Transparency, Accountability, and Growth

Join us in in protecting our Earth and holding accountable those who threaten its well-being.

Knowledge is power. How may we partake in oversight of polluters and ensure environmental justice if not for some level of government transparency? The most pressing call to action right now in New Jersey is for Governor Murphy to uphold transparency in government, by VETOing the harmful S2930/A4045 which would gut the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). Call 609-292-6000, Text 732-605-5445 and Send NJ’s Governor this Waterspirit inspired letter, and pass it on. (Visit our Calls to Action for more ways to support sacred water and a livable future in this region!) The Governor has not yet taken action, has not indicated what he will do -veto or sign-and the clarion call is echoing across media: this bad bill shall not pass.

We have a moral obligation to protect Earth and preserve its sacred natural resources. The desecration of our lands, waters, and air by polluters driven by greed is a violation of the sacred trust we hold with the Earth and future generations.

Of note on the subject of broad transparency toward environmental justice is last Thursday, Senate Budget Chairperson Senator Whitehouse (RI) and House Oversight and Accountability ranking member Representative Raskin (MD) referred their findings of decades long disinformation campaign by big polluters to the Department of Justice via Attorney General Garland. While we must focus on prevention, we must simultaneously support the need for polluters to pay to clean up the mess they knowingly made, which is being inherited by current and future generations of young people.

Embracing truth, even when it is uncomfortable, allows us to learn from mistakes, and evolve into our best selves. Only through facing reality with honesty and courage may we truly progress and reach our full potential. What would it be like if state budgets were prioritized by morality?

Join us as we work to preserve and enhance transparency and environmental justice in New Jersey & beyond! Take Action Today

Our Summer Newsletter is Here!

CLICK HERE to read the pdf of Waterspirit’s exciting summer newsletter. Inside, you’ll find:

  • an article about faith and climate anxiety;

  • an article about mentoring youth activists;

  • fun facts about water and waves;

  • eco-spiritual summer reflections;

  • recognition for our donors who have given in honor of loved ones;

  • plus photos from recent events.

Print newsletters will arrive in the mail next week. If you would prefer to receive a hard copy of the newsletter, please reach out to water@waterspirit.org.

Investing in A Livable Future

Recently the state legislature of Oregon passed a bill into law that would prevent investments in coal related holdings. The power that states and organizations of large financial wealth have and hold can make a big impact toward a livable future. A forthcoming report Banking on Climate Chaos finds that big banks, for instance, spent over $347 billion on fossil fuel expansion in 2023. Zoom in on the Biden Administration’s recent passage of power plant rules, which continue to exclude gas plants.

This moment requires creativity and courage. Some people are using their power of song to sway investors. Waterspirit is proud to share that Sister Susan Francois who is advocating for social justice, is not only doing this great work and supporting NJ’s Fossil Fuel Divestment Act (S198), but is also getting press coverage for her wider ripples of influence.

Read Investor Nuns’ Shareholder Resolutions Aim to Stop Wall Street Financing of Fossil Fuel Development on Indigenous Lands: Faith-Based Climate Advocates’ Transparency Efforts are More Than a Hail Mary via Keerti Gopal, InsideClimateNews.

We often share that if it was not recorded or reported, it did not happen.

Fitting it is that our Calls to Action page prominently features ways for you to take action to SAVE New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act law, through Monday!

Join Waterspirit and our powerful network as we advocate together with love and hope!

Drinking Water Week 2024: We Need Oversight To Ensure Water Quality

This week is Drinking Water Week! This is a great time to raise awareness about the importance of water quality and access. Calling back to the importance of investigating from our blog post last week, we must be ever guarded when it comes to holding our representatives accountable to representing all of the people, not a few or for self-interest gains. Laws are only as effective as they are implemented.

URGENT ACTION IN NJ: We must lend attention to tomorrow’s hearing of S-2930 Thursday, May 9 at 10 am in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. Its companion, A-4045, will be heard on Friday, May 10 at 12 pm in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Passage of these bills may set up for floor votes in both chambers on Monday, May 13th, which will determine if residents will have access -however costly-to transparency in the notoriously corrupt state. (Take Action Below)

Let us be reminded that New Jersey’s representatives do not reflect the lived experiences of the majority of their constituents in 2024. For those who may show up, please do; you make a difference when you show up.

