Sorry for the lapse in news on the proposed Pinelands Pipeline. Things have been more than a little bit interesting on the Pinelands front since we last provided an update. As was noted in our last post on the subject, Senator Van Drew has been very outspoken about working with Gov. Christie and Senator Sweeney to get this pipeline shoved through. Apparently their attempt to stack the Commission is not going unnoticed by the same four ex-governors who took a stand last time in defense of the independent Pinelands Commission. Past Governors Kean, Florio, Whitman, and Byrne came out with yet another letter imploring the Senate to not put Barr on the Commission. Roohr, by the way, has withdrawn his nomination. Soo...back to the full Senate hearing. We were SUPPOSED to be at the State house for the hearing scheduled for LAST Thursday--yes, these things come up crazy quick-but of course we had snow and the state offices were closed. If you want to be in on the next round, which will involve a visit to various state senate offices this week as well as the nomination possibly going forward on March 16th, please check in with the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. I wish I had more concrete info for you all, but Trenton is not giving us very much of a heads up on agenda items.
Also in the news- Christie basically sold us out to Exxon. Awhile back Exxon really made a mess of things up in North Jersey. They were taken to court with the state asking for close to $9 billion for damages and clean up. What we ended up with amounts to pennies on the dollar-less than $300million. Even this made a few lawyers scratch their heads. If, heaven forbid, this pipeline WERE to get built, and if some disaster were to befall us, could NJ citizens expect the same thing to happen? Would the Pinelands, and NJ residents, be jilted out of a fair settlement to recoup clean up costs and damages?