Can pigs fly? and other eye openers!

[Guest guest]

http://listserv.fsl.com/pipermail/wtcrc/2006-September/000352.html

For six years, President Bush has been

systematically dismantling the scientific capabilities of U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The President has begun closing

EPA's research libraries -- which the EPA enforcement staff relies

upon

for crucial information to do their jobs. The President is also

closing

EPA scientific laboratories, thus diminishing the agency's ability to

judge which problems are really serious and which are less so. As a

result, this President's legacy will be accelerated deterioration of

the

natural environment, yet oddly this may be a political plus among

Republicans. Many of the GOP's most faithful supporters embrace

environmental deterioration as evidence that the End Times are upon

us,

when Jesus will return to Earth.

As EPA loses its scientific capabilities, the effects are being felt

at

the state level, because this is where EPA used to provide backbone

for

weak state agencies.

At the state level, wealthy polluters and land developers put enormous

pressure on state agencies to cut corners -- and these wealthy few

often

can have their way with state government because they fund the

reelection campaigns of governors, mayors, county councils, judges,

and

other local lights. Federal EPA is supposed to provide a floor, below

which even the most craven politician cannot sink. As the Bush plan

unfolds, EPA is losing its capacity to play that crucial role.

The pressure to cut corners -- to fill in wetlands, pave over farms,

declare toxic wastes " safe, " and so on -- is relentless in all states,

even the wealthy ones. Take New Jersey, which is the wealthiest state

in

the union, measured by annual income per person.

New Jersey is a small place with 8 million inhabitants, and it is

heavily polluted. It also has the highest cancer rate among all the

states (2002 data). The New Jersey Department of Environmental

Protection (DEP) now lists 16,000 contaminated sites throughout the

state, and roughly 200 to 300 new sites are reportedly added to the

list

each month. Back in the early 1990s, wealthy developers saw a chance

to

make money " redeveloping " these toxic sites, and they began referring

to

them as " brownfields " -- as if to suggest that these pots of poison

are

like farm fields at harvest time, with corn stalks silhouetted against

the sunset. Nothing could be further from the truth. These sites are

often dripping with the nastiest chemicals you can imagine --

combinations of radioactive waste, black oily goo, dioxins, PCBs,

mercury, lead, chromium, TCE, PCE, perchlorate, dozens of pesticides,

benzene, jet fuel, miscellaneous chlorinated solvents and on and on.

The Superfund toxic waste cleanup law was sponsored by Jim Florio when

he represented New Jersey in Congress, 1975-1990 -- which made Mr.

Florio the darling of environmentalists. However, late in his single

term as governor of N.J., 1990-1994, Mr. Florio began to relax the

rules

for cleaning up contaminated sites, to make it easier for developers

to

build on " brownfields. " Mr. Florio's successor, Republican Christie

Whitman (N.J. governor, 1994-2001, and then head of U.S. EPA), relaxed

the N.J. cleanup rules even further, until these rules are now

commonly

described as " pave and wave. " Got a toxic site? Pave it over with a

thin

layer of asphalt or a plastic tarp -- or put a golf course over it,

or a

grammar school or a condo development -- and wave the problem goodbye.

When she was governor, Ms. Whitman's slogan was, " New Jersey is Open

for

Business. "

Lax cleanup standards were intended to help developers make money.

Brownfields are cheap to buy but expensive to clean up. However, after

" cleanup " was redefined to include covering with a plastic tarp or a

parking lot, then the profit-potential of " brownfields " soared.

Democrats and environmentalists love to blame Ms. Whitman for this

creative redefinition of " cleanup. " But Democrats have controlled New

Jersey with large majorities since Ms. Whitman left office 5 years ago

and the cleanup rules haven't changed -- except perhaps to become even

more permissive.

Of course relaxing the cleanup standards is never justified as a gift

to

wealthy developers. It is justified as a solemn obligation to the

urban

poor, who desperately need jobs and affordable housing, it is true. So

-- the story goes -- the " pave and wave " approach to toxic sites is a

benevolent act, promoting needed development in blighted urban zones.

Unfortunately, a basic law of the universe -- the law of entropy --

guarantees that toxic chemicals left in the ground will eventually

migrate away from their original location and enter air, water, soil,

worms, birds, fish, insects, mammals -- the food web -- and eventually

people. Plastic tarps and asphalt doilies will not halt this process.

And so the state of New Jersey -- and all its inhabitants -- are now

contaminated with hundreds of industrial poisons. The New Jersey DEP

has

acknowledged that pollution causes roughly 4,100 new cancers in New

Jersey each year -- and it's pretty easy to make the case that this is

the tip of a large, unspoken iceberg. There's a reason why New Jersey

is

the No. 1 in cancer nationwide.

Today, former governor Jim Florio is in the business of building big-

box stores on contaminated sites, and Christie Todd Whitman runs her

own

environmental consulting firm, helping wealthy developers navigate the

state's environmental laws to maximize gain. Republican or Democrat,

it

matters not. The point is to make money building on toxic sites

without

going to the expense of cleaning them thoroughly. With the " pave and

wave " approach, the state's 16,000 " brownfields " are no longer a

deadly

liability -- they have become a vehicle for expressing charitable

concern for the urban poor and a new source of wealth for the

already-wealthy.

However, everyone now acknowledges that, from a public health

perspective, the system is completely broken.

This fact was driven home this summer by a series of revelations that

shocked even the most cynical among us:

** On August 4th, the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill revealed that Kiddie

Kollege, a day-care center in south Jersey, had been operating for two

years in a former mercury-thermometer factory in rural linville.

When tested, 1/3rd of the children -- ranging in age from 8 months to

13

years -- showed excessive mercury in their urine, as did one adult

staff

member.

The toxic Kiddie Kollege had been discovered on April 11 by a DEP

employee who " had a hunch " that something might be wrong and initiated

air tests. But it was not until July 28 that DEP officials provided

facts to the day-care operator, who promptly shut down the

Kollege. " In

hindsight, in April, we could have shut it down regardless of home

rule,

regardless of anything, " Elaine Makatura, a DEP spokesperson, told the

New York Times.

** By mid-August, two other day-care centers had been discovered built

on contaminated sites. The " Through the Years " daycare was discovered

on

a site contaminated with heating oil and PCBs less than a mile from

Kiddie Kollege. And " The Ultimate Scholar " daycare in Toms River,

N.J.,

closed August 10 after high levels of tetrachloroethylene -- dry

cleaning fluid -- were discovered in a play area.

Soon the DEP acknowledged that 700 of the state's 4,200 daycare

centers

are operating within 400 feet of toxic sites.

But then the plot thickened.

By August 16, news reporter Tim Zatzariny, Jr. of the Courier-Post in

Cherry Hill revealed that the Kiddie Kollege daycare site had been

mysteriously removed from the DEP's list of 16,000 contaminated

properties, along with 1,845 other toxic sites that disappeared from

the

DEP list some time between 2002 and 2005.

Toxic sites removed from the list included 50 landfills; 100 chemical

companies; a former Nike missile site; the Bader Field Airport in

Atlantic City; Camden Iron & Metal, Inc., and Penn Jersey Rubber &

Waste

Company, both in Camden; Vanguard Vinyl Siding of Gloucester City, and

so on.

Reporters all over the state jumped on the story, eager to discover

who

had removed the 1,846 toxic sites from the list. To this day, no one

has

publicly revealed the name of the culprit, but reporters have printed

candid confessions by several top state officials.

The 1,846 sites disappeared from the list while Bradley M.

was

chief of DEP, serving Democratic governor McGreevey -- another

darling of environmentalists who worked aggressively to help him into

office. But environmentalists got stabbed in the back by Mr. McGreevey

and by Mr. . Based on Mr. 's performance, Jeff Tittel,

head of the New Jersey Sierra Club, told a reporter, " The name of the

game for was letting rich sponsors of [governor] Jim

McGreevey

build on tainted land, " said Tittel. " Taking contaminated sites off

the

books makes more land available for the developers. "

Mr. reportedly " bristled " at the suggestion that his DEP gave

preferential treatment to rich builders. But he acknowledged that DEP,

under his leadership, was in complete disarray, unable to even keep a

tally of toxic sites, much less clean them up: " The DEP's professional

staff was so overwhelmed, he said, that it was impossible to even

pinpoint the number of contaminated sites and accurately chart the

agency's progress in dealing with them, " the Bergen Record reported

him

saying in an interview.

Other DEP employees and former employees piled on. It turned out that

DEP has only 175 " case managers " assigned to the 16,000 toxic sites,

for

an average of 91 sites per case manager. One former DEP case manager,

McKee, recalled having close to 100 cases assigned to him for

supervision in the early 1990s [which were Florio years]. A

dysfunctional bureaucracy further hampered his work, he

said. " Deadlines

for cleanup progress are not enforced; there is no priority system and

no real tracking and reporting system, " McKee told Lane of

the

Newark Star-Ledger.

As a result, toxic sites remain on the DEP's list for decades. " One

former chemical company site in South Brunswick has been identified as

contaminated since 1981 and has not been cleaned up. The same goes

for a

radium company in Orange, identified by the DEP as a contaminated site

in 1984. A metal finishing company site in Bound Brook has been

contaminated since 1985 and is still an active case, " Lane reported.

On August 27 Lane revealed the dirty little secret that no one had

ever

talked about in print before: " One current [DEP] case manager spoke

openly about the political pressure brought to bear for the agency to

cut corners. One current case manager, Amil Singh, said heavy

caseloads

account for the notoriously low morale in the site remediation

department.

" But he also said the department was plagued by a less tangible

problem:

political pressure.

" It is particularly intense when a redevelopment project or real

estate

transaction at a contaminated site is being held up pending a 'no

further action' letter -- a certification that a cleanup is complete -

-

from the department, he said.

" 'There's a lot of pressure on the case managers to take certain

actions

in order to appease the local governments and make property move,'

Singh

said. 'I've been pressured to produce NFAs (no further action letters)

by my own [DEP] management,' " Singh said.

The current DEP chief is P. , a no-nonsense former EPA

worker. Ms. told the New York Times that her agency needs

" better tracking of contaminated sites, clearer cleanup priorities and

stronger enforcement efforts. " This sounds good.

Will Democratic Governor Jon Corzine -- current darling of the state's

environmentalists who helped him gain office -- initiate the needed

reforms to permanently clean up toxic sites across the state? So far

Mr.

Corzine has spent his time assuring everyone that no new daycare

centers

will be built in toxic waste sites -- as if New Jersey's toxic waste

problems ended with daycare centers.

A larger question is, Can elected officials of either party protect

public health and give us environmental justice by standing up to the

monied interests who paid for their election campaigns?

Can pigs fly?

Campaign finance reform -- getting private money out of our

elections --

is still an essential priority. Without it, other reforms will be

half-baked at best.