August 11, 2008

Welcome to Environmental Advocates of New York’s online newsletter from the State Capital, your source for environmental news. We update you every other week with tidbits and observations carefully gleaned from the halls of the Capitol.

DEC Deja Vu All Over Again 

In response to Governor David Paterson’s recent call to reduce state agency budgets by seven percent due to the    state’s burgeoning fiscal crisis, Environmental Advocates of New York is calling on the Governor and lawmakers to hold staff levels steady and immediately grant the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) a waiver from the statewide hiring freeze in order to protect public health and safety.

You may recall that state agency budgets were cut by 3.35 percent during the first round of budget clean-up. In addition to across-the-board agency budget cuts of seven percent, the Governor called lawmakers back to Albany later this month to debate a yet unseen round of cost-cutting measures.

While most observers expect that obtaining legislative approval for additional budget cuts prior to Election Day will be difficult, regardless of what the Legislature does the DEC has already has been hit with a serious body blow—the reinstatement of a statewide hiring freeze. 

You may recall that the twin policies of a hiring freeze and early retirement incentives during the Pataki Administration severely undermined the DEC’s ability to protect our natural resources.  As DEC staffers retired or left the agency, their positions remained unfilled.

As documented in our reports, Endangered Agency I & II, New York State’s main environmental regulator lost up to 800 scientists, engineers and other key staff during a 10-year period.

At the time, the Administration argued the agency was “doing more with less.”  But these pithy phrasings didn’t bear up under scrutiny. Rebuilding the DEC was a priority for Governor Spitzer and more than 100 positions were added back to the agency.

Even with these additions, as our continued investigations have uncovered, the DEC still lacks the staff to the job. Our most recent report on the state’s failed water pollution permit program, Permission to Pollute, documents how the state is rubber-stamping 90 percent of water pollution permits, which results in millions of gallons of unmonitored pollutants released into New York’s waterways.  

With fiscal storm clouds gathering, the state is returning to leaving positions unfilled, a policy that threatens New York’s environment, as well as public health and safety.

What does a hiring freeze mean for the DEC? The agency’s workforce continues to reach retirement age in rapid fashion. By our estimates, almost 300 workers left the agency during 2007. Even with expert management, failure to fill those positions will result in fewer inspectors to monitor water and air pollution and less oversight of polluters.

New York has already taken steps to fix the three wasteful programs identified in our Wa$ted Green report on lost state revenue—perverse tax credits under the Brownfield Cleanup and Empire Zone programs, and questionable loans from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund—and Environmental Advocates is looking for more perverse tax credits and wasteful spending.

Lawmakers are expected to return to Albany on August 19th. We’ll be sure to share the Governor’s additional cost-cutting proposals with you as soon as the ink is dry.

Hooray for the Compact

On Friday, August 1^st, the U.S. Senate passed the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources     Compact. Now ratified by eight states and two Canadian Provinces, the Compact only needs a vote in the House before it can go into effect.

The Great Lakes Compact will limit large-scale and harmful water withdrawals from the lakes. The measure will also ensure that New York has a seat at the table when important decisions about water use are being made in years to come. Congress is expected to vote on the Compact (and pass it) when the House returns to Washington, D.C. in September. We’ll be sure to let you know when it’s time to declare victory.  

Click here to read more in the Washington Post.

Who Cares? Senator Chuck Schumer CAIRS

Last week, Environmental Advocates of New York joined U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer to blast the U.S. Court of Appeals for striking down the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) in its entirety. While the CAIR regulations should have been stronger, without the rule New York State will have a harder time meeting federal air quality standards for ozone (smog) and other air pollution. Thirty New York counties currently don't meet the EPA's minimum air quality standards. 

CAIR required cuts in soot and smog-forming emissions from power plants in the eastern U.S. In New York, the EPA estimates that the rule would have saved about 1,500 lives per year. States that currently don't meet federal smog and soot standards (like New York) were counting on these power plant reductions in their compliance plans.  

Senator Schumer is calling for legislators to pass a measure that would reinstate the pollution-reducing regulations. The bill, S.1177, would establish a national cap-and-trade system for power plants and restrict the four major types of pollution they emit: carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide. In many ways, it feels like the summer of 2003 all over again.

As a downwind state, and without controls in place to cut power plant pollution from states to the west and south, we will continue to be on the receiving end of large amounts of pollution.

We’ll let you know what happens when legislators return to the nation’s capitol in September. 

Click here to learn more.

Long & Winding Road for RGGI

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (AKA the RGGI), the 10-state cap-and-trade plan to reduce power plant pollution, makes its final stop today before the Environmental Board.

All signs are go for the regional climate plan. Next up—the first emissions auction.  We’re on the doorstep of a major success in New York State and now the fun really starts. Who will be trading allowances with whom? How much will a carbon dioxide allowance cost? What’s going to happen to the funds generated through the auctions?

For the record, Environmental Advocates believes that proceeds from the auction of carbon dioxide allowances should be directed to energy efficiency efforts that save consumers over the long-term, and not one-time rebates to offset higher fuel costs. 

New York consumers would do a lot better with interest rate buy-down programs for loans to improve home energy efficiency, instead of rebate checks from the state.