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Northern Portion of Bulls Island Still Closed, 9 Years After Freak Accident

Trenton’s Duck Island Continues To Be Neglected

Duck Island Should Be Developed As A New Urban State Park

I am shocked that with all the Penn Foundation money dedicated to the Delaware River Watershed (more than $100 million) and all the well endowed NJ conservation groups that receive that money, that there is absolutely no vision for this gorgeous riverfront site (Duck Island), which could become a premier state park and provide tremendous benefits to a distressed city.

[see End Note below]

The Hunterdon County Democrat reports that DEP is sponsoring a litter cleanup day on the Delaware River on September 21 2019, see:

• Volunteers needed for Delaware River cleanup

The cleanup is limited to the Lambertville, Stockton and Frenchtown area:

Volunteers will meet for shoreline cleanups in Kingwood, Bull’s Island in Stockton and at the Holcombe-Jimison Farmstead in Lambertville. If water levels permit, boat-based cleanups will be held out of Kingwood and Bull’s Island.

The event raises questions and exposes serious problems at DEP.

I reached out to the group coordinating the DEP event (and likely funded for that work by DEP), The Delaware River Greenway Partnership, to ask for their help on building public awareness of these problems and advocating for solutions. They were not interested.

1. Bulls Island Still Closed 9 Years After Freak Accident

Why is the northern portion of Bulls Island still closed after 9 years? For those not aware of the history, see:

• Why Is Bulls Island State Park Still Closed Almost 6 Years After A Camper Was Killed by Tree?

DEP should designate the northern portion a natural area and finish the restoration work they’ve begun there.

A cleanup day there would be a good opportunity to begin public awareness and organize to put some pressure on DEP to get going.

Seems like no one is doing this work and I can’t understand why not, especially after we won the war on stopping Christie DEP Commissioner Bob Martin’s insane clear cut plan. A lot of good people in Hunterdon County made that happen, so I don’t think it would be hard to re-engage them in restoring the Island they saved.

We won the war and now are losing the peace. The DEP’s neglect there is a scandal.

No vision. But lots of focus on band aid feel good measures and securing DEP and Foundation funding.

2. Trenton’s Duck Island Continues To Be Neglected

I assume that DEP chose the location for the event. Bad choice.

DEP must be aware of the mess on Duck Island. Obviously, from a litter removal effectiveness standpoint, volunteer resources would be better targeted there.  Look at the mess – has it been cleaned up yet?

There are other compelling policy reasons to target resources to such an area of historic gross neglect.

Why is a Democratic administration who claims to be committed to “environmental justice” neglecting an urban park (the City of Trenton owns the land in the photos) and instead allocating money to clean up wealthy backyards of the elite in Hunterdon County?

The DEP Delaware River litter cleanup would be far more effectively targeted on Duck Island.

3. Duck Island Should Be Cleaned Up, Restored, And Developed As An Urban State Park

Duck Island is a gem on the Delaware River in Trenton. It would make a spectacular urban riverfront park, in NJ’s Capital City.

The Island not only has major problems with illegal solid waste disposal and litter.

There are toxic sites on the island that are not completely cleaned up and the public has not been fully compensated for Natural Resource Damages (NRD) caused by major corporate polluters, including oil industry corporations and PSEG.

There also is a mothballed sludge incinerator that was so poorly designed it never operated, and a closed PSEG power plant.

PSEG recently sold their closed power plant property on Duck Island to Hilco Redevelopment Partners, a development company. According to PSEG:

HRP envisions redeveloping the sites as state-of-the-art industrial parks to serve the growing need for regional warehouse distribution hubs in central and northern New Jersey.

The last thing we need is another “warehouse distribution hub”, especially on the shore of the Delaware River on the edge of Trenton.

The state has no vision.

By failing to develop comprehensive remedial and ecological restoration plans for the entire Duck Island the State of NJ missed a golden opportunity to acquire that land from PSEG as the anchor of a new urban State Park.

But it’s not too late.

Hilco Redevelopment has not received DEP approvals for demolition or redevelopment at the site.

The Murphy administration should immediately do the following:

1) put Hilco on notice that the State of NJ plans to make the Island a State park, will not approve redevelopment permits, and desires to negotiate the purchase of the site. If Hilco is not interested, then NJ is willing to condemn the land, with compensation.

2) Put all the polluters on notice, via an NRD lawsuit, that the State seeks to restore damaged natural resources on the island and that they must pay for the damage they did.

