Climate Progress, Mar. 4, 2014

After a mysterious chemical contaminated the water supply of some 300,000 West Virginians in January, residents were left with more than just a bad taste in their mouths. They had unanswered questions. Why, they asked, was there so little information on the specific chemical that spilled? Why were storage tanks allowed to be so close to such an important drinking water supply? Why was there no emergency response plan in place? And why had it been 23 years since anyone inspected those tanks?

The way America regulates its vast inventory of chemical compounds was immediately called into question. People were shocked to learn that under federal law, more than 60,000 chemicals are allowed to enter American commerce without scientific proof that they are safe. And according to federal government estimates, one out of every three Americans is at risk of a poison gas disaster by living near one of hundreds of chemical facilities that house highly toxic chemicals.

Lawmakers in West Virginia hurried to introduce new rules for chemical storage tank safety, a version of which just passed the state’s House of Representatives. But those who have been trying for broader reform say that bill is not enough. It would take more than one hastily-drafted bill, they said, to fix all of the loopholes and challenges that currently plague chemical safety and storage regulation. It would take more to prevent the next West Virginia.

“I’m looking for action here, not a lot of words,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said during a recent hearing on chemical reform. “And so far, I’ve seen a lot of words.”

Why Do It?

Despite very real concerns of future spills in West Virginia and beyond, advocates for complete chemical safety reform have not seen the legislation they are so desperately looking for. That lack of hard information begs the questions: What would true reform actually look like? How difficult would it be to achieve?

It’s easy for someone to say ‘we shouldn’t be shocked’ when it’s not their family or themselves, when they don’t feel the repercussions

The United States federal government currently regulates more than 84,000 chemical substances. There are approximately 12,440 chemical facilities across the country, surrounded by more than 100 million people. Of those facilities, 473 of them surround populations of 100,000 people or more, putting large populations at risk of catastrophe from a deliberate or accidental chemical release.

And chemical releases happen often. According to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, 1,374 different facilities leaked 287 different chemicals into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans in 2010 — all for a total of 194 million pounds of chemicals released that year. As a report in BloombergBusinessweek notes, that’s almost 10,000 tons of chemicals spilled into U.S. waters in one year, and those are just the ones that have been officially reported.

A Greenpeace interactive map shows high-risk chemical plants throughout the United States.

CREDIT: Greenpeace

Bloomberg’s takeaway from those numbers is that “we shouldn’t be surprised, shocked, or awed when a spill happens.” But some aren’t willing to take that approach.

“It’s easy for someone to say ‘we shouldn’t be shocked’ when it’s not their family or themselves, when they don’t feel the repercussions,” Maya Nye, president of the West Virginia citizen group People Concerned About Chemical Safety (PCACS), told ThinkProgress. Nye has been advocating for safer chemical storage regulations with PCACS since a 2008 explosion at a Bayer CropScience pesticide facility killed two workers and injured eight, nearly puncturing a neighboring tank of toxic methyl isocyanate near her home.

After the Bayer explosion, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board recommended West Virginia establish a program requiring annual third-party safety audits, the findings of which would be publicly available. The CSB has made that recommendation to West Virginia three times in the last five years, but it has not been implemented.

If West Virginia had implemented that statewide program, CSB chairman Dr. Rafael Moure-Eraso said it might have prevented the January chemical spill that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians. Nye is not so sure. The recommended program only applies to chemical facilities that store extremely hazardous substances. Crude MCHM is not considered hazardous under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, which currently allows 62,000 chemicals — including crude MCHM — to be stored with no requirement that they be tested or shown to be safe.

That crossing between federal and state regulations means it will be difficult, if nearly impossible, for one bill to solve all the problems that advocates say currently plague the chemical storage systems in West Virginia and across the country.

“Individual state laws can’t cover everything,” said Christie Todd Whitman, the former Environmental Protection Agency chief under George W. Bush and current advocate for stricter safety standards on American chemical facilities. “You need to have some federal legislation.”

Round Up The Little Guys

Whitman has a unique history of trying to implement federal chemical safety regulations, beginning with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

After the attacks, then-EPA administrator Whitman drafted new rules to strengthen the safety of chemical storage facilities — or, as President Obama has called them, “stationary weapons of mass destruction.” If approved, those rules would have allowed the EPA to implement an already-existing provision of the Clean Air Act that required facilities to use safer chemicals and storage processes.

To Whitman’s frustration, however, the Bush White House declined to endorse a draft bill, and Congress did not act. She has been calling for a renewed effort ever since.

But believe it or not, the rules that Whitman wants do exist. They manifest themselves, however, as “standards” set by industry trade association the American Chemistry Council (ACC). ACC’s members are held to strong universal safety standards, and they include a lot of the things that chemical safety regulation advocates want: publicly accessible safety information, a commitment to using inherently safer chemicals, and hardening the structural integrity of chemical facilities.

Individual state laws can’t cover everything … You need to have some federal legislation.

Some of the biggest chemical companies are ACC members: BASF Corp., Dow Chemical, DuPont, ExxonMobil. And even though the standards are not technically enforceable, they are working, Whitman says.

“The big companies are pretty responsible because they don’t want anything to happen,” Whitman said, noting the potentially huge liabilities that larger companies face. “But it’s the smaller ones, the outliers — there’s so many of those that are not members [of ACC] and they have very volatile chemicals.”

It’s true, America’s most notable chemical disasters in the year have not been dominated by Big Chem. The company responsible for West Virginia’s notorious spill was Freedom Industries, a company whose tiny, decrepit headquarters is tucked at the end of a bumpy dirt road in Charleston, West Virginia. Williams Olefins is not the smallest company in the world, but it’s not well-known — except for that June 2013 toxic chemical explosion that killed two workers and injured 114 others. And have you ever heard of West Fertilizer Company? Neither did most people in the United States, until a chemical explosion at one of its Texas facilities in April 2013 killed 15 people and injured 160.

None of those companies are members of the ACC. They do not pay ACC’s dues, and are therefore not subjected to ACC’s safety standards. “That’s why you need federal legislation,” Whitman said.

A Bigger Toxic Chemical Encyclopedia

But universal safety standards are not the only thing the federal government needs to tackle to prevent chemical spills, and ACC agrees. The group, along with advocates for stronger chemical safety regulations, want updates to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — the same law that allowed crude MCHM to be stored in West Virginia with no requirement that it be shown to be safe.

The TSCA is America’s primary law on chemical use, but it has not been updated in the 38 years that it has been in existence. Out of the 80,000 chemicals in use in the country today, the 62,000 chemicals that were already in use when the law was passed were “grandfathered” — meaning there was no requirement to determine whether or not they are actually safe for humans.

“In the United States, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty,” Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, has written. “And, the only way they are proven guilty is by health effects turning up in people who have been exposed, often years later. In some ways, that makes us all guinea pigs.”

Gupta’s comments likely ring true to those exposed to the chemical spill in West Virginia, who still don’t know what that exposure will mean for them in the short- or long-term.

There remains debate on how best to solve the problem of the TSCA, though it is almost universally considered a problem. A bipartisan bill introduced by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) in 2013 would update the law by allowing EPA to identify some, but not all, priority chemicals for additional safety information.

The Washington Post’s editorial board applauded the bill, saying its authors “were right to balance a legitimate interest in maintaining an innovative and profitable chemicals industry against public health demands.” But environmentalists scowled, saying it “still leaves too many gaps in protecting the public.” Alternatively, many have suggested reform modeled after the European Union’s 2006 chemical law, called REACH, which authorizes EU officials to study and collect data on more than 100,000 chemicals over several decades. But the EU’s method uses animal testing, making it a controversial option.

Either way, something has to be done soon with TSCA, according to League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

“Republicans and Democrats in Washington should redouble their efforts to finally reform the [TSCA] in a way that truly protects public health,” he said. “We can’t afford to wait until the next crisis for Congress to act.”

Heightened Community Preparation

Universal standards and updates to TSCA would likely require Congressional action. The EPA could act on its own, but as Whitman notes, it would undoubtedly be challenged in the courts — meaning it may take the span of litigation before rules are actually implemented.

