COMMENTARY: Could NJ be the next Flint?

Flint, Michigan, is a major man-made public health and environment disaster. It happened because of an anti-environmental and regulatory agenda set by Gov. Rick Snyder.

What happened there, could it happen here?

Snyder chose an emergency manager who was political crony and industry lobbyist who decided to use the polluted Flint River for the town’s water supply to save money. Just like in Michigan, Gov. Chris Christie has also stacked his administration and environmental and public health professionals with political friends and former lobbyists that worked for polluters. We have serious concerns that what happened in Flint could happen in New Jersey because the Christie administration has weakened and rolled back clean water protections in New Jersey.

From his first day in office, Christie signed an executive order saying New Jersey cannot have any protections stronger than the federal government and then started to dismantle environmental protections. That executive order came directly from the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch brothers.

Similar to Michigan, the Christie administration’s head of water is a former lobbyist. Christie has even held secret “stakeholder” meetings where special interest groups have rewritten rules for stormwater management, water-quality-management planning, flood hazard areas, protections on category one and stream buffers and Highlands regulations in order to develop in environmentally sensitive areas.

The legislature has stood up to the governor as has the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency against the Christie administration’s flood hazard areas that will lead to overdevelopment and add more pollution to our waterways. The administration has also proposed a New Jersey Pollution Discharge Elimination System that will allow more discharge from sewerage plants.

The Department of Environmental Protection has even changed the rules so it can pump dirty water from the Passaic River into the Wanaque Reservoir, which serves almost all of Bergen County. Our DEP should really stand for the “Department of Excessive Pollution.”

Our governor has basically gotten rid of the Drinking Water Quality Institute by not allowing it to meet for five years. The administration has not adopted new standards on the known carcinogen perfluorooctanoic acid, perchlorate, perfluorononanoic acid, pharmaceuticals in our waterways, chromium and arsenic, even though we have the science in place to adopt protections. Christie’s administration has downgraded and eviscerated the DEP’s Division of Science and has replaced it with the Science Advisory Board, which is primarily made up of polluters and corporate interests.

Even worse is that the state has failed to update the 20-year-old Water Supply Master Plan, which determines water availability as well as water quality issues. This means the DEP may be allowing development in areas where there is not adequate water supply and taking from polluted sources.

If the Christie administration continues taking over cities instead of allowing cities to file for bankruptcy, Christie could be directly in charge of their water supply. With an ongoing record of weakening of clean water protections in the Highlands and Pinelands, we are concerned what could happen with the government takeover in Atlantic City.

As in Flint, Christie has already allowed Camden’s water to be privatized to cut costs in an area whose wells are in a place that are too contaminated. As a result, it is taking Camden’s water from highly contaminated sources and even trying to get Pennsauken to take the water. In Atlantic City, there are plans for water privatization and their wells are threatened by a Superfund site.

Like Snyder, Christie doesn’t care if there is lead in our drinking water. Christie recently vetoed a bill that would protect children from lead so he could grab the money for the budget. Under the Christie administration, environmental enforcement and inspections have been cut at least 60 percent. However, the DEP has failed to release no new data on inspections for the past four years, so it could have been cut at least 80 percent.

The EPA failed to do its job when it came to the Flint crisis and the regional director has since stepped down. We believe this is because of the attacks from the right wing of Congress to try to gut the EPA, block funding, stop it from implementing the Clean Water Act, and try to repeal the Waters of the United States rules. These attacks have made the EPA afraid to do its job and we are concerned it will not hold the Christie administration accountable for its attack on clean water or have enough oversight.

When you have people that go into office whose purpose is to make sure government does not function and destroy it, this is the result. However, when a crisis like this hits, the same people in office blame government, but they are the ones who deliberately caused it.

When you try to dismantle government and follow an anti-environmental and regulatory agenda, you end up with the consequences of what happened in Flint. Christie has put our environment and public health at risk. That’s why what happened in Flint can happen here.

Jeff Tittel is director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.