Rachel's News #873: Toxic Daycare in N.J.

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At 09:26 PM 9/22/06, you wrote:

>Rachel's Democracy & Healthy News #873, Sept. 21, 2006

>[Printer-friendly version]

>

>AS EPA IS SHREDDED, STATE TOXIC WASTE PROGRAMS FAIL

>

>By Peter Montague[1]

>

>To recap from last week: 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

>Franklinville. 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. Campbell

>was chief of DEP, serving Democratic governor James 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. Campbell. Based on Mr. Campbell's performance,

>Jeff Tittel, head of the New Jersey Sierra Club, told a reporter,

> " The name of the game for Campbell 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. Campbell 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, Thomas 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

>Alexander 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 Lisa P. Jackson, a no-nonsense former EPA

>worker. Ms. Jackson 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.

>

>============

>

>[1] I would like to acknowledge one of the real heroes in this story

>-- Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and its

>New Jersey field director, Bill Wolfe, a former senior analyst at DEP.

>As this story evolved, it was Wolfe who helped news reporters

>understand the ins and outs of arcane cleanup regulations, suggesting

>where they should be looking to find sleeping dogs and smoking guns.

>

>Return to Table of Contents

 

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