Whitman gets mixed reviews on green record
Copyright 2000, The Star-Ledger, Newark, New Jersey
December 20, 2000
By Dunstan Mcnichol, The Star-Ledger, Newark, New Jersey
If Gov. Christie Whitman could pick an image to define her environmental record, she might opt for the hills of Sterling Forest.
It's a pristine stand of 19,500 woodland acres straddling New York and New Jersey that Whitman has helped shelter from would-be developers with $11 million in state land buys and other initiatives.
Her critics, however, might prefer Roche Vitamin Inc., a manufacturing plant in Belvidere, Warren County, as a more appropriate image.
Company officials there recently notified Whitman's Department of Environmental Protection that for the past three years they have been inadvertently belching out 300 tons of methanol annually — at least 10 times the rate state permits allow.
Critics say Whitman has opened the door to such transgressions by limiting fines to polluters and weakening state anti-pollution regulations in the name of streamlining the regulatory process.
As Whitman prepares to trade in seven years of stewardship over New Jersey's environment for the top spot at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, both her supporters and critics agree she leaves behind an environmental legacy that is mixed.
"My record here in the state of New Jersey is a strong one, and has been recognized nationally," Whitman told reporters after a ceremony in which she approved another $8.3 million in spending to preserve open spaces. "I'm happy to have a discussion about the environment of New Jersey."
Among her accomplishments, Whitman first lists the ongoing effort to acquire and preserve 1 million acres of open land. Since Whitman took office seven years ago, the state has preserved 252,000 acres of open space and farmland, almost as much as the state preserved in the three decades before she took office.
Whitman also touts her efforts to simplify state regulations, to encourage corporate environmental compliance through cooperation rather than enforcement, and to make it easier for private developers to acquire and rebuild polluted urban properties, known as brownfields.
Her critics, however, say the Republican governor has used the notion of "regulatory reform" as a cover for pro-business policies that have limited the state Department of Environmental Protection's ability to monitor and enforce pollution controls.
They also note that the staff of the DEP has declined by 12 percent under Whitman, fines for violations of state air and water pollution permits have dropped by more than 70 percent, and explosive suburban development has consumed open space faster under Whitman than at any other time.
At the same time, Whitman has been stymied by challenges from the EPA and local environmentalists in her long-running efforts to rewrite the state regulations concerning water pollution controls and coastal development. In both instances, critics charge the Governor's proposed changes would allow enormous amounts of additional pollution and development of sensitive lands.
"In New Jersey, there have not been a lot of agreements between Governor Whitman and the environmental community on regulatory issues, which are the basic components of the EPA," said Curtis Fisher, lobbyist for New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, a pro-environmental lobbying group and persistent critic of the Whitman administration. "I think that speaks volumes about the distinction between one's rhetoric and one's record."
New Jersey environmentalists predict that Whitman, once in Washington, will continue to press ongoing EPA efforts to clamp down on air pollution, particularly from Midwestern coal plants. But they also predict she will pursue environmental policies that are mindful of the interests of business owners and corporations.
"It's not a zero-sum game, and we can't let it be seen as that because, frankly, then you lose," Whitman said yesterday during an interview with The Star-Ledger. "If you let it be seen that you can only have an either/or, we'll lose to business because they've got more gumption, more dollars to put behind efforts, more power to sway things."
Hal Bozarth, executive director of the Chemical Industry Council of New Jersey, said Whitman had restored "balance" to a state environmental policy that, until she took office, had been damaging to economic development.
"I think she's at least let the pendulum swing back and allow it to stop in a place where there's a balance of economic development and environmental protection," he said.
From afar, even Whitman's detractors say the Governor looks like a shining environmental knight, wrapped in the mantle of her high-profile commitment to preserve 1 million acres from development.
At Whitman's urging, lawmakers and voters in 1998 approved spending $2 billion to buy up and preserve up to 1 million acres of open space. According to the administration, legislation that passed the state Senate this week puts the state one-fifth of the way to that goal.
But up close, Whitman's critics say, the Governor's environmental credentials begin to look deeply tarnished.
"At the national level, Sierra is concerned that a Bush EPA head would dismantle EPA and take it out of the enforcement business," said Bill Wolfe, a researcher for the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club. "I believe that this is precisely the policy Whitman has presided over and legitimized in New Jersey."
Early in her tenure, when New Jersey was still stinging from a sharp recession and a string of corporate mergers that had cost the state hundreds of thousands of jobs, Whitman promised to make the state "open for business."
To accomplish that, she pursued a two-pronged strategy of tax cuts and sweeping changes to environmental regulation.
Among other initiatives, Whitman eliminated revenues from fines as a source of DEP funding; established an Office of Dispute Resolution to mediate disputes over environmental issues between businesses and the DEP; and installed the Office of Business Ombudsman, essentially a business lobbyist, in the secretary of state's office.
She also cut DEP staffing by 738 employees during her first three years in office, cut the agency's budget form $200 million in 1993 to $168 million in 1997 and cut the DEP staff workweek by five hours in 1995.
In addition, she adopted regulations that limit the state's ability to establish anti-pollution measures that are more stringent than federal standards and promised businesses a refund of their permit application fees if the DEP did not handle applications quickly.
But in the later years of her administration, as the economy soared, Whitman turned to open-space preservation and growth-control measures as the focus of her environmental agenda.
"I share the view of those who say her legacy is certainly a mixed bag in New Jersey," said Robert Tucker, a former Cook College environmental policy professor who served as director of the DEP's division of research until 1995. "I think when she first came in, she really decimated the DEP, and it's never completely recovered."
At the same time, however, Tucker said Whitman has been "really strong" on open space preservation.
"But I really worry — I don't think she has the guts to stand up to Governor Bush when he wants to drill on the North Slope," he said.Earlier this year, Whitman managed to raise the ire of both environmentalists and pro-development forces by advocating a new set of water pollution controls and sewer guidelines that would attempt to limit new growth to areas of the state already approved for sewer service. Builders viewed the measure as far too restrictive, while environmentalists didn't think it went far enough to protect open space.
"Some of the local, the state, environmental people won't be satisfied until you know we're 100 percent pure, and we're human beings living here, so we're never going to achieve that," Whitman said of her critics. "And I appreciate the idea that you need to have strong advocates out there pushing constantly, but I think we also have to recognize there is a balance here."