Over the strident objections of major environmental organizations, the New Jersey Legislature, back in mid March, overwhelmingly passed legislation allowing the DEP to attack the state's mountain of contaminated sites by licensing environmental engineers to oversee the cleanups.
Today, more than a month later, the bill's still sitting on Governor Jon Corzine's desk.
Wait a minute, you ask. Didn't the governor support the legislation from the get-go? Isn't he aware that the backlog of 20,000 sites is a major embarrassment for New Jersey? Doesn't he recognize that the chairmen of the environmental committees in the Senate and Assembly put their reputations on the line in sponsoring the spills and spent countless hours negotiating the details with a host of affected parties?
The answer is yes, yes and yes. Dumb guys don't get to run Goldman Sachs.
So, what's up, you ask.
What's up is that the governor is running for re-election. And his polling numbers are scary bad and the state's economy continues to slump and the enviros are labeling him as anti-environment.
So what, you ask. Corzine can't possibly think for a minute that they'd endorse Republican Chris Christie over him.
Don't be silly. Dick Cheney will join a gay rights march before the Sierra Club endorses a Republican for governor in New Jersey.
But remember this: former DEP Commissioner Chris Dagget also is running for governor as an independent. And the governor's campaign folks know that a vote for Dagget is more likely a vote subtracted from Corzine, not Christie.
So, what's likely to happen?
Well, the governor does have a few more days at least to sign the bill. He might just go ahead and do that. But he also could throw the enviros a bone.
What kind of bone?
He could conditionally veto the bill, demanding that the legislature amend it to make it more palatable to the Sierra Club, NJ Environmental Federation, NJ Environmental Lobby, et al.
Or?
Or he could sign it and simultaneously issue an executive order giving the enviros something they value highly.
Like what?
Well, let me turn the question around and ask it of you, dear reader.
What could the governor give up that might please the environmental community, or at least get them off his back until November? And should he do it?
Use the comment block below. If you don't see one, click on the tiny "comments" line.
In the meanwhile, we recommend that you check out our earlier posts on this topic (below). Pay special attention to the interesting comments from folks involved in the site remediation process, both in New Jersey and in Massachusetts where a licensed site professional program has been operating for years.
NJ Gov. gets Licensed Site Professional bill
Licensed Site Professional vote Monday in NJ
NJ Licensed Site Professional bills advance
NJ Licensed Site Professional bill's encore
Will New Jersey see Licensed Site Professionals?
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Friday, April 24, 2009
Where's NJ's Licensed Site Professional bill?
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15 comments:
Frank - the embarrassment Corzine rightly fears is signing any bill privatizing toxic site cleanup. At her US Senate EPA confirmation hearing, his own former DEP Commissioner, Lisa Jackson, ran away from the bill that she herself advocated in NJ. What does that tell us?
It is not hard to realize that the source of the problem in DEP site remediation program is TOO MUCH private sector influence. DEP does ZERO enforcement of cleanup requirements and industrial polluters are allowed to simply stonewall DEP case managers and run out the clock. The selection of the cleanup plan is controlled exclusively by the polluter, an absurd situation that allows cost minimization and economic factors to drive what should be a public health and environmental protection program.
This - plus GROSS MISMANAGEMENT at DEP - is what explains the huge backlog. PRIVATIZATION will only make those problems worse, not better, as the environmental cop is taken off the beat.
Since the bill passed, there have been additional highly embarrassing disclosures - with more shoes to drop - on suppression and coverup of the DEP risk assessment on toxic chromium, and the health risks in Jersey City and the Hudson County "chrome coast". What did Lisa Jackson know and when did she know it? She put people's lives on the line to appease NJ business community and advance her own career. How sick is that?
Oh, and don't worry about Mr. Daggett on this one - he's a "brownfields" redeveloper who has been playing this game for many years. No way he can criticize CoOrzine with those kind of skeletons in his closet.
My guess is that the source o delay is appeasement of NJ enviro's - they recently issued a legal opinion stating that the bill was unconstitutional. When he signs the bill, Corzine can claim that his legal counsel spent some time researching that. But what folks really should research is compliance with federal law, which is a much more significant issue, especially if US EPA finally grows a spine and threatens to withhold millions of dollars of federal cleanup monies in NJ under RCRA and Superfund.
Does anyone recall that a similar threat by USDOT is what killed the McGreevey "pay to play" procurement Executive Order and the Fast Track bill?
That's a pretty hefty list of allegations, not the least of which is that Lisa Jackson is now disavowing New Jersey's proposed LSP program.
Any challengers out there to Anonymous's contentions?