“People think EPA just can’t get enough of regulations; for the most part they would rather have Congress do it,” Whitman said. “Unfortunately with this Congress, it’s difficult to get things done.”

Everybody out there is just being systematically kept in the dark about the chemicals that surround them.

Congress, however, does not always have to be involved, particularly in making communities more prepared for a disaster. Experts cite New Jersey’s Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act as an example. The law contains extremely detailed language on what chemical companies are required to do in order to prepare and was prompted by one of world’s worst chemical accidents — which no one saw coming.

On a December night in 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India leaked deadly methyl isocyanate gas into the atmosphere. The release killed between 2,000 and 8,000 people in just the first few days. In the wake of that event, it was discovered that Union Carbide had actually prepared a comprehensive hazard analysis of the plant. That analysis acknowledged the risk of a terrible urban tragedy if a leak occurred.

Problem is, the company didn’t tell anyone about the risk, according to Fred Millar, a hazardous materials policy consultant in Washington, D.C. Millar said that after the 1984 disaster, the U.S. discovered that Union Carbide had a sister plant with the same deadly chemical, located in — where else? — Charleston, West Virginia.

“Everybody out there is just being systematically kept in the dark about the chemicals that surround them,” Millar said, “and basically that’s what prompted New Jersey to do its Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act.”

Among other things in the New Jersey state law, owners of chemical facilities are required to develop extremely detailed emergency response plans, including procedures for informing the public about accidental releases. Companies are also required to document the proper first-aid and emergency medical treatment necessary to treat human exposure to their chemicals, and those treatments are required to be coordinated with the community emergency responders. Companies are also required to designate a so-called “emergency coordinator” who is responsible for updating the public on any release — anywhere from what mitigation measures the company is taking to how changing weather conditions are effecting the release.

“West Virginia should be thinking about that kind of thing,” Millar said.

Share The Wealth

Another strong chemical safety law already in place in the U.S. is a local law in Contra Costa County, California. That law, too, requires companies to submit safety plans. Under the chemical safety program, the government employs people who regularly oversee those plans.

The key difference there, though, is that those companies help pay for the program through government fees.

“The success of a safety program is dependent upon the cooperation of industrial chemical and oil refining facilities within Contra Costa County,” the law states. “Preventing accidental releases of regulated substances is the shared responsibility of industry, government and the public.”

Part of that shared responsibility means making sure companies actually feel responsible when they do cause damage to the community, according to Millar. If companies aren’t afraid of being held completely liable for their actions, he says, why would they even make the costly effort to prevent a spill in the first place?

“[Companies] don’t have to worry about a government where they can just buy out everybody,” Millar said. “What they do have to worry about is liability concerns.”

He continued, “If you try to advise governments to set up a really good state law on chemical safety, make sure there’s some very powerful language about liability, and mandatory insurance. That’s the best advice I can give.”

Why Hasn’t Anything Happened Yet?

Chemical accidents are not new. Neither are calls for regulatory reform. The fact is, those calls have been pushed aside for the last decade, thanks in no small part to rigorous lobbying efforts from the chemical industry.

CREDIT: OpenSecrets.Org

“Chemical companies don’t want more layers of accountability,” Maya Nye wrote in a recent op-ed in the Charleston Gazette. “That’s clear by the amount of money spent on chemical industry lobbying every year.”

From 2005 through part of 2012, the chemical industry gave $39 million to candidates for federal office and spent $333 million on lobbying at the federal level, according to a Common Cause report, and the numbers are increasing every year. That money almost always goes to Republicans, as OpenSecrets notes.

“The chemical companies are in a near constant state of conflict with environmentalists and consumer advocates — a key constituency of Democrats — and thus the industry has calculated that it is better to support the GOP,” an OpenSecrets summary of the chemical industry says. “Over the past two decades, Republicans have received nearly three-quarters of the $72 million contributed by the industry.”

While not all chemical lobbying efforts focus on chemical storage safety (much of ACC’s efforts surround the disclosure of harmful chemicals in products), the industry has sunk its teeth deep into American politics, and not just at the federal level. The Center For Public Integrity recently detailed just how deep, a herculean effort to dig into the fine prints of legislation state-by-state. In 2010, for example, the $100 million advocacy group helped defeat, amend or postpone the passage of more than 300 bills dealing with chemicals and plastics in 44 states.

It’s not that the ACC doesn’t support some sort of reform, CPI’s report notes — it’s just that the reform must be done on its own terms.

“It’s an onslaught,” Connecticut legislator Diana Urban, a Democrat, told CPI. “You go into a committee and they’re out here grabbing legislators one after another … It’s very hard for me to fight that.”

The post How To Stop The Next Chemical Spill From Happening In Your Town appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Climate Progress, Mar. 7, 2014

CREDIT: AP Photo / Kim D. Johnson

A new study has just added to the case that fossil fuel pollution helps drive up cardiovascular disease.

Burning fuels like coal and gasoline doesn’t just give off carbon dioxide. It also releases a cocktail of other pollutants — especially sulfur dioxides and various types of nitrous oxides, all key ingredients in the smog that sits in the atmosphere over highly polluted cities like Los Angeles or Beijing. There’s also been a long-demonstrated statistical link between that pollution and cardiovascular problems like heart disease.

Now a new study out of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, and published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, may help describe just how that link works.

The researchers looked at 3,896 patients and their exposure to nitrogen dioxide specifically, which gets released when power plants burn coal or a car burns gasoline. After estimating the outdoor exposure over the preceding year, they ran the patients through an MRI scanner to get a look at their heart. The researchers found that increased exposure to nitrogen dioxide went along with a roughly 5 percent increase in the mass of the heart’s right ventricle, as well as changes in the blood flow through the ventricle.

“Although the link between traffic-related air pollution and left ventricular hypertrophy, heart failure, and cardiovascular death is established, the effects of traffic-related air pollution on the right ventricle have not been well studied,” said Peter Leary, the study’s lead author. “Greater right ventricular mass is also associated with increased risk for heart failure and cardiovascular death.”

When the Environmental Protection Agency first started cracking down on fossil fuel pollution in the 1970s, one of the most unexpected discoveries was the big increase in Americans’ health that accompanied the rules. One EPA study showed that by cutting down on sulfur dioxides, nitrous oxides, and particulate matter, environmental regulations prevented 130,000 heart attacks, 86,000 hospital visits, 160,000 premature deaths in 2010 alone.

All that avoided illness, in turn, lead to 13 million additional work days and 3.2 million additional school days. It also freed up a lot money that would’ve gone to medical treatment, and instead allowed to be spent on other pursuits.

That all adds up to a healthier economy. Government analyses consistently show that the economic benefits of government regulations outweigh their costs by a wide margin — and most of those benefits are thanks to environmental regulation of pollution.

It’s become routine for business interests and opponents of regulations to warn that jobs will be destroyed whenever the government decides to beef up its regulations of car emissions and other forms of pollution. But that economic damage consistently fails to materialize, and the unseen health benefits of reducing pollution are a big reason why.

The post A New Study Shows How Fossil Fuel Pollution Damages The Heart appeared first on ThinkProgress.

NJ Spotlight, Mar. 3, 2014

The statistics associated with young men of color are grim, but race and gender are only one part of a complex equation.

By ROLAND V. ANGLIN

President Barack Obama recently announced an initiative to help young men of color fare better on any number of life outcomes such as health, education, and participation in the workforce. The components of the initiative have not yet been described in detail.

As reported in the general media, the Department of Education will find ways to work with states, localities, and school districts to discourage out-of school suspensions — which have been a distinct problem for young males of color.

The initiative lifts up an entire industry that has emerged over the past 20 years centered on assisting males of color. Much of it is supported by philanthropy and increasingly the public sector through local school districts searching for ways to narrow the educational achievement gap. These programs span a wide range of issues, including fatherhood counseling, workforce development, paths to manhood, and getting disconnected youth back in school.

By and large, the necessity and strength of these programs are clear.

Most American adolescents successfully transition to adulthood. A disproportionate share of African-American, Latino, Native American, and southeast Asian males, however, are trapped in a cycle of limited opportunity, poverty, and then prison.