3) allocate CBT Open Space funds to DEP Division of Parks to develop remedial, ecological restoration and park plans.

4) Begin acquiring lands on the island with Green Acres Funds.

5) Put together a package for a legislative appropriation and allocate adequate funds in next fiscal year’s budget.

This is all technically doable and financially feasible.

I am shocked that with all the Penn Foundation money dedicated to the Delaware Watershed (more tha $100 million) and all the well endowed NJ conservation groups that receive that money, that there is absolutely no vision for this gorgeous site, which could become a premier state park and provide tremendous benefits to a distressed city.

The fact this lack of vision and outright neglect is occurring under a Democratic administration that claims to be committed to environmental justice is an outrage and totally unacceptable.

Where are the conservation groups? The major Foundations? The Democrats?

The fact that this idea is not even on the radar is another example of corporate PSEG power in NJ.

[End Note: While the weenie conservation groups and corporate Foundations partner with and provide cover for the Murphy DEP, sabotage real activism and undermine the fossil moratorium campaign, and conduct ineffective window dressing actions like a litter cleanup day (its bad enough that the litter cleanup action is window dressing, but, as I show above, it is completely ineffective in meeting its own timid litter cleanup goals), Sierra Club provides an alternative and more effective approach on how to integrate social events with real activism on a a priority issue that targets and holds the Governor and DEP accountable.

Next Saturday (September 15), they are holding a picnic event on the Delaware, that celebrates 5 years of activism in opposing the PennEast pipeline:

Dear Sierra Club member,

We are hosting a picnic/social on Sunday September 15th at Cavallo Park in Lambertville to celebrate the 5th Anniversary fighting PennEast, and we’d love for you to join us!

SUNDAY, September 15: Picnic/ Rally Celebration – All of Us as One Against PennEast

We’ve been fighting to stop the PennEast pipeline for five years.  We’re getting together for a social picnic and rally to celebrate that we stopped the pipeline so far. We will rally to prepare for the next steps in battling this disastrous pipeline. PennEast has now filed for critical DEP permits, so the real battle starts now.

The PennEast pipeline would cut through an incredible amount of environmentally sensitive areas, critical drinking water, and historic properties. It must be stopped!

I am no longer a Sierra Club member – Jeff Tittel sent me this this morning, likely as a move to agree in part with the above post, but go beyond it to focus on a more important issue. I focused on re-opening Bulls Island and making Duck Island a State Park, while ignoring the elephant in the room! Oops! Hoist on my own petard!

That’s No Big Deal, because I’ve written many times recently about Murphy DEP’s climate failures, including failing to revoke Christie DEP rollbacks to wetlands and stream encroachment regulations and failure to adopt rules to implement the Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification requirements. These failure will make it virtually impossible to deny the PennEast pipeline permits and WQC ~~~ end]

State Government Continues To Ignore Climate Crisis In Policy, Law, and Regulation

Necessary “Radical Revolution of Values” Can Be Advanced By Reforms

The climate crisis and necessary transition to a zero carbon economy, 100% renewables, and deep rapid greenhouse gas emissions reduction will require radical changes not only in the economy, politics, and society at large, but also in law, regulation, and governing.

We desperately seek radical systemic and institutional change – what Doctor King called a “radical revolution of values” – but realize that such change can be facilitated by minor reforms.

In that spirit of minor reform, we suggested a baby step today. That suggestion grew out of recent frustrations with State government and DEP continuing to ignore the climate crisis and miss opportunities to make needed changes.

While State government does absolutely nothing but defend the status quo, political leaders and their political appointees heading critical agencies like DEP continue to mislead the public with slogans and press releases, not real action.

While the focus in NJ is correctly on big changes like a fossil moratorium and phase out and nationally on Shut It Down and the Green New Deal and the Sanders Climate Plan, we’ve got to start somewhere and someone has got to take out the garbage, So, we urged Senate environmental leaders to begin the process of systematically restructuring NJ laws and regulations to address energy and climate.

If you consider this a fools errand, just consider that’s exactly how the Koch Brothers achieved radical right wing Libertarian change – via incremental change over time.

I agree that the climate emergency does not allow time for an incremental reform strategy. But I view social change as a titration: a steady drip, drip, drip, can lead to a radical changed state (there’s also chaos theory and the wing of a butterfly flapping metaphor).