I note that the post states "Doesn't he recognize that the chairmen of the environmental committees in the Senate and Assembly put their reputations on the line in sponsoring the spills and spent countless hours negotiating the details with a host of affected parties?" Sponsoring the spills?! Subconscious slip? But the truth! Sponso Smith is feathering his nest and Corzine was either convinced LSPs were a good idea by Assist. Commissioner Irene Kropp and her cronies at DEP who have upper mgmt positions in consulting firms or industry lined up for themselves (as former Assist. Commissioner Evan Van Hook who went to work for Honeywell) or he needs the support of all the local politicians who are bought and paid for by developers or both. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out what LSP is all about. I've been told by people working at small environmental consulting firms and at PSEG that they don't necessarily think this is a good bill. Developers and other "fast tracker" who want to build schools on contaminated property that the local politicians want to unload because they can't get rateables love the idea, however.
Anonymous -
"Sponsoring the spills" was not, believe me, a Freudian slip. But it is a great argument for not relying too heavily on spell-check programs. Thanks for pointing it out, embarrassing as it may be to us.
I've decided to exercise the editor's prerogative and reopen the blog post to correct that typo. Rest assured, however, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, that your comment will live on, undisturbed, as a cautionary note to me and all others who dare take to the keyboard to express an opinion on this blog (or elsewhere).
-- The Editor
frank - I'll put my name on my comments (the first anonymous - I'm forced to selected that to post here for some reason)),
Check out the transcrip of the Lisa Jackson confirmation hearing. At the very end, Chairwoman Barbara Boxer asked her POINT BLANK if she would bring NJ LSP program to EPA. Jackson replied - point blank - no way.
I was there. But I'll dig up a link.
The fact that the NJ press corps has not reported this significant fact is telling.
Bill Wolfe
Frank - please post the below evidence that suppors my claim that Jackson disowned and ran away from the LSP privatization bill during Senate confirmation:
Link to CSPAN video - Boxer "lightening round" questions start at 3:28:55
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=Congress-A-14317
Jackson was asked 6 questions, the last at 3:36:20 is the best, where Boxer asked Jackson to respond to my criticism (PEER). Boxer set that question up by mentioning EPA whistleblowers had provided good information to her that she used. PEER did that. This gave PEER credibility and prevented Jackson from attacking the messenger.
At 3:26:45 Jackson is asked by Boxer for "your views on polluterrs self certifying that property is clean".
At 3:42:43 after specifically citing the NJ LSP bill she supported in NJ, Jackson finally gets around to responding and says:
"I don't believe that process [i.e. private certification, as in LSP] has merit at the federal level". BINGO!
Boxer removes any ambiguity at 3:43:03 by saying:
"you don't anticiapte and you do not expect" to allow private consultants to certify sites as clean.
It could not be more clear.
Since then, NO ONE has held Jackson accountable to the responses she gave Boxer on these 6 questions. ONLY ONE media outlet even covered the Boxer "lightening round" (i.e Pro Publica's Joaquin Sapien).
For example, in response to criticism of 3 years of delay in proposing DEP MCL regulations, Jackson claimed that DEP was "enforcing" and implementing a 5 ppb drinking water MCL for perchlorate in the absence of adopted rules. That is legally highly questionable practice - how does one enforce rules and MCL standards that don't exist?
She also made a statement that was closely parsed on about when she personally learned about Kiddie Kollege. She linking that to the date DEP sampling results were obtained, not over 3 months prior.Very careful choice of words here - but I hear that there are emails that document what was known when and by whom on the chromium issues.
Bill Wolfe
When Lisa Jackson became commissioner, I personally took a report I wrote to her office and handed it to her personal assistant. My reason for doing so was that she would see the example of what happens when the DEP hires consultants for its Publicly Funded Site Remediation Program. As a case team member, I found it necessary to write the Remedial Investigation Report (RIR) myself because I had no confidence that the contracted consultant, who lost all interest in the case once the DEP vetoed soil excavation for nominal soil contamination, that using consultants was neither quicker nor cheaper. Plus, I had documented the consultant's incompetence, including relabeling the existing wells but comparing the newer results to older results so that they were comparing the concentrations of different wells. They also had to do a costly resampling because the samples arrived at the lab past the time limit. And they billed three times the Department approved price for mobilization and mobilized twice before and after a holiday to maximum effect! The point was that the Department should not contract consultants, at least not the "lowest bidder". I can only imagine what will happen once consultants lead their clients down the path without DEP oversight. Sites will not be cleaned up faster and investigations will cost much more in the end. No one who really understands the situation would support this bill. What did Jackson do with my report? She passed it to the Assistant Commissioner Irene Kropp, who gave it to my bureau chief with the message to not contact her directly but to go "up the chain of command". She continued to place all trust in Kropp and isolated herself. After Kiddie Kollege, they had the gall to promote this LSP idea as a solution (with input from the Publicly Funded folks I'm sure). Why is Kropp so kean on the LSP idea? Because she thinks it will redeem her last disastrous idea: NJEMs, an overpriced, unpopular, user unfriendly and outdated database she purchased 10 yrs ago. She thinks the DEP staff, many of whom have Masters or higher degrees, are going to be content to check off whether or not various steps in the investigation were performed in NJEMs without reading and evaluating the report or the work. If they are bored to death and leave DEP because they aren't drones, all the better. Fewer pensions to pay out.
