs to private groups, including NJ Future and Sustainable NJ. The private group NJ Future even got funded by the Christie DEP to prepare a secret plan to privatize Liberty State Park, the crown jewel of the State Park system. DEP funds elite private group NJ Audubon to prepare forest logging plans.

The Appellate Court’s decision has huge implications for many DEP programs, for two reasons:

First, many DEP regulatory responsibilities have been delegated – or outsourced – to private sector entities, a privatization policy that preceded but was actively promoted and expanded by the Christie DEP.

Second, many DEP programs are implemented via Guidance Documents. Curiously, the Democratically controlled Legislature, acting in concert to implement the Christie administration’s regulatory rollback agenda, attempted to restrict DEP’s use of Guidance documents back in 2011, see: Bill Banning Enforcement of Guidance Moves to Governor Christie’s Desk.

Why is Gov. Murphy’s DEP Commissioner dodging this issue? DEP ducked and referred the press to the Attorney General’s Office.

Over more than a decade, so much of DEP has been privatized, outsourced, and/or based on Guidance documents. Do Gov. Murphy and the Democrats want to continue to abdicate and privatize?

Or will they act quickly to assume and restore their regulatory responsibilities to protect public health and the environment?

A key example is the controversial Vapor Intrusion Guidance.

Toxic chemical vapors could be migrating into homes and buildings at hundreds of sites across the state.

The vapor issue is now in the national spotlight, because due to vapor risks, EPA recently announced an intention to begin to consider vapor intrusion as a factor in Superfund listing decisions.

But it is not just the Site Remediation Program that would be impacted.

Here are some other examples of DEP implementation Guidance:

• Highlands Act
• Drinking Water Protection Programs
• Exceptional Wetlands Designation
• Regulated Medical Waste Management
• Environmental Guidance for Local Construction Code Officials
• Watershed Management
• TMDLs (AKA, water pollution cleanup plans)
• Nitrate Dilution Modeling
• Septic Management
• Model local Stormwater, steep slope, fertilizer application, and Stream buffer ordinances
• Stormwater permitting
• Wastewater Management Planning
• Management of Solid Waste After Floods
• Recycling, Solid and Hazardous Waste Management
• Asbestos Management
• Daycare Facilities
• Schools SARS Syndrome
• Farmland Preservation Program
• Safe Schools

Perhaps thew most egregious example of privatization is the DEP’s toxic site cleanup program, which was privatized by the legislature, at the request of the Corzine administration and thenDEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson.

That delegation is very poor public policy, but, because it was done by the legislature, it is NOT vulnerable to challenge under the Court’s ruling.

But DEP has delegated numerous DEP regulatory responsibilities to the private sector, either without any DEP oversight or under the guise of the kind of self certification program that the Court rejected.

A currently controversial illustration of the DEP’s delegation to private contractors is the installation and management of toxic vapor intrusion systems in homes in Pompton Lakes, NJ. Approximately 450 homes there have been poisoned by toxic chemical vapors from the Dupont site.

Residents recently appealed to DEP to correct problems in dealing with those vapor systems and got this Kafka-esque bureaucratic runaround from the DEP regarding the title known “3rd Party Contractor Program”. According to an October 23, 2018 email from Heather Swartz, DEP Office of Community Relations (email provided upon request):

It became apparent to me … that I need to clarify the division of responsibilities for addressing the vapor intrusion issues at the DuPont Pompton Lakes Works site.  DEP and EPA are co-leads for the larger vapor intrusion pathway project, meaning both agencies have equal responsibility for developing policies and providing technical input with regard to testing and installing systems at the homes being addressed by Chemours’ contractor, HDR.  However, when the 3 ^rd  Party Contractor Program was developed several years ago, EPA was designated the lead for that aspect of site cleanup.  DEP role for the 3 ^rd  Party Contractor Program is limited to providing technical support.  Consequently, EPA is solely responsible for developing and implementing policies related to the 3 ^rd  Party Contractor Program.  This would include determining what contractors can participate in the program and what types of meetings are appropriate.

This “3rd Party Contractor Program” appears to share the same defects found by the court in terms of delegating DEP’s regulatory responsibilities to protect public health. Specifically, the Court noted the lack of accountability in private delegated programs. In the Pompton Lakes case, that lack of accountability to the homeowners is front and center.

This is a statewide problem at hundreds of toxic waste sites in NJ.

We urge our friends in Pompton Lakes to make some noise, so that media cover the issue and perhaps a lawsuit can be filed to enforce the Appellate Court’s reasoning in the radon case.

Similarly, in addition to the legal vulnerable programs highlighted above that rely on Guidance Documents  the DEP relies on private contractors – some certified, some not – in many regulatory programs, including air and water pollution control, laboratory testing, and drinking water protections.

These programs all are vulnerable to the Court’s decision – so, that decision may have opened a Pandora’s box and may begin to unravel years of DEP abdication and privatization.