Obviously, there need to be substantive policy changes to laws, not just minor process reforms. But such minor reforms can provide ammunition to the public to demand real change, while holding government accountable. Here’s our letter:

Dear Chairman Smith and ranking members of the Senate Environment Committee:

I write concerning the climate crisis to suggest a modest low cost policy that can begin to address the need for deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions reflective of science and to achieve the goals of the Global Warming Response Act, while improving the transparency and scientific basis for decision-making.

I’ve been disappointed by recent legislation and DEP regulation that ignore greenhouse gas emissions and miss opportunities to consider and reduce emissions.

For example, despite the fact that the building sector accounts for a huge percentage of total emissions, the legislature passed and Gov. Murphy recently signed amendments to NJ redevelopment law that ignore energy conservation, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions, see:

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2019/08/gov-murphy-quietly-signs-major-redevelopment-law-no-standards-to-address-greenhouse-gas-emissions-energy-efficiency-renewable-energy-environmental-justice-2/

On the regulatory front, DEP continues to propose regulations, management plans and issue permits that fail to address energy conservation, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions, see:

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2019/09/murphy-dep-proposes-new-permit-for-fossil-fuel-boilers-no-greenhouse-gas-limits-or-efficiency-standards/

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2019/08/murphy-dep-issues-another-permit-to-a-major-air-polluter-no-limits-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions/

One way to begin to systematically consider and inject energy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate into NJ legislative and regulatory policy across state government would be to enact a law that mandates consideration of energy policy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate in all legislation and regulatory actions.

Current  legislative policy mandates consideration of fiscal impacts of proposed legislation.

With respect to proposed regulation, the NJ APA mandates consideration of social impacts, economic impacts, environmental impacts, federal standards analysis, jobs impacts, agricultural industry impacts, regulatory flexibility analysis, housing affordability impact analysis, smart growth development impact analysis, and racial and ethnic community criminal justice and public safety impact analysis.

Surely, energy (including consistency with the BPU Energy Master Plan), greenhouse gas emissions (including consistency with the Global Warming Response Act and DEP implementation plans), and climate impacts (including adaptation) warrant equal consideration in legislation and regulation.

Accordingly, I request that you draft and introduce legislation to amend the NJ Administrative Procedure Act to mandate consideration (and quantification) of energy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts during promulgation of regulation, adoption of functional plans, development of policies, and issuance of permits, technical manuals, and Guidance documents. The law. should apply across the Executive Branch of State government. The bill should also apply these requirement to the legislature in considering legislation.

The bill should include mandates to consider direct, indirect, secondary, cumulative, and lifecycle impacts.

Such amendments would begin the huge legal and institutional change in State government that will be required by a rational transition to a zero carbon economy, renewable energy, and attainment of deep and rapid greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

I would be glad to work with you in fleshing this out and appreciate your consideration of this modest request.

Respectfully,

DEP ignores industrial boiler CO2 emissions of the equivalent of over 7,500 cars

DEP proposal lacks data on total number of boilers or tons of CO2 emitted statewide

“If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.”  ~~~ Marianne Williamson

I plead guilty to wonkiness, but sympathize with the sentiment of that quote.

Nonetheless, people need to know that the Murphy DEP once again has shown that they have no intention of regulating or reducing greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels.

The DEP just had another opportunity to do so, but instead proposed a new “General Operating Permit” (GOP – 009) for industrial oil and gas fueled boilers that has no CO2 emissions limitations or even monitoring and reporting requirements for greenhouse gas emissions.

While NJ State air pollution laws and DEP regulations define greenhouse gas emissions as air pollutants and require polluters to install “state of the art” (SOTA) pollution controls, the proposed “General Operating Permit 009″  has no standards for combustion efficiency or requirements to maintain and operate the boiler at optimum combustion efficiency.

In fact, in lieu of imposing strict NJ specific SOTA requirements, the proposed GOP defers to federal EPA requirements for:

Similarly, the GOP also lacks CO2 and methane emissions monitoring, reporting and record keeping requirements, so the DEP is flying blind and the public has no way to know about GHG emissions.

The DEP proposal provides no data that would allow the public to know how many of these industrial boilers there are, where they are located, or how much pollution they emit statewide.

The DEP proposal provided no analysis of greenhouse gas emissions or how they relate to the GHG emission reduction requirements of the Global Warming Response Act.

The DEP proposal provided no data on optimum or actual combustion efficiency from these kind of industrial boilers. Instead, the proposal defers to the manufacturers specifications.

The DEP proposal provided no engineering, combustion, or pollution control specifications or standards for what constitutes “state of the art” in pollution control.