A bit of realism demands that we renovate LSP instead of kill it. The DEP won't get the resources to do the cleanups itself unless there's American Revolution II (which we need for the environment, but that'll take some time). The LSP bill does need to get the DEP a ton more money from a polluter-supported oversight fund, a consumption tax that also funds this, higher auditing requirements, a greater proportion of environmental types on the oversight board, and a handful of things.
Corzine is paralyzed on a handful of pro-environment measures right now. It's as if he wants to see who his Republican challenger will be...They're squabbling nicely amongst themselves and he doesn't want them to unite and point their fire at him on an environmental issue. What's the solution?
well, it isn't Daggett.
Dear "realist" - Corzine must kill the LSP bill - you don't fix a problem by digging deeper - and with the same private sector shovel that put you in the hole.
But this is a diversion from the challenge Frank posed - he wrote:
"That's a pretty hefty list of allegations, not the least of which is that Lisa Jackson is now disavowing New Jersey's proposed LSP program.
Any challengers out there to Anonymous's contentions?"
No one here has risen to that challenge or responded to the FACT that Lisa Jackson ran away from the LSP bill to gain EPA confirmation (as the CSPAN video documents).
Now there's a story - assuming there are intrepid journalists out there!
Bill Wolfe
Dear Paralyzed - you ask what is teh solution.
The answer is simple: like my mom (and hopefully yours) told me:
DO THE RIGHT THING. VETO THIS BILL.
Good politics is good policy - and vice versa.
Wolfe
The vast majority of DEP's "backlog" is Industrial Site Remediation Act (ISRA) work. If the act was repealed, then environmental consultants could do "due dillegence" investigations for purchasers of industrial/commercial property and the lender can decide whether or not they did a good enough job. Of course, the developer's and banks in this state wanted a "covenant not to sue" so they got ISRA passed. All this does is pass off the liability and make everyone feel better about the land sale. If you removed ISRA and everyone went back to being responsible for their own purchases and any polluter pays, DEP could focus on the most pressing matters. As it is now, anytime a well-connected developer wants something looked at, everything is dropped because he picked up the phone and called Corzine or the commissioner. EVERY DEP case manager can give examples of cases where this has happened, regardless of whether or not other cases had more pressing threats to the public/environment.
Bill, many people respect your knowledge of the issues. However, I don’t think I have ever seen you support anything the DEP has done in this state, so your outrage is expected. Furthermore, you seem to be getting angrier and angrier as the years go by. Take a Xanax and relax.
No bill is perfect. Having said that, a lot of accusations against certain DEP officials are a bit over the top. That is, unless you got fired from the DEP.
The fact is, the SRP is broken. Is this the answer? Who knows, but it is worth a try. To argue that the Governor should fund the DEP at a level that supports the hiring of 100’s of new caseworkers is simply a fantasy. We have to live in the real world. There is no money. So, come up with solutions, don’t take the easy road of simply highlighting the problems.
As for the EO, it is like throwing bricks in the Grand Canyon…it is pointless. The only difference is that the environmentalists will be at the bottom, catching those bricks and whipping them back at the Governor’s head. So much for trying to be a nice guy.
Dear annonymous - now wonder you don't put you name on that ad hominum attack. I am glad to tell readers here that I am proud I was fired from DEP for disclosing Christie Whitman and Bob Shinn's coverup on mercury contamination of freshwater fish. Have you ever had the integrity to elevated the public interest above your own career interests?
I agree that SRP isbroken. But Who and what broke it?
I do not support hiring ANY additional staff in SRP. They have PLENTY of staff now to do the job right now.
What I support is good management - start with a priority list of sites, based on risk to HH&E, that DEP abandoned. DEP is statutorily obligated to develop this list. No private sector manager could last a week in a job if she/he refused to develop rational priorities given scarce resources and surplus work to do. Why should that be tolerated at DEP? Lack of priorities allows the political intervention that a prior commenter noted (that copmmenter is a DEP staffer (or former staffer). Lack of priorities also allows others with no interest in cleaning up a site to stall and run out the clock and not face ANY enforcement liability (this is caused also by the voluntary nature of the current SRP program).
Next, start really enforcing cleanup requirements - including mandatory schedules for document submission and actual site cleanup. Make the polluters pay for delay. No more endless technical debates with DEP case managers on minutia.Again, this would never be tolerated in the private sector or any regulatroy program that had integrity. No other DEP program is implemented like this.
Last, simplify cleanup requirements. Start with mandatory permanent remedies - dig it up don't study it to death for years and then end up just capping toxics and leaving them in place (the cheapest and riskiest cleanup approach that simply shifts risks and costs to the future).
These 3 steps wuld be real refrom. Lisa Jackson even pledged to do all of them but never followed through on thios plesadges. Read her OCtober 2007 testimony if you don't beleibve me. See, I do my homework instead of attacking the messenger like you do.
Wolfe
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