National data shows that males of color are underperforming at alarming rates across a number of success indicators compared with their peers. Although black and Latino students each account for approximately 15 percent of K-12 enrollment, they represent 30 percent and 20 percent of all twelfth-grade suspensions and expulsions, respectively. They are also four times more likely to be placed in special education classes, and twice as likely as whites to drop out of school.

Juvenile males of color have the highest rates of arrests and detention while awaiting trial and are more likely to be tried as adults and to be incarcerated in a secure juvenile or adult correctional facility. For these males, the confluence of deteriorated schools and neighborhoods, poor health, and limited job opportunities restricts productivity and participation in the economy and eventually upward mobility.

Although I recognize the complex interplay between race and gender, and difficulties males of color face in transitioning to adulthood, I nonetheless struggle with an overreliance on any policy or strategy that targets a subset of the population based on its race and gender. Note, I said "struggle," not oppose. Targeting can lead to invidious distinctions, an unsustainable competition for limited resources among groups, and — even more damaging — possibly obscure a larger problem.

For instance, each year thousands of students exit the educational pipeline prior to graduation, while many others graduate without having mastered the knowledge and skills necessary for success after high school. In addressing the graduation crisis, social science literature has come to identify students who are overage and under-credited (OA-UC) as most prone to dropping out of school.

This population, also referred to as “off-track” students, has been targeted for interventions by many other jurisdictions, most notably by the New York Department of Education’s Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation (OMPG). In its analysis of the New York City’s youth population between the ages of 16 and 21, the OMPG discovered that nearly all high school dropouts, at one time during their educational tenure, were at least two years off track toward graduation in terms of their age and/or credit accumulation.

Although the OMPG data indicated that the city’s dropout population consisted disproportionately of males of color, the data also revealed that the dropout population was also made up of students who had failed to receive intervention services that might have prevented them from becoming OA-UC and had not received remedial attention once they had become OA-UC.

Consequently, the OMPG’s approach to increasing graduation rates was to rely on data to develop a thorough understanding of the problem; an understanding in which race and gender composed one variable (albeit an important one) in a much larger equation. The focus on race and gender was neither exclusive nor a substitute for a comprehensive review and understanding of the central barriers to success.

My concern is that not only can programs that focus on a subgroup serve to further stigmatize the group but also that targeting will become a replacement for critical analysis. As a social scientist, I know that problems are often more complex than can be seen on the surface. Only by digging deep can we really accomplish the ultimate goal of expanding the success pathways for males of color.

The growing strength of this males-of-color movement should be recognized, and harnessed in support of a wider discussion of educational opportunity. But I believe it can serve as the gateway to a discussion that is wider yet, one about opportunity in this country, and about ways that growing inequality limits upward mobility.

I think the movement is at its best when anchored in specific questions that have a preponderance of research and rigorous policy discussion behind them, such as:

How can we work with schools and districts to rethink harsh disciplinary practices that often push young males of color to drop out?

How can we harness connected community and institutional data to identify and prevent the phenomenon of overage, under-credited youth who also then drop out?

How can we muster targeted support for local districts that are trying various strategies to prevent dropouts?

How can we improve workforce development programs to actually train and link individuals to a sustainable career?

How can we use the expanding knowledge base on adolescent brain development to help all young people navigate the shoals of young adulthood?

Can we teach resilience and “grit” to all young people coming from challenging circumstance? Are we as a society prepared to spend the necessary resources for support services for all young people facing these challenging circumstances?

Although there are many other questions to be asked and explored when addressing males of color, those that focus on access to education and opportunity are ones that lead to an open path, the true path to being my brother’s and sister’s keeper.

====

Roland V. Anglin is director of the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University.

NJ Spotlight, Mar. 4, 2014

It seems like every week or so, the Governor’s Office sends out another press release, announcing yet another pot of storm recovery or mitigation money. For people who haven’t been following things closely (and even for some who have), it can be maddening trying to understand exactly where all the aid is coming from, who it’s going to, and how it can be spent. Here’s a broad overview to help clarify how the recovery is being funded.

Starting at the Top

Most of the Sandy aid money that’s come to New Jersey has come out of the $48 billion Disaster Relief Appropriations Act Congress approved for all the affected states. Out of that, Gov. Chris Christie said last May that he expected about $20 billion to $25 billion to ultimately make it to New Jersey. More recently, he revised his estimate downward, projecting that the state will receive $15 billion to $20 billion at the end of the day, about half of its approximately $37 billion in losses. Most notably, this includes money distributed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the form of Community Development Block Grants, to be distributed by the NJ Department of Community Affairs. So far, the state has received $1.8 billion, and another $1.46 billion is on its way.

The CDBG money funds three of the four main recovery programs for individual homeowners:

** the Homeowner Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) program, which offers grants of up to $150,000 to repair, elevate, or rebuild primary residences;

** the Homeowner Resettlement Program, which provides $10,000 grants for people to remain in or return to Sandy-impacted communities;

** and the Sandy Homebuyer Assistance Program, which offers up to $50,000 to assist eligible low and moderate-income residents to purchase homes in Sandy-impacted communities.

CDBG funds also go to several programs for landlords, developers, business owners, and local governments. This includes the Post Sandy Planning Assistance Grant Program, which provides funds for counties and municipalities to hire licensed planners to "be better able to guide their rebuilding efforts to promote resilience and encourage economic growth.” In addition, $25 million of CDBG money also funded the state’s “Stronger Than the Storm” post-Sandy tourism marketing campaign.

Aside from the Community Development Block Grant program, portions of the $48 billion in Sandy recovery money have made it — or will make it — to New Jersey through a number of other routes. For example, the New Jersey Department of Transportation received $925 million to make emergency repairs to state highways; NJ Transit got over a billion dollars from the Federal Transit Authority; and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allocated $226 million to New Jersey to address health and social-service needs created by the storm. Other federal funding has trickled down to the state through the EPA, U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Labor Department, Commerce Department, and Army Corps of Engineers. And the U.S. Small Business Administration received $520 million to hand out as low-interest loans to residents and business owners in New Jersey and the other Sandy-affected states.

Other Sources

Out of the $48 billion in emergency aid Congress approved in response to Sandy, FEMA received nearly $11 billion for its Disaster Relief Fund] (on top of $6 billion that was already allocated to the fund for FY 2013). From this fund, the agency has so far given out more than $420 million in individual assistance to New Jersey residents who applied to receive grants of up to $31,900, for losses not covered by insurance or eligible for an SBA loan. That aid is divided between two categories: "Housing Assistance," which pays for minimal repairs to make a damaged home habitable and "Other Needs Assistance," which covers things like medical and dental expenses, clothing, and repairs of vehicles. In addition, FEMA has handed out over a billion dollars so far in public assistance to the state, as well as to counties, municipalities, and other local government entities throughout New Jersey. This includes funding for debris removal, emergency repairs of infrastructure, and repairing damage to utilities. Along with the $48 billion Congress approved, it also gave $9.7 billion in borrowing authority for the National Flood Insurance Program — which is run by FEMA — to pay out federal flood insurance claims. Some flood insurance money also provided Increased Cost of Compliance (ICC) coverage to help homeowners elevate their homes to comply with the new FEMA flood maps. In addition, some Sandy survivors also had private flood insurance policies, and people additionally received payouts from their homeowners insurance for wind, fire, and other non-flood-related claims arising from the storm.

Protecting Against Future Storms

There’s one other FEMA stream of money that’s worth mentioning, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. The HMGP kicks in after the president officially issues a federal disaster declaration, as President Barack Obama did for New Jersey after Sandy hit. The amount of HMGP money issued to a state is calculated using a formula based on a percentage of the combined total of FEMA Public assistance, FEMA individual assistance, and SBA loans.