Accordingly, the public has no way to meaningfully understand or comment on the proposal.

The proposed GOP-009 is open for public comment until September 18 (see this for how to submit comments).

A “General Permit” (GP) is a uniform permit that applies to and spells out standard requirements for an entire category of pollution sources. There are no public participation requirements for a GP, so you have no way to know about and no say in influencing DEP’s regulation of the air polluter down the street.

The GP mechanism was designed by DEP as a “streamlined” cheaper and quicker bureaucratic alternative to a far more rigorous “Individual Permit” issued to each individual facility or pollution source.

In this case, the DEP proposed GOP-009 that applies to industrial boilers fueled by oil or natural gas with a capacity from 10 million BTUs’/hour to 50 million BTU’s per hour.

This is an industrial size boiler, not something you’d have in the basement. Walk with me as we put the DEP technical jargon in a context you can understand and do a back of the envelope “worst case” sketch.

For context, a 50 million BTU/hour boiler would consume about 350 gallons of oil per hour (at 140,000 BTUs per gallon)

According to CO2 emission factors of the Energy Information Administration, fuel oil emits about 173 pound of CO2 per million BTUs. (By comparison, gasoline for your car has about 160 pounds of CO2 per million BTUs. )

At 50 million BTUs/hour, that translates into:

(173 lbs CO2/million BTUs x 50 MBTUs) X (24 hours/day) X (365 days/year) = 75,774,000 pounds/year

75,774,000 lbs/2000 lbs/ton  = 37,887 tons/year CO2.

THIS IS FOR JUST ONE BOILER. DEP provided no data on how many boilers there are in NJ.

For comparison, gasoline for your car emits about 19.6 pounds of CO2 per gallon. So, the industrial boiler emissions translate into about 3.87 MILLION gallons of gas per year.

Assuming a typical car travels 15,000 miles per year and gets 30 miles per gallon (500 gallons per year),  one 50 million BTU/hour boiler translates into the CO2 emissions of about 7,740 cars.

The DEP GP proposal does not identify how many of these boilers there are in NJ or how many hours a day they typically operate, so there is no way to translate these numbers into actual CO2 emissions.

The DEP GP does not indicate what the typical combustion efficiency these boilers operate at or what an optimum combustion efficiency is for these size boilers, so it is impossible to determine if the GP adequately regulates combustion efficiency in a way to minimize CO2 emissions.

Amazingly, the DEP GP defers to “the manufactures recommendations” when it comes to technical issues related to combustion efficiency – there are no standards or mandatory requirements for combustion efficiency or boiler maintenance and operation in the DEP GP.

There are no CO2 emissions monitoring, reporting, or record-keeping requirements in this DEP GP, so there is no way for DEP or the public to know how much CO2 they are actually emitting.

When the CO2 emissions by a single industrial polluter of the equivalent of over 7,500 cars are completely ignored, once again, we must note that the Murphy DEP is not serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

California Offset Program Increases GHG Emissions & Provides Perverse Incentives

Similar Flaws In NJ RGGI Program 

Market Based Trading Replaces More Effective Regulation

No Way To Mend It – Time To End It

“Cap and trade with offsets would guarantee that we pass climate tipping points, locking in climate disasters for our children. Cap and trade benefits only Wall Street and polluters, sacrificing humanity and nature for their profits.” Dr. Jim Hansen

A new Report by academic researchers from Stanford, Berkeley & other universities provides a devastating critique of California’s greenhouse gas “cap and trade” program (hereafter “Stanford”).

The complex Stanford Report was picked up by the academic oriented media, who did a great job in understanding the complexity and clearly presenting the implications, for example, see: MIT Technology Review – a much lighter read than the academic paper. I recommend that you read the MIT Technology Review story before trying to tackle the full Report: (hereafter “MIT”)

• Whoops! California’s carbon offsets program could extend the life of coal mines –  A new study highlighting the risks of perverse incentives offers the latest evidence that carbon offsets are a deeply flawed way of combating climate change.

A California program to curb climate emissions could have the unintended effect of extending the life of coal mines or encouraging farmers to switch to crops that produce far more greenhouse gases.

The risk of such perverse incentives in the state’s fledgling carbon offsets program is among the most alarming findings in a new paper by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford and other institutions. And it’s just the latest evidence that such schemes can grossly inflate the emissions reductions achieved, or even inadvertently boost total climate pollution.

After you digest that MIT Technology Review article, you can read the whole Stanford Report: