WolfeNotes.com

 

All this was happening in the street, while fat cat lobbyists scowled:

Still, those [regulatory relief] bills won the approval of all but a handful of state lawmakers.

“Our regulatory process stinks and needs to be overhauled. . . . I think we should do much more,” said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester). “I think we’ve regulated the state almost out of business.” ~~~ Environmental Regulatory Shift In NJ Draws Praise and Concerns (Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/21/11)

Senator Sweeney simply is ignorant and misinformed on both environmental regulation and economic development.

Is he competing with Governor Christie for the Biggest Idiot award? Or just talking to Hal Bozarth too much?

That Sweeney quote is from yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer story by Maya Rao.

I worked with Maya on the story and it follows what I wrote about most of last year, and more specifically in January when I outlined the year’s upcoming events (see: Shoes Drop in 2011, As DEP Implements Christie “Regulatory Relief” Policy):

I forsee a series of train wrecks, as DEP implements Governor Christie’s pro-business “regulatory relief“ policies that are codified in Executive Orders #1-4. The framework and foundation for implementation of those policies was laid during 2010. 

Because Senator Sweeney repeats the business community’s lie that environmental regulations “regulated the state almost out of business“, let me remind the Senator of a few fundamental facts about:

• why we regulate
• environmental regulations provide net economic BENEFITS
• there is no credible study that demonstrates that NJ regulations have driven economic development out of the State
• virtually all economists agree that the cause of the economic recession is related to the Wall Street fraud, greed, and deregulation driven real estate bubble.
• Basic democracy: Poll: 79% of NJ Residents Oppose Relaxing Environmental Regulations

I) Here’s why we regulate strictly in NJ

Because another Governor named Christie – as in Whitman – tried and failed to rollback strict NJ standards to federal minimums, let me start with an excerpt of the transcript of my testimony to the US Senate Confirmation hearing on Christie Whitman for US EPA Administrator. I cited that excerpt in testimony to the NJ legislature last March 18:

At that time, we disclosed a July 29, 1994 memo from then DEP Assistant Commissioner Lou Nagy to Commissioner Shinn. The memo compared DEP’s strict standards with weaker EPA requirements and warned of a significant increase in the number of potential fatalities.

This was not some tree hugger warning, it came from Shinn’s own Assistant Commissioner who wrote to Shinn to warn about:

“Industry (e.g., CIC and NJBIA) would obviously prefer backing off to the EPA thresholds. .However, the increases made by EPA on adoption were so large (averaging some 18 times the TCPA values with 33 of the 60 substances common to both lists assigned from 5 to 167 times corresponding TCPA values) that they are not technically justifiable in an area as densely populated as New Jersey where substances are generally handled on small sites, and would correlate with a significant increase in the number of potential fatalities”. (complete Shinn memo found on page 126 of Whitman EPA confirmation transcript)

Got it Sweeney?

So let me repeat – especially given the toxic chemical industry in your district – we need strict regulations to avoid “a significant increase in the number of potential fatalities.” Ask Hal Bozarth about all that (or Jim Sinclair about this (watch it!) – the only effort to hold Christie accountable for “regulatory relief” EO and the first to focus on variance policy).

But lets look more broadly than fatalities associated with chemical plants adjacent to residential neighborhoods.

The environmental indicators that justify NJ’s stringent environmental and public health regulatory protections are uniformly dire.

On the public health side, NJ has the nation’s highest cancer and asthma rates.

As we wrote over a year ago (harsh truths we were unable to get published on NJ’s timid Op-Ed pages):

The environmental indicators that justify NJ’s stringent environmental and public health regulatory protections are uniformly dire.

NJ is the nation’s most densely populated state with the most cars, most development, most pavement and most toxic pollutants per square mile. NJ’s precious shore is highly over-developed and vulnerable to storms and sea level rise. Yet we continue to lose more than 15,000 acres of forests, farms, and wetlands per year to new development. NJ’s racially and economical segregated urban communities bear unjust disproportionate pollution and health burdens.  Contradicting lots of empty political rhetoric about reducing emissions, NJ’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise steeply. NJ has the most toxic Superfund sites and more than 20,000 other toxic sites. Communities are threatened by at least 15 chemical facilities, where an accident or terror attack could kill more than 100,000 residents. In NJ, more than 65% of streams and rivers and 100% of lakes [and Bays] fail to meet water pollution standards and lack cleanup plans. Statewide Fish Consumption Advisories warn that fish and shellfish are too toxic to eat. Over 12% of residential water wells fail health standards. The entire state does not meet health based standards for air pollutants ozone, fine particulates, and numerous cancer causing toxic chemicals; and not surprisingly NJ has the nation’s highest cancer and asthma rates.

II) Environmental Regulation Provides Net Economic Benefits

According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) thirteenth annual Report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal regulations:

“The estimated annual benefits of major Federal regulations reviewed by OMB from October 1, 1999, to September 30, 2009, for which agencies estimated and monetized both benefits and costs, are in the aggregate between $128 billion and $616 billion, while the estimated annual costs are in the aggregate between $43 billion and $55 billion.”

EPA recently testified to Congress that the economic benefits of Clean Air Act regulations exceed costs by a factor of 10-40 to one.

DEP economic benefit estimates of NJ’s clean air rules are similarly positive on the economics (while showing reductions in thousands of asthma attacks and other respiratory events, hosspital emergency room visits, sickenss, and death).

A DEP study calculated huge economic value of NJ’s “natural capital” that is protected by environmental regulations.

The Final Report was quietly posted on the Division of Science and Research’s website. Despite score of press releases posted by DEP, the only place I could find Report mentioned was in July 31, 2007 Corzine press release:

“New Jersey has preserved over 1.3 million acres of open space and farmland. In addition to the environmental impact of preserving open space, a recent DEP report valued New Jersey’s “natural capital”, which includes open space, at $20 billion annually.”

III) “Horror Stories” – But No credible Study – Blame Envrionmental Regulation for the Recession

No studies to summarize and link to here, as none exist.

Worse, by their own admission, the NJ Chamber of Commerce sought “horror stories” – not facts –  to fuel the Christie DEP Transition Team deregulation juggernaut.

According to NJBIZ,

Assembly Republican Executive Director Rick Wright said the transition team is interested in hearing from businesses about how regulations affect them. He encouraged the audience at a New Jersey Chamber of Commerce breakfast Friday morning to show the transition team “the horrors that they need to hear about regarding regulations’  effect on businesses.

As we predicted:

So, the Christie Transition Team will be inundated with all sorts of anecdotes and alleged horror stories explicitly designed to mislead. Given the composition and bias of that group, they will lack expertise and experience to evaluate the merits of this sort of propaganda.

Worse, there is no public process during the transition, which tends to be secretive. Therefore, there will be no independent check on the process, to provide countervailing information, to correct errors, to create a context for misinformation, and to reject flat out falsehoods and bad information likely to be submitted.

This is a very poor policy-making process and – given Christie’s regulatory animus – a prescription for disaster.

IV) Economists agree that Wall Street Fraud, Greed and Deregulation caused the economic crash

A large body of literature exists to demonstrate this fact. But instead of quoting the superb journalistic work of Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone (see: Why Isn’t Wall Streeet In Jail), let me quote more mainstream Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman:

When the financial crisis struck, many people, myself included, considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated.

How naive we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.

The bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was established by law to examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States. The hope was that it would be a modern version of the Pecora investigation of the 1930s, which documented Wall Street abuses and helped pave the way for financial reform.

Instead, however, the commission has broken down along partisan lines, unable to agree on even the most basic points.

It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure. First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks”, which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.

Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.

It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally.

Sweeney now joins the know nothings in the Republican party, including Governor Christie.

Senate Secretary confers with Sergeant at Arms

As we all know (or you wouldn’t be reading this), there has been a revolution in media.

As we all also know, there is a severe shortgage of substantive coverage of State House action – particularly on complex environmental issues – by the corporate media.

Press area – The crush of interepid reporters competing for scarce space of course forced ejection of uncredentialed bloggers.

The Bergen Record, Asbury Park Press and Philadelphia Inquirer don’t send their environmental reporters to Trenton. And the State House political reporters are spread far too thin and not well suited to covering environmental issues before the legislature. Environmental groups are too busy lobbying to report back to the public and their own members.

As a result, NJ citizens and environmental interests suffer. Unaccountable legislators are given a pass as they ignore strong public support for environmental protection and carry the water of special interests. And they do so with impunity. Legislators say and do things in Trenton that they would never defend back home to constituents. Democracy fails.

In fact, one of my primary objectives in creating this site was to fill voids in Trenton coverage by corporate media, who have abandoned complex public policy issues (thank goodness for NJ Spotlight – “where issues matter“).

I also try to remedy other well documented flaws in corporate media coverage, from the bias, to shallow sound bite deadline driven “he said/she said” coverage, to “fair and balanced” pseudo “objective” styles that allow corporate lobbyists to make sham claims, like the world is flat, global warming is a fraud, and that DEP and environmental regulations are killing the economy.

I am an expert on the issues I write on (more knowledgeable than any Trenton journalist), I work hard at it, and my photos are respectful and of reasonably high quality.

But none of that apparently matters to those cynics with political power in Trenton.

The media policy of the Democrat controlled NJ Senate is desperately holding on to a bygone media age where they controlled the game.

They don’t seem to understand that the world of journalism has changed, or maybe they think that they can ignore it and it will all go away.

The Senate Secretary and his control freak Sergeants at Arms simply refuse to accept the fact that bloggers and sites like WolfeNotes.com deserve the same priviledges and respect as members of the corporate media.

For 3 years now, I have been covering and photographing – without incident – legislative hearings in Trenton. I operate in those hearings in a discrete way and with the express approval of the Committee Chairmen.

After concerns were raised last year by one Sergeant at Arms about my taking photographs from areas restricted to credentialed corporate journalists, I secured former Senate President Dick Codey’s personal approval to do so.

This obviously pissed off someone.

So I was ejected this morning from the press area.

Having discussed this issue with them previously, I immediately walked down to the Senate Majority Office and got Senate President Sweeney’s staffer to over-ride the Sergeant at Arms’ ejection. Well, that really set them off!

As a result, my access privileges apparently have changed for the worse and I’m barred from media areas.

This means I won’t be able to shoot frontal photos of lobbyists testifying.

Ironically the reversal of former Senate President Codey’s open policy was dictated by a former professional journalist, who clearly has a working understanding of the need for access to photograph legislators and those testifying on bills before committees.

Today, despite the approval of Commitee Chairman Paul Sarlo and staff to Senate President Sweeney, recently appointed Secretary of the Senate Kent M. Hicks (also known as former NJN reporter Kent St. John) ejected yours truly from the press corps section of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing.

Mr. St. John/Hicks’ move follows last week’s restriction on photography in the Senate Environment Committee, despite the approval of Chairman Bob Smith.

This is really a debate about the definition of journalism, as unaccountable Sergeants at Arms want control and those with traditional corporate media credentials and access resist competition and democratization of their “profession”, especially by dirty hippie bloggers.

This is also about a bunch of old men with a little power and nothing to do.

I have nothing but contempt for turf protective petty bureaucatic authoritarians like Kent St. John (or Kent Hicks) and his empire of decrepit tin badge Seargents at Arms crew.

Senate President Sweeney should be embarrassed. And while I wasted time writing all this, I didn’t tell you about the bad bills released today! More to follow on that. And hopefully, I’ll do a better job than my absolutely flumoxed and incoherent testimony today!

Sergeants at Arms attend to their important duties!

Critics Vindicated About Industry Influence On NJ DEP Science Advisory Board

I’ve been appalled by how over the last decades DEP has been pushed off course and effectively abandoned its original mission as a science based regulatory agency and been transformed into what is essentially a toothless finance, grant making, patronage, and public relations operation.

Sometimes I’m reminded of all that when I randomly come across old debates on DEP science and regulation. These echoes prompt me to do a little digging to see how my criticisms of things turned out.

I came across this revealing gem this morning about a 2009 debate over the DEP’s “Science Advisory Board” (SAB):

• N.J. environmental groups fear science panels will be pro-development (9/20/09)

…. Faced with ongoing budget cuts and staff reductions, [Acting DEP Commissioner] Mauriello contends the advisory board is a natural fit for lean times. He says it is premature to specify the issues he would tap the group to consider. But critics claim the board will be a tool for pro-development and industry forces that want to roll back tough pollution standards and circumvent the DEP’s own scientific staff.

“This thing was created because the science and research people inside the DEP are perceived at top levels as out of control because they did not let politics and the wishes of the administration get in their way of recommending such things as a tougher chromium clean-up standard in Jersey City,” said Bill Wolfe of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER.

Mauriello said he tried to defuse such suspicions through the wording of the May directive he issued to create the board. The work of the panel, according to the directive, would be “limited to specific scientific and technical issues” that the commissioner pitches its way, “not policy or regulatory matters.” Mauriello also said the board will report to the DEP’s staff of scientists, who are helping to select its membership.

“I respect the fears of the environmentalists,” Mauriello said. “But it can only be a good thing to have an independent group of scientists to look at what we do. The days of thinking we don’t need outside assistance are over.”

Let’s break that debate down in light of what has transpired at the DEP SAB during the intervening 14 years.

At the outset, it is important to note the history and context regarding DEP science and regulation.

The SAB was formed during a time of “ongoing [DEP] budget cuts and staff reductions” that had begun 15 years earlier in 1994 by the Whitman administration’s budget cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

Progress to restore damage caused by those Whitman attacks was made under the McGreevey administration in 2002 (e.g. the Category One stream buffer protection program, the Highlands Act, revived and greatly expanded Natural Resource Damage lawsuits, et al). But that progress spawned a furious backlash by industry and developers (particularly in response to DEP over-reach with the “Big Map” land use regulatory initiative). So DEP was under even more withering and sustained criticism by the regulated business community.

Six years later, the Governor at the time the SAB was formed, Jon Corzine, was a former Goldman Sachs Neoliberal and certainly no champion of DEP or environmental regulation.

The Legislature had just privatized the DEP toxic site cleanup program and replaced DEP staff oversight with a private contractor controlled program under the May 2009 “Site Remediation Reform Act”. That legislation thus explains Acting DEP Commissioner Mauriello’s vague remark that “The days of thinking we don’t need outside assistance are over.” That was code for privatization. Mauriello knew all about that kind of political abuse, see:

• Chemical Industry Lobbyists Met With DEP Commissioner Today

• This Is Why We Need Transparency at DEP

• Political Manipulation of Science – Jersey Style

The prior Jersey City toxic chromium controversy had spawned a DEP whistleblower’s dissenting Report and a crackdown by the DEP Commissioner on DEP scientists, including issuing a gag order and even blocking publication of DEP science in peer reviewed journals. “Out of control” DEP scientist and staffers wrote controversial memo’s about all that.

Shortly thereafter, in the Gubernatorial election of Nov. 2009, Chris Christie was elected Governor and his first action on his first day in Office was issuing 4 sweeping Executive Orders that established a regulatory moratorium, attacked DEP science and targeted regulation for rollbacks (see EO’s #1 – #4). Gov. Christie later nominated and the Senate confirmed a totally unqualified retired corporate consultant, Bob Martin, as DEP Commissioner. Martin openly sought to “transform” DEP to make it more business friendly.

Those facts are critical to understanding the political pressures on DEP scientists and regulators and the true origins and political objectives that drove the formation of the SAB.

So, let’s explore a few specific salient questions:

1. Was the SAB independent and free of industry representation, bias, and advocacy?

2. Did politics intrude and shape SAB science?

3. Did the SAB limit its role to “scientific and technical issues”?

4. Did  the SAB “report to DEP’s staff of scientists”?

5. Did the SAB engage the most pressing issues and advance the public interest or corporate interests?

The DEP SAB website provides evidence upon which we can answer these questions. This includes SAB membership and the 44 research Reports issued by the SAB.

I’ve also written many times about the SAB over these 14 years (e.g. see this and this and this and this).

I even successfully sued the DEP to obtain public records regarding the qualifications and background information on scientists that DEP was selecting for the SAB, see: (Star Ledger, 2/23/10):

• N.J. DEP must release names of 108 candidates for Science Advisory Board

So let’s respond to those questions:

1.  Was the SAB independent and free of industry representation, bias, and advocacy?

No. The evidence is clear.

Business and industry had several representatives appointed to the SAB and the DEP’s ethical standards on conflicts of interest and recusal did not prevent those scientists from participating in issues and SAB deliberations and Reports where they had biases and even conflicts of interest.

Here are specific examples of that:

• Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette Re-Appoints Dupont (1) And Corporate Hired Guns To DEP Science Advisory Board

• Corporate Members Of Murphy DEP Science Advisory Board Must Be Replaced

2. Did politics intrude and shape SAB science?

Yes, although documenting that is nuanced and complex, and the degree of politicization has varied over time.

But the SAB first recommendation Report on the DEP’s “Nitrate Dilution Model” and Assessment of the Median Nitrate Concentration Model for the New Jersey Highlands in Subwatersheds and Land Use Capability Zones are egregious examples of abuse, as they advanced the development community’s transparent attack on DEP land use regulation, water quality standards, and the Highlands Act’s septic density standard (which Christie DEP adopted rollbacks to).

Several other of Commissioner Martin’s charges to the SAB reflect political attacks on DEP science and regulation. Here’s another example:

• DEP “Science” Board Recommends Rollback of Groundwater Standard

For the typical kinds of industry attacks on DEP science and regulation, see also this Philadelphia Inquirer story:

• NJ bill could change regulation of drinking water contaminants

[…] Bill Wolfe of NJ PEER said that adding industry to the board would “set up conflicts of interests.”

He also said the bill would change the procedure the institute uses to determine risk, weakening its ability to limit contaminant levels.

“We’re in a very very complex area of science and regulation, and this is a sledge hammer,” he said.

You can see his two blog posts about the measure here.

Hal Bozarth, of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, supported the legislation. He said that industry and commercial interests were “disenfranchised from participating in a process which affects them greatly.”

The Press Of Atlantic City also published a critical story on the SAB on October 28, 2010 (behind a paywall), which I discuss in this post.

On September 9, 2010, Philadelphia PBS affiliate WHYY also broadcast a critical story about SAB deliberations being conducted behind closed doors and not open to the public – I excerpt and discuss that WHYY story in this post.

So, this issue actually used to get media coverage – Sadly, that is no longer the case.

3. Did the SAB limit its role to “scientific and technical issues”?

No. The evidence is clear.

The large majority of the 44 SAB Reports specifically involved DEP regulatory policy, DEP regulatory standards, and DEP regulatory programs.

4. Did  the SAB “report to DEP’s staff of scientists”?

No. The evidence is clear.

The DEP Commissioner selected the issues the SAB would address. The DEP Commissioner issued the charge to the SAB that defined and constrained the SAB’s work. And the SAB issued Reports to the DEP Commissioner, not DEP science staff.

5. Did the SAB engage the most pressing issues and advance the public interest or corporate interests?

This is a more difficult subjective judgment, but in my opinion the answer is clearly no.

The SAB’s first 2016 Report on climate science was about adaptation, not climate science and/or the need for deep and rapid greenhouse gas emissions reductions:

NJDEP Charge Question: Which aspects of climate change should be considered at this point to be inevitable, and how should NJ best adapt to these? What additional studies are indicated to assess statewide vulnerabilities to global warming and sea level rise, and how can these studies be linked to adaptive land use management practices, open space protection, and resource utilization?

Gov. Murphy’s Corporate Subsidy Wind Victory Press Conference Is An Insult

View From Paulsboro High School – fourth and long

[Update below]

Tomorrow, NJ Spotlight tells me, Gov. Murphy will hold a press conference in, of all places, Paulsboro NJ, to celebrate his multi-billion dollar subsidized corporate off shore wind victory.

For once, NJ Spotlight gets the context right [but they left a lot out]:

• [Gov.] Murphy is scheduled to sign the legislation tomorrow in Paulsboro, where the foundations for the turbines are to be manufactured. [They left out that most of the manufacturing, jobs, and profits are foreign.]

• The [federal] approval comes just days after the state Legislature approved a bill granting the developer access to lucrative federal tax credits to address concerns about rising costs and supply-chain issues. [They left out billions more in corporate subsides.]

They also left out another equally important recent story that provided the contrast to expose exactly what’s going on here: i.e. where Gov. Murphy’s Board Of Public Utilities just slashed a proposed public utility solar infrastructure and rooftop solar program by $286 million – a massive 75% cut in the proposed plan.

You see, there is not much corporate profit in rooftop solar and it is a real threat to the power and profits of the fossil fueled corporate utilities, their shareholders, and Wall Street parasites [aka “traders”] and investors.

That’s exactly the opposite of capital intensive wind, which works very well with the Wall Street financed and fossil gas corporate power business model, like PSE&G.

In addition to the issues of massive corporate subsidies to the Gov.’s off shore wind program and the revealing contrasting cuts to far more “sustainable” (I hate that word!) and the equitable (better concept, but still not equality) labor intensive, small scale, distributed, local, rooftop solar and the massive subsidies to PSE&G nuclear (over $1 billion so far and counting at $300 million per year as far as the eye can see), Gov. Murphy’s decision to sign this corporate scam in Paulsboro NJ is a huge slap in the face to the community, which has been neglected by DEP and poisoned by corporate polluters (as his DEP is doing very little to reduce these risks or pollution emissions).

I’ve written many, many times about Paulsboro, a toxic “sacrifice zone” (and years before Chris Hedges coined that phrase), e.g. see this recent post for the summary of that toxic history:

• A Shameful (And Continuing) Toxic Legacy: From Lodi And Paulsboro, NJ To Palestine, Ohio

Off shore wind will do absolutely nothing to address any of these problems – and the fossil refinery will continue to operate and pollute.

Your author debates NJ Senator Sweeney, Earth Day, 2005. Sweeney would later become Senate President in 2010.

I’m too hot and burnt out right now to write anything more – the Pacific northwest is suffering a climate chaos induced simultaneous heat dome and smoke from Canadian wildfires.

And I can’t drink enough beer to make that go away.

Neil Young warned us:

The world is turning – I hope it don’t turn away. …

Get out of town, think I’ll get out of town.

I head for the sticks with my bus and friends.

I follow the road, but I don’t know where it ends.

[Update: 7/6/23 – Here is a perfect quote that reveals how totally out of touch the NJ groups are – I would bet that they have never even been in Paulsboro, but will appear today for the first time at Gov. Murphy’s press conference photo op (and probably get quotes in Murphy’s press release):

 “Every responsible offshore-wind project moves us toward our clean-energy future, which in addition to climate and economic benefits, will also improve our air quality, which for too long has disproportionately impacted low-income communities and communities of color,’’ said Allison McLeod, senior policy director for the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.”

https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2023/07/feds-clear-way-for-orsted-to-move-ahead-with-ocean-wind-1-njs-first-offshore-wind-facility/