New Jersey has received a total of $290 million in HMGP funds, to be used not for direct disaster recovery, but rather for mitigation and resiliency measures to protect against future storms. Of this, the state decided to spend $100 million on the HMGP Elevation Program, a grant for Sandy-affected primary, single-family homeowners to receive up to $30,000 to help raise their homes to comply with the new FEMA elevation standards. Another $100 million went to provide initial funding for a plan to provide buyouts of about 1,000 storm-damaged properties around the state, as well as another 300 repetitively flooded homes in the Passaic River Basin (the state eventually plans to spend $300 million on the program). Beyond that, $25 million went to the Energy Allocation Initiative, a program to provide backup generators for municipalities that’s at the center of Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s claim that her city was shortchanged on Sandy aid. Smaller amounts went to fund the purchase of backup generators at gas stations, to help counties with their hazard mitigation plans. And $50 million was handed out to Offices of Emergency Management on the county level, to distribute to municipalities for “local resiliency projects,” including a variety of flood- and disaster-mitigation measures.

Future Disaster Recovery Efforts

Last month, the Department of Community Affairs released its draft action plan to receive the second batch of $1.46 billion in CDBG funding. State officials held a series of public hearings on the matter over the past few weeks, and they’re wrapping up a 30-day public comment period, as required by HUD — which will be handing out this money. Once the comment period ends at 5 p.m. tomorrow, the DCA will be required to issue written responses, make any changes or modifications to its plan as it deems necessary, and then submit the plan to HUD for formal approval. The federal government’s response will ultimately determine what shape the state’s Sandy recovery programs take in the months to come.

NJ Spotlight, Mar. 5, 2014

By SCOTT GURIAN

The backup generator at Hoboken’s Observer Highway firehouse was destroyed when the building was surrounded by floodwaters.

The Sandy fund that’s at the heart of Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s accusation against the Christie administration was allocated through a faulty selection and scoring process.

An ongoing investigation by NJ Spotlight and WNYC/NJ Public Radio has found that by using the Christie administration’s own scoring criteria, seven of Hoboken’s requests for backup generators should have been funded instead of just one, making it eligible for up to $700,000 more than it was originally awarded

Zimmer has claimed her city was shortchanged because she refused to support a redevelopment project favored by a close ally of Gov. Chris Christie.

The money in this particular program has yet to be distributed, and when these scoring inaccuracies were brought to the administration’s attention, officials said they were making adjustments and correcting problems and would take this investigation’s findings into consideration.

The process used to allocate funds, however, provides a window on the Christie administration’s handling of Sandy recovery money. Questions about the integrity of the scoring data appear to extend beyond a few errant numbers to structural issues concerning the methodologies used in the ranking process.

The problems run much deeper than just Hoboken. Many errors were discovered after only a cursory review of the data, and their occurrence is too varied and numerous to easily overlook.

A review of the initial scoring highlights many municipalities receiving unequal treatment, and anomalies such as Nutley — which had comparatively little damage from Sandy or past storms — getting a significant mitigation grant of $556,240, while places like Atlantic City and Belmar weren’t awarded any funding at all.

To be clear, the $25 million Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Energy Allocation Initiative — the focus of this investigation — is only a small fraction of the overall Sandy aid money, but it’s one of the few grants given directly to local municipalities. And it’s also one of the few over which the Christie administration has complete control.

The Administration’s Scorecard
The investigation’s findings are based largely on an analysis of the internal scoring spreadsheet the Christie administration used to conduct its rankings. The spreadsheet was obtained by the New Jersey chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and was shared with NJ Spotlight reporting partner WNYC/NJ Public Radio.

According to that document, as well as information supplied by the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding — the department overseeing the state’s Sandy recovery effort — applicants were awarded points for a variety of factors including population, density, and disaster history.

Using those criteria and the ranking system identified by state officials, NJ Spotlight conducted its own scoring and found instances of similar grant applications from different municipalities receiving unequal treatment, multiple cases of applicants being awarded points they never should have gotten or not earning credit – or the proper amount of credit — for ranking criteria they met, and a scoring methodology that appears to have favored a few applicants at the expense of the majority in several key rankings.

NJ Spotlight and WNYC/NJ Public Radio have tried to get detailed answers from the Christie administration about how the allocations were awarded, but despite a public records request and weeks of calls and emails, we’ve only received partial explanations.

Four different administration departments participated in the scoring, and the initial award decisions were shared with towns and the press over four months ago. Yet, confronted with these findings, administration officials now say the awards were preliminary and may still be revised. If the scoring is to meet its own criteria, the list of revisions will be lengthy.

Assessing the Damages
In the aftermath of Sandy and the nor’easter that hit New Jersey about a week later, 2.7 million people were left in the dark, some for as long as two weeks. The power outage crippled the region, shutting down transportation networks, contributing to sewage overflows, and causing major delays for drivers waiting to fill their tanks.

In densely populated Hoboken, more than 85 percent of residents and businesses were without power for days. At the top of the hill on Hudson Street, a small number of row houses that still had electricity had extension cords and surge protectors strung out their front windows, attracting dozens of people who sat around chatting as they charged their laptops and cell phones. Down the block from city hall, PSE&G also set up a command post under a giant tent for residents to power their mobile devices.

At the Marian Towers senior housing complex in the badly flooded southwest section, it was chaos, with backup generators running on empty and only the building superintendent left to look after the 150 residents.

“We have no power, we have no heat, and there’s a lot of elderly people in the building that really need help,” said Tony Sciarra, one of dozens of residents milling around the lobby the day after the storm. Without elevators, many tenants were trapped on the twelve-story building’s upper floors, unable to manage the stairs, and food supplies were running low.

Elsewhere in town, generators at several of the city’s fire stations failed after taking on water, so firefighters were unable to recharge their equipment. What’s more, the department’s radio repeater system located atop the Stevens Institute of Technology Administration Center building was supposed to maintain power when the university’s backup generators kicked in, but that didn’t work as planned. “All of my fire companies were out, and I had no way of communicating with them,” recalled Fire Chief Richard Blohm.
Meanwhile, officials were struggling to find ways to communicate disaster-recovery information to residents. They resorted to posting handwritten messages on bulletin boards in key locations around the city.

Hoboken Fire Chief Richard Blohm.
All this was still fresh in the mind of Mayor Zimmer a few months later when she delivered her annual State of the City address and called for a variety of measures to harden the power grid and make Hoboken less vulnerable. Along with proposals to build a giant flood wall to protect the city, manage stormwater runoff, and ensure sustainability and resiliency, Zimmer spoke of the need to build a micro power grid with backup energy sources. Redundant power was necessary, she said, for critical infrastructure like the police and fire departments, city hall, hospital and supermarket.

It wasn’t just Hoboken that was thinking about energy resiliency.

After New Jersey’s Office of Emergency Management announced early last year that it was handing out money from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program for projects to lessen vulnerabilities to future storms, more than half of the 1,550 letters of intent it received from municipalities and other entities around the state were for backup diesel and natural gas generators – the single most-requested type of project.

Recognizing the need, state officials set aside $25 million in HMGP funds to create the Energy Allocation Initiative, but even that amount paled in comparison to the demand, which was nearly 10 times as much.

To sort through proposals from over 400 applicants, state officials convened a working group composed of representatives from the Office of Emergency Management, Department of Environmental Protection, Board of Public Utilities, and Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness to develop a scoring and ranking system. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Sustainable Jersey also participated, but they were not directly involved in the scoring.

THE SCORING PROCESS
Applications from various towns and cities were assigned points in a variety of categories to determine if they were eligible and how much funding they would get. Proposals were graded using seven criteria:
Population size
Population density
Membership in the National Flood Insurance Program
Whether or not the applicant had conducted a BPU Local Government Energy Audit
FEMA public assistance payouts from 1999 up until last August (with those applicants who had requested more public assistance from past disasters receiving more points)
Facility Tier: Applications for first responders, hospitals, wastewater facilities, and shelters received more points than transportation systems and emergency communications equipment; city halls and senior centers not capable of sheltering did not receive any points
Inclusion in the NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness State Asset Database (relates to a small number of applications from facilities of significance like hospitals, water utilities, airports, and universities)
Water and wastewater treatment facilities also received scores in two additional categories: size of population served and “total daily flow” (with larger facilities receiving more points)
Although the scoring process appears rigorous, it was not applied with the same rigor — or even consistently — across the board. And while NJ Spotlight chose to home in on Hoboken and Brick Township, because they were most suitable for a one-to-one comparison, we uncovered numerous other anomalies. Among our findings:

Atlantic City didn’t get any funding at all because it was shortchanged in the FEMA Public Assistance category and because its application for generators at five of its fire stations and five of its shelters was grouped on the score sheet as a single request.

Belmar’s request to fund a generator for an emergency evacuation shelter was similarly denied because it didn’t receive any credit for its public assistance history, despite having asked for more than $2.6 million over the past 15 years.

Jersey City’s $3.5 million request for 22 generators only received an allocation of $159,840 because it was given just a single line item on the score sheet. The city also missed an opportunity to get backup power for its traffic lights because that application was shortchanged in the FEMA Public Assistance ranking.

One of Bloomfield’s requests for its fire station was turned down because it received an improper number of points.

Though it’s been awarded some $825,000, Newark had several of its requests denied due to fluctuations in public assistance points that can’t be explained by the source data.

The scoring irregularities appear to have worked the other way as well. Morristown and Nutley incorrectly received hundreds of thousands of dollars for backup generators despite having comparatively little disaster history. Had the scoring been done properly, it appears that none of their requests would have been approved. Likewise for Cresskill, Dover, Monroe Township (Middlesex County), Mount Arlington, North Caldwell, and Old Tappan.

Meanwhile, Berkeley Township, Cresskill, East Brunswick, Fair Lawn, Mahwah, Manville, Tenafly, Union, and Washington Township (Warren County) are among the municipalities that got credit for energy audits they never actually conducted. Without those added points (or in the case of Cresskill – the combination of points in both categories), they wouldn’t have received an allocation through this program.
To complicate matters even further, Rahway is in a class of its own, with three of its generator requests accidentally entered multiple times on the score sheet, but assigned a different number of points in each instance.

Hoboken Up Close
What happened when NJ Spotlight slid Hoboken’s application under the microscope?

According to documents we reviewed, Hoboken submitted seven requests totaling about $100 million for HMGP funding, for everything from building a two-mile long floodwall to flood-proofing the city’s historic library to turning vacant land into parks to reduce stormwater runoff.

It was ambitious, and after Mayor Zimmer came forward with her allegations that Christie administration officials had threatened withholding Sandy aid money, the governor’s office issued a press release portraying Hoboken as foolish for asking for so much.

But it turns out $100 million wasn’t the highest request, and it wasn’t out of the ballpark given what several other municipalities had requested.

Documents NJ Spotlight received in response to public records requests show Brick Township, for example, requested a total of $241 million, and the City of Elizabeth — which, though larger, suffered much less damage than Hoboken — asked for funding for 21 projects totaling $62 million.

As with other municipalities, all of Hoboken’s non-energy-related requests were lumped together under “Local Resiliency Projects” and were passed along to the county OEM, for officials to make the spending decisions. The state ended up giving Hudson County a total of $1.7 million, which it them distributed 13 ways, taking $136,000 for itself and giving equal amounts to each of the dozen municipalities within its borders.

As for the energy-related request Hoboken had made — $1.7 million for 12 backup generators — the city was notified in October that it would receive just $142,080 through the Energy Allocation Initiative.

But according to a close review of the data — including an analysis of the state’s internal scoring spreadsheet and an examination of how letters of intent from various municipalities were treated — it appears that Hoboken’s application was handled differently from others, and it received substantially fewer points than it should have.

Brick officials bundled their requests for nine different generators into a single letter of intent totaling $1.260 million And they attached an itemized list breaking down how much each generator would cost.

Hoboken similarly submitted a single letter of intent for 12 generators totaling $1,770,000.

But in Brick’s case, the working group gave the township a separate line item for eight of the nine generators (the ninth was excluded for reasons that are unclear). This process worked greatly to Brick’s advantage, since it gave the township eight opportunities on the score sheet to get funding. And each request that earned at least the minimum threshold of 80 points was guaranteed coverage of project cost, up to $142,080. In the end, several of Brick’s requests crossed that threshold, and it received an overall allocation of $380,000.

In Hoboken’s case, rather than getting separate line items for each of its 12 requests, the city inexplicably received just three line items, labeled on the score sheet as "Public Works Department," “Emergency Medical Service,” and “Shelter.”

Further, NJ Spotlight obtained a list from NJ Clean Energy of all municipalities and local government departments that have conducted Local Government Energy Audits. We confirmed with the NJ Board of Public Utilities that this was the same data the working group had used to award points in the “BPU Energy Audit” category. It was found upon examination that Hoboken improperly received credit for a Public Works Department audit it had never completed, but did not receive credit for eight of its other generator requests.

In addition, a review of Hoboken’s 15-year FEMA public assistance history found that the city had received nearly $1.5 million in disaster aid as of last August, when officials conducted their scoring. According to an Office of Emergency Management spokeswoman, historical public assistance requests totaling between $500,000 and $2 million should have gotten 20 points, yet Hoboken’s three requests only received 10 points.
NJ Spotlight conducted its own scoring for Hoboken’s generator requests and found that — according to the working group’s own rules and ranking criteria — had Hoboken been treated the same as Brick (and some other municipalities like Rahway) and had all points been properly awarded the city would have received at least partial funding for seven of its 12 requests and would have been entitled to as much as $839,680, if it had been scored like other municipalities.

NJ Spotlight’s analysis of Hoboken’s scoring does not even take into account the fact that Hoboken only received 10 out of 20 points in the population-density ranking, despite being the fourth most densely populated city in both the state and the nation. Administration officials defended their scoring methodology, noting that Guttenberg — the city at the top of this ranking — has a density nearly one-and-a-half times that of Hoboken).

The bar was set similarly high in the population ranking category: Newark and Jersey City — the state’s first- and second-largest municipalities — only received five out of a possible 20 points. Elizabeth — the state’s fourth-largest city — did not receive any points. Full credit was awarded, however, to a handful of county applicants and statewide agencies, which administration officials said had the effect of prioritizing "regional" projects, as called for by the recommendations of the President’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.
In some instances, a small change in points made all the difference between whether a community got pushed over the minimum threshold to receive funding or whether it got no funding at all. In other cases, differences in how applications from various municipalities were treated meant that some towns and cities potentially received hundreds of thousands of dollars more or less than they should have, according to the scoring criteria laid out for the program.

Expert Witness
Mark Mauriello worked at the NJ Department of Environmental Protection for three decades, eventually rising to the role of Acting Commissioner before leaving in 2010 to work in the private sector. During his time at the agency, he participated in several working groups just like this one, and he’s quite familiar with the mechanics of how the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program works.

Mauriello reviewed the state’s internal scoresheet at the request of NJ Spotlight, and he concluded that the way state officials conducted their rankings appears to be much more complicated than it should have been.

“Whenever you see these things, you don’t know the subjectivity of who’s populating these columns and these boxes,” he said, “And obviously, the more of these columns you have, the more opportunities you have to check off a box and add weight or points to a certain proposal. It just seems to me that this thing by nature creates a lot of opportunity to really make funding decisions that might not be in the best interest of the state.”

Rather than rank the applicants based on their FEMA public assistance history following federally declared disasters, Mauriello said a much better gauge of the needs of municipalities would have been to look at their claims history with the National Flood Insurance Program to capture a wider snapshot.

“I find it a little unusual that the selection criteria wouldn’t include NFIP claims, which represent a broader scope of impacts, hazards, and I would argue opportunities for mitigation,” he said.

Others like Bill Wolfe of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility raised questions about the relevance of awarding points based on whether the applicant had conducted an energy audit (state officials called it an indication of “efficiency and forethought”).

Using the scoring criteria former NJDEP Commissioner Mark Mauriello suggested the state should have used, NJ Spotlight mapped the towns and cities that applied for funding through the HMGP Energy Allocation Initiative to see the relationship between their past flooding history and the percentage of their mitigation grant requests that were honored.

To level the playing field, we focused on the subset of requests municipal applicants made for Tier 1 projects — like police stations, fire departments, and shelters. We excluded the handful of municipalities that are not part of the National Flood Insurance Program.

In some cases like Point Pleasant, Passaic, and Little Falls, there appears to be a strong correlation, with municipalities that have the most flooding history receiving the largest portion of requested aid. In others, towns like Franklin Township and Caldwell applied for mitigation funding through this program but did not receive anything. That seems fair, given that they have little history of flooding.

But there are also places like Mount Arlington, Plainsboro, and Winslow, which received much greater award allocations than they should have, if they were ranked strictly by their flood histories. Meanwhile, Atlantic City, Tuckerton, Belmar, and Keyport did not have any of their grant requests honored, but they probably would have if their flood histories had been a primary factor in the ranking. Zoom in to see greater detail.

NJ Spotlight also looked at the approaches taken by several other states to rank municipalities for mitigation aid following federal disasters. An expert in disaster relief who worked on the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in 2008 (but did not wish to be identified due to current business relationships) said the state of Texas scored solely on the tier of the applicant, so critical facilities like police and fire stations received money before anyone else. He agreed with Mauriello’s assessment about New Jersey’s scoring system. “It opens up the process to criticisms of fairness if you establish too many criteria,” he said.
By contrast, the state of Connecticut took a more holistic approach to its awarding of mitigation aid following Sandy. Scott Devico with the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection says state officials scored on a series of eight questions. Some looked at similar factors as New Jersey, such as population and facility tier. But there were also broader considerations, such as:

How much does the measure directly mitigate the effects of a frequent natural hazard?

To what extent will it result in a long-term solution and require minimal maintenance?

To what extent will it eliminate future vulnerabilities?

Does this represent an innovative approach or best management practice?

A Chance to Respond
As part of its investigation, NJ Spotlight provided copies of the documents we obtained to both the Department of Environmental Protection and the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, ran our findings by them, and offered them multiple opportunities to respond.

“This was done with great speed. It was a necessity to get it done and get things moving, and when you have something like that, you’re always bound to have some confusion,” said one administration official, who only agreed to speak anonymously. Municipal representatives and county OEM officials said that despite several mandatory training meetings, there was little guidance given on how to complete the forms, so different applicants took wildly different approaches.

Some simply submitted the completed letter of intent, while others attached all sorts of supporting documentation. In some cases, multiple requests were combined in a single LOI, while in others, they each appeared on their own application. Some municipalities included itemized cost estimates from engineering firms, which also tacked on contingency fees. It’s unclear how those doing the ranking would have accounted for such fees.

Backup generators like this one at Hoboken’s Fire Dept. HQ failed after taking on floodwater.
Meanwhile, the administration official we interviewed admitted that there may have also been confusion among members of the working group that did the scoring, so different people would have relied on different rules and methods to assign points.

“We’re going back over to reconcile to make sure they were evaluated on a consistent basis,” he said. “We’re fixing it, and we’re well aware of it,” he said.

“While legitimate scoring errors have been discovered and rectified, any assertion that they were anything but human data-input errors or attempting to connect those errors to unsubstantiated claims in the press is simply and categorically false,” wrote NJ DEP spokesman Larry Ragonese.

Given a list of specific questions, he provided partial answers to some, but declined to comment on others.

“These are all technical questions that would require our working group to provide specific answers,” wrote Ragonese, “But they are still in the process of completing their task. So I can’t insert you into the middle of their work.” The picture the administration paints of a grant decision process still up in the air and subject to all sorts of changes appears to be at odds, though, with the timeline of events that have transpired so far, as well as with the understanding of several individuals involved with the process and interviewed for this story.

Municipalities first submitted their letters of intent for the HMGP Energy Allocation Initiative in February and March of last year. The state Office of Emergency Management (or in some cases, state lawmakers acting on OEM’s behalf) sent out letters to applicants announcing allocation decisions in October, and the governor’s office issued a press release at the time. Meanwhile, elected officials in several municipalities including:

Morristown

Rahway

Burlington

Little Falls

and a number of other communities went public with their allocation amounts.

Out of nearly 150 applicants who received initial award letters, a couple dozen had their amounts adjusted, and they received revised allocation notices in December. Later that month and in January, the state asked all applicants to submit detailed plans for how they intend to spend their awards. In early February, there was a workshop for grantees in Toms River to review the process of preparing memorandums of agreement to receive the money from FEMA. All indications seem to be that the process is moving full steam ahead.

That analysis is backed up by an official who was involved with the process and agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. He said that the allocation amounts appeared to be relatively stable even back in the fall — when they were first announced — and that it’s unlikely there was still a lot of reassessment going on by this point. “Any adjustments that were made after September were only because there was recognition there were real problems with the scoring or for correcting new realities that came to light,” he said, adding that the only changes now would be strictly around the edges.

That also sounds accurate to Mauriello. “I don’t know how it’s still up in the air if those decisions are made,” he said. He added that the state asking applicants to submit their spending plans is a fairly significant milestone. “I guess it isn’t final until the spending plans are received and approved and all that, but that’s sort of a formality. I think the substance of the work has happened. It seems like if it’s not final, it’s pretty close to the goal line.”

Further, while responding to Zimmer’s claims that Hoboken had been shortchanged, state officials never once said that the award amounts were still being finalized. Nor did New Jersey’s Storm Czar Marc Ferzan respond to Zimmer’s allegations late last month.
Given the assertion that award decisions are still being revised, NJ Spotlight asked Ragonese and other administration officials when the process would be complete. They were unable to provide details, saying only, “We are continuing internal reviews. The process is still ongoing.”

No Playing Politics
What Ferzan did say, on a follow-up call with reporters a few weeks later, was that politics has never played a role in the state’s distribution of Sandy aid money, and that any suggestion discrepancies like these were anything more than honest mistakes would be unwarranted.

“It’s unfathomable that the system could be gamed in any way,” he said. ““There is nothing that is more highly regulated than federal disaster grants programs. Everything must be documented. Everything is subject to review by federal agency auditors. Each federal agency has an Office of Inspector General. And as a result of that, there’s been a lot of process that’s built into disaster recovery.”

While it’s generally true that there’s a massive amount of oversight built into the distribution of federal Sandy aid, HMGP is different in key ways from some other sources of funding for rebuilding and recovery.

The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is not intended to pay for repairs but rather to help recipients prepare for future events. FEMA gave New Jersey broad discretion about where to distribute this money. That potentially includes areas that may not have even been directly affected — or badly affected — by the disaster.

A gas-powered generator provides electricity for a Hoboken residence in the aftermath of Sandy.
When it comes to HMGP spending, FEMA’s only rules are that approved projects meet a list of eligibility requirements and a cost–benefit ratio analysis, so any dollars spent today can be quantified with a return on investment over the long term.

The Christie administration was under no obligation to distribute funding from the HMGP Energy Allocation Initiative to municipalities in proportion to the damage they suffered from Sandy. In fact, damage from Sandy wasn’t even a factor that was explicitly considered in the ranking criteria (It would have been partially captured in the points assigned for FEMA Public Assistance History, but state officials say the working group relied on data supplied by FEMA last August, and many public assistance requests from Sandy were processed in the months following that).

Since there are few federal requirements over how the state distributes this mitigation money, there’s actually not a lot of oversight to ensure that scoring and ranking are conducted fairly.

“FEMA’s mantra is to ‘let the locals lead,’” said one official who’s been involved with the state’s grant process, but would only speak off the record. “They give broad guidelines, but it’s up to the locals to implement, and they don’t generally second guess the local officials,” he said. “If the state were to say, ‘We want to give money to municipalities that have a trout stream but not to municipalities with dunes,’ FEMA probably wouldn’t step in to micro-manage that decision,” he continued.

That analysis was echoed by a statement from FEMA officials themselves. “The state administers the HMGP and the funds available to them,” they said. “FEMA does not determine who gets money or how much money a subapplicant [municipality] receives from the HMGP. It is a state responsibility. Every state determines how they spend, or not spend their HMGP funds.”

Illogical and Unfair?
Even if all the scoring were done properly, it would seem illogical and unfair to many people that a densely populated city like Hoboken — which suffered over $100 million in damage from Sandy and has a long history of flooding — would receive no more funding through this program to prepare for future storms than a place like Mount Arlington, a tiny borough with just 5,000 residents that has received less than $200,000 in past FEMA disaster assistance. Or that a place like Belmar — which suffered heavy damage in Sandy and previous storms — wouldn’t receive any funding at all.

So while the administration might not have actually broken any FEMA rules with its scoring, the appearance of improprieties is there.

A spokesman for the city of Hoboken released a statement in response to NJ Spotlight’s findings. “This investigation adds to the growing body of evidence that the Christie Administration’s process of distributing Sandy funds has been flawed, politicized, and subject to abuse,” it said.

Briefed on the investigation’s findings, state Senator Ray Lesniak — a frequent critic of the administration — called for an independent audit of the state’s distribution of Sandy aid money. “We’re going to have to just add that to our lengthening list of investigations,” he said.

For their part, state officials — who previously seemed ready to wrap up this grant program and move on to other things — now appear to be backpedaling.

“As part of the State’s ongoing quality control and assurance process,” they wrote in a letter to grant applicants a few days after NJ Spotlight first confronted them with the scoring improprieties, “the cross-agency working group continues to review each data point, confirm accuracy, make any needed adjustments, and ensure that the data is correct before finalizing and submitting project applications to FEMA (no projects have yet been submitted)."

The letter continued, "As part of this process, the cross-agency working group has already worked with several municipalities to make adjustments as warranted. All proposed energy projects included in Letters of Intent (including in communities that did not receive initial notice of an Energy Allocation) are also being proactively reviewed, and we will contact you promptly in the event that any adjustments are required.”

State officials also noted that the proposed $210 million NJ Energy Resilience Bank might give another chance to applicants that don’t receive funding through the HMGP Energy Allocation.

In Hoboken, meanwhile, the city council recently approved a bond ordinance to come up with the $1.7 million — including the $700,000 they should have gotten through the Energy Allocation Program — to pay for their original generator requests. Unlike the grant that the city should have received, this money will have to be paid back — with interest.

Photograph of flooded Hoboken firehouse courtesy of Vincenzo Bochicchio.

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NJ Spotlight, Mar. 5, 2014

By Matt Katz

Credit: Governor’s Office/Tim Larsen

Gov. Chris Christie offered Wednesday a detailed, step-by-step analysis of why Sandy aid has been slow getting to victims — and why it is largely the federal government’s fault, not his.

At a town hall meeting in Berkeley Township in Ocean County on the Jersey Shore, Christie downgraded his assessment of how much money New Jersey will receive from the federal government. In May 2013, when federal first started flowing, Christie said the state would see as much as $25 billion; on Wednesday, a spokesman said New Jersey may get as little as $10 billion.

Christie made it clear Tuesday that the federal government has made it difficult for New Jersey to get the money he needs.

First, he said it took longer for Sandy victims to get federal aid than victims of any other disaster in American history. Second, he turned a criticism of the federal insurance program into a conservative call for smaller government.

And finally, he said, thanks to corruption in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Jersey faces daunting federal regulations in writing checks to Sandy victims.

"We’re the ones who have to deliver the news about the federal regulations; you’re the ones who have to comply with them," he said, striking a sympathetic tone that was evident throughout the town hall.

Reading off a sheet of paper, Christie listed the hurdles that audience members have had to go through to get money to fix their homes: From registering with FEMA, to proving primary residences, to documenting income levels, to getting environmental and historic reviews on properties, to hiring contractors, to putting money in escrow for the construction.

"That’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve steps," he said.

And yet, New Jersey is doing a far better job at distributing Sandy money than New York state or New York City, he claimed.

About a dozen protesters were outside the town hall, with signs blaming Christie for everything from failing to deliver Sandy aid to bridgegate.

Of the 10 questions, none asked about bridgegate, and the Sandy questions were informational and not confrontational.

The crowd appeared to be overwhelmingly Republican — his call to "elect a new president" after a question about Obamacare brought a standing ovation and the most resounding applause of the day.

A group of Sandy victims who wore black shirts to the event were not called on by the governor to ask a question.

NJ Spotlight, Feb. 25, 2014

R. William Potter

By R. William Potter

On January 24, State Sen. Nicholas P. Scutari announced plans to introduce what may prove to be the most important civil rights enactments in New Jersey in many decades. Scutari’s bill aims to legalize and regulate the adult use and sale of marijuana. If enacted, this bill would end the war on this drug, which 42 percent of adults admit to having smoked — including presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton (although Clinton claims he never inhaled).

Scutari’s effort follows the lead of two states, Colorado and Washington, where voters last year approved ballot initiatives to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana in a manner comparable to alcohol or tobacco. His bill also comes hard on the heels of Gov. Chris Christie’s January inaugural address in which he decried “the failed war on drugs,” but stopped short of endorsing legalization or even decriminalization.

Scutari’s bill should come as no great surprise. Indeed, the wonder is that it has taken so long. Legalization of this native-growing hemp plant, “cannabis sativa,” if it happens, should bring an end to one of the darkest chapters in American history: The mass arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of black, Hispanic, and poor young men who crowd our courthouses and prisons and, even if they are spared jail time, find their way up the ladder of success forever blocked by a nonviolent drug crime conviction.

Let’s look at some numbers. In 2012, there were 749,825 arrests nationwide for all types of marijuana drug violations — possession, use, sale, and cultivation. And of that huge number of lives upended by coercive state action, the vast majority — 88 percent — were for possession only. That’s 658,231 people detained, searched, and cuffed by police officers, before being hauled before a judge and dumped into jail until posting bail.

In New Jersey we find much the same story. In 2010 there were some 22,000 residents arrested for simple possession, according to data released by Roseanne Scotti, director of the New Jersey Drug Policy Alliance. “The time has come to tax, regulate and legalize marijuana for personal use,” Scotti added in a prepared statement of support for the Scutari bill.

National surveys have consistently shown that whites use illegal drugs at roughly the same rate as blacks and Hispanics. But people of color are at least three times more likely to be arrested and more than twice as likely as whites to be incarcerated if convicted of a nonviolent drug offense.

The resulting toll on minority families and their communities can hardly be exaggerated. Even after they serve their time, if only a night in jail, or are ordered to pay a small fine, they are forever branded with the mark of legalized discrimination. They can be denied the right to vote, instantly foreclosed from job opportunities, kicked out of public housing, and rendered ineligible for government-backed college loans.

All this for smoking a “weed” that President Obama recently conceded is less dangerous to a person’s health than drinking alcoholic beverages or smoking cigarettes.

In her masterly book, “The New Jim Crow” (subtitled “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”), law professor Michelle Alexander recounts the damning and overwhelming evidence of systematic discrimination in the police enforcement of anti-drug laws and, just as important, their debilitating aftereffects:

“The impact of the drug war has been astounding,” she writes. “In less than 30 years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, dwarfing the rates of every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the U.S., the rate is roughly eight items that, or 750 per 100,000.”

Beyond the numbers, “the racial dimension is its most striking feature” of the failed war on drugs. “No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The U.S. imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa at the height of apartheid.” As a result, Alexander notes, “it is estimated that three out of four young black men and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods can expect to serve time in prison.” It is well past time to suggest that ending the war on drugs — more accurately, a war on certain drug users — should be at or near the number one item on the agenda of every civil rights (make that human rights) organization that is committed to ending injustice in America. The NAACP, CORE, and predominantly African-American church congregations — among many others — should support the Scutari initiative with all the persuasive power they can muster.

§

As for those who may remain indifferent to these appeals to civil rights and justice, they would do well to consider the economic cost to taxpayers. According to data collected by the National Drug Policy Alliance (NDPA), U.S. taxpayers annually shell out in excess of $51 billion arresting and prosecuting 1,550,000 people for various nonviolent drug charges. And that sum does not include the annual cost to incarcerate those sentenced to time behind bars, estimated at $30,000 – 40,000 per inmate.

Not only could these public funds be far better spent on real priorities — such as repairing our nation’s sagging infrastructure — the nation is missing out on lost revenues. “If currently illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco,” estimated the NPDA, it would amount to $46.7 billion. When you add the direct cost of continuing to fight the unwinnable war on drugs to the missing tax revenues, there’s the tidy sum of $97.7 billion in yearly tax dollars wasted.

Which brings us back to Scutari’s legislation (not yet introduced as of this writing). What are the prospects it will pass any time soon? Probably not great, mostly due to likely political opposition from self-styled conservative legislators. Have a Scotch on the rocks after work? Fine by them, if not taken to excess. But let a black man get caught with a single marijuana joint and it’s a one-way ticket into the criminal justice system.

It’s time for conservatives, mostly Republicans, to apply their anti-government rhetoric and pro-freedom philosophy intelligently. If so, they would quickly climb aboard the legalization band wagon and push for it to become law. It makes no sense for them to oppose strict environmental regulation of energy sources needed to protect this threatened planet from the consequences of global climate change while also supporting the war on drugs.

So we might ask reluctant lawmakers: Why should government continue its costly and failed effort to control a person’s choice of recreational drug, and do so by reserving punishment largely to young black, Hispanic and poor youth who are singled out for enforcement?

Editor’s note: The U.S. Region II office of the EPA yesterday released a letter saying its inquiry determined air-quality monitoring equipment was operated by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in accordance with agency rules and air-quality concentration did not exceed health standards for pollutants.

Amid all the investigations into the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge last fall, yet another inquiry has been launched by a federal agency into what happened and why.

But this investigation has nothing to do with who ordered the shutdown. It focuses instead on why an air-quality monitor closest to the bridge was inoperative for a few days during the lane closures, when drivers were stuck in a massive traffic jam for hours on the busiest motor vehicle bridge in the world, spewing pollution into the air.

Why should people care? The monitor is used to measure the amount of fine particulates in the air, a dangerous pollutant from trucks, cars, and buses. The state only recently achieved compliance with federal air-quality standards that safeguard human health — decades after the Clean Air Act was enacted.

At the request of the New Jersey branch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General has opened an initial review of the issue.

“Public health safeguards, like pollution monitors, should be off-limits to political manipulation,’’ said Bill Wolfe, director of New Jersey PEER. “Perhaps there is an innocent explanation for marooning thousands in a pollution Twilight Zone, but no one in the Christie administration has yet to offer one.’’

The night before the lane closures on September 8 and continuing for the next two-and-half days, the air quality monitor, the closest to the bridge atop a Jersey City firehouse, operated by the state Department of Environmental Protection ceased reporting data about the level of particulates in the air. Previously, the monitor had experienced only very short outages.

According to NJ PEER, the air pollution monitoring devices are required under the federal Clean Air Act and their use by state agencies is overseen by the EPA. Their purpose is to measure the amount of diesel, oil, and other fuel particles in the air. These particles are so small that they penetrate the deepest recesses of the lungs and are linked to asthma, other respiratory diseases, and premature death — although exposure must occur over a long time.

The readings from other monitors, as well as the inoperative monitor once it came back online, suggest that air quality reached unhealthy levels during the closure. Particulate readings on the out of service monitor were more than twice the level before it was shut off, according to NJ PEER.

“This extended outage masked the health effects on those stuck on the bridge enduring hours of exhaust from idling vehicles,’’ Wolfe said “This act literally added injury to insult.’’

The governor’s press office failed to respond to comment on the issue.

Al Jazeera America, Mar. 1, 2014

On the occasion of Ralph Ellison’s centennial celebration, Dexter Mullins reflects on how little has changed

by Dexter Mullins

Black people – and black men in particular – are still viewed and judged as though we are all one person, with one mind, and that we are all either criminals or about to become criminals.Brian Jackson / Alamy

The cover of Ellison’s "Invisible Man" Random House
With his widely read novel “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison ignited a conversation and an awareness of racial alienation in America that had the potential to help bridge the gap between the nation’s races.

But as we celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday on Saturday, it is almost staggering to see how little has changed since Ellison published the book in 1952.

Black people — and black men in particular — are still viewed and judged as though we are all one person, with one mind, and that we are all either criminals or about to become criminals.

We are still treated as if we are less than everyone else, no matter the degrees we may possess, how impressive our job titles or our contributions to society.

Indeed, as we celebrate Ellison today, it is a shame to have to say that the black man as an individual is still “invisible” and that the country has a long way to go.

I was painfully and frustratingly reminded of this just last week in Brooklyn.

It was the middle of a snowstorm, mild by New York standards, and a bunch of friends were gathering for a game night in. Since my friend’s house was only a few blocks away, and the snow and wind were really more of an annoyance than anything else, I didn’t see any reason not to go. I grabbed a backpack, put on a hoodie to block the snow from my face and put on a coat over it to keep me warm.

On the way, I stopped by a Duane Reade pharmacy in my neighborhood to pick up supplies. When I walked into the store I made several observations. The first was that the store was empty, with the exception of one other customer who I believe was Native American (I apologize if I got that wrong). It was near closing time. And the entire staff on duty — from security to manager — was black.

I didn’t think much of it, and went about my business. It’s what happened next that took me off guard.

After dusting off the excess snow from my jacket and wiping my feet, I found myself comparing two similar products in the middle of the store. I was in plain sight, right in front of the cashier. All of a sudden, the manager’s voice comes across the store PA system.

“Guard, please walk the floor.”

At this moment, as the only African-American customer in the store, I am immediately made aware of my blackness, my lack of individuality and the impossibility of being seen not as a thief but as a regular customer.

To them, I’m just another black kid from the area wearing a hoodie and carrying a backpack — intent on shoplifting.

The guard does as he is asked and begins his round of the sales floor, but as he approaches me he slows down, stares and stands in place as if to indicate that he knows I am up to no good.

Calmly, I walk on to the next aisle, where the only other customer in the store is also standing. I really want to give the guard the benefit of the doubt; after all, he’s only doing what he was asked.

But as he proceeds to walk up to the aisle I am now in, stare at me again, walk off, double back around and repeat, I have to face facts. Because I’m black, it was predetermined that I would do something wrong and because of that I needed to be followed and monitored like a common criminal.

Thoroughly pissed, I grab my items and go to pay. The cashier rings me up and I say to him:

“I have to say, it feels really nice to know that having two college degrees and never breaking the law mean nothing when I come into your store. I guess because I’m black, wearing a hoodie and I have a backpack on, I must be a thief, right?”

The cashier — who is black, remember — tries to laugh it off, detecting my sarcasm.

“It’s not like that,” he says.

"I’m the only black customer in here, do you think I’m stupid?” I ask. Unresponsive, he just finishes ringing me up and starts to bag my things.

I stop him.

“No, thanks, I don’t need a bag. I’ll put it in my backpack with the rest of my contraband.”

When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.
Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man"
To be fair, the company did reach out to me to apologize, and it offered to fire the security guard in question. But that is not the solution. It is not my desire to see anyone lose employment in an economy that is challenging at best and has always been doubly hard for black men to thrive in. Besides, he was just doing as instructed.

The issue is one of blanket discrimination and presumption.

As a black man, I find it painful to know that no matter what I do to distinguish myself in work, in society or in life, nothing will be as powerful as the preconceived notions people have about me based solely on the color of my skin.

There isn’t a black man or boy in this country who has not been told by someone in his family that while people may say we are equal, the reality is quite different and that — should you find yourself in a situation with any person of authority, or a rogue vigilante who thinks he’s above the law — it is better to hold your tongue and submit to the traffic ticket, search or humiliating line of questioning and get home alive than it is to try and make a stand to prove your point and come home in a pine box.

I remember the day my father told me that even if I knew I was right, I should never argue with the police. I had just gotten my driver’s license, and I remember it not because of what he said to me but because I could see in his eyes that it was something he was truly worried about — me getting pulled over or frisked, trying to assert my rights as an American citizen and being beaten or killed by a member of law enforcement.

That same conversation has no doubt been revived at black family dinner tables across the country, especially in the wake of the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. Sadly, I know that it is a conversation I will have to repeat should I ever have children of my own.

At the end of Ellison’s novel, the main character learns to embrace his individuality after years of conforming to society’s perceptions and expectations of what a black man is supposed to be. Today, it is society that needs to embrace the individuality of minorities and re-examine where our nation’s race relations really are.