Pope Francis helps us think about the lucidity required for this moment in time:

“28. We need to rethink among other things the question of human power, its meaning and its limits. For our power has frenetically increased in a few decades. We have made impressive and awesome technological advances, and we have not realized that at the same time we have turned into highly dangerous beings, capable of threatening the lives of many beings and our own survival. Today it is worth repeating the ironic comment of Solovyov about an “age which was so advanced as to be actually the last one”. [22] We need lucidity and honesty in order to recognize in time that our power and the progress we are producing are turning against us. [23] “ Laudate Deum

ACTION STEPS TO DEFEND OPRA from our friends at League of Women Voters NJ:

  1. SHOW UP AND BE HEARD: Attend Thursday's Committee Meeting and Testify. Let us know you are coming and request additional information here!              

  2. APPLY PRESSURE: Call your legislators and urge them to vote no! Use this call script to make your case.

  3. EMAIL YOUR LEGISLATORS: bit.ly/protectopra. Visit our social media pages @lwvnj to share the action alert with your networks. 

  4. STAY READY: A4045 will also be scheduled for a committee hearing in the Assembly. This could happen as early as Monday 5/13. 

 Join Us! Water@waterspirit.org

MONDAY: Enviro Advocates Celebrate Major Victory Against Williams Transco’s NESE 

Media Advisory 

May 3, 2024
Media Contact: 
Taylor McFarland, Sierra Club: Taylor.McFarland@sierraclub.org
Kari Martin, Clean Ocean Action: KMartin@cleanoceanaction.org
Ed Potosnak, NJLCV: ed.potosnak@njlcv.org
Blair Nelsen, Waterspirit: bnelsen@waterspirit.org 

MONDAY: Enviro Advocates Celebrate Major Victory Against Williams Transco’s NESE 

KEYPORT: Today Williams Transco let its FERC certification expire and will not seek another extension to construct its Northeast Supply Enhancement Project. Transco’s Northeast Supply Enhancement Project (NESE) included a compressor station to be built in Trap Rock Quarry in Franklin Twp. and 3.5 new miles of connecting natural gas pipeline through Old Bridge that would run nearly 24 miles through Raritan Bay and into the Atlantic Ocean. The fossil fuel project would have caused irreparable harm to our environment by increasing climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and flooding, destroying critical wetlands and habitats, and cutting through sensitive Raritan Bay and New York Bay. 

Transco’s decision not to seek another extension is a massive victory for the people of South Brunswick and Franklin Township fighting the compressor and the people living near Raritan Bay, where Transco’s pipeline would cut through. 

Environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, Clean Ocean Action, NJ League of Conservation Voters, Waterspirit and others, will hold a press conference at Keyport Waterfront Park on Monday, May 6th to celebrate this monumental victory. 

Who: Environmental Organizations, including Waterspirit, Clean Ocean Action, NJ League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and local advocates 

What: Press Conference celebrating the defeat of the NESE Pipeline 

Where: The promenade at Keyport Waterfront Park, American Legion Dr, Keyport, NJ 07735

When: Monday, May 6th at 1:00 pm

Livestream: Link to NJ Sierra Club Livestream

Investigating Matters: Take Action Today!

While evidence continues to mount proving that fossil fuel industry companies have lied to the public through disinformation, it remains our responsibility as watershed residents to monitor, report and organize to protect sacred water. There are attempts such as the recent one by the Biden-Harris Administration to strengthen existing laws, like the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), and yet we still require something enduring, like constitutional right to clean air, clean water, a stable climate and healthy environments, a green amendment. Even in New Jersey, which is one of several states suing these bad actors, with a landmark cumulative impacts environmental justice law, implementation, consequences for violations remain lackluster. Wherever we live, let us take the opportunity to connect with others who are caring for watershed and airshed health. Visit our Calls to Action Page.

For instance, residents have been complaining about an odor stemming from a landfill in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. Resulting from public outcries and government response regarding a landfill in Monmouth County, in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, there is now an odor complaint line. To report a foul smell, Call 732-559-ODOR(6367). Read the article announcement here.

Earlier this week, Waterspirit’s own Program Manager and flood victim attended her township’s zoning board meeting in Middlesex County to ensure there would be care and mindfulness given to potential planning in or around a flood zone. She was pleased and glad she had the opportunity to attend.

Also this week, a student leader presented about the New Jersey Green Amendment to their municipal Environmental Commission, whose liaison spoke favorably about it at the municipal council last night. Ultimately a goal is supporting as many municipal and organizational resolutions in support of a NJ Green Amendment (ACR43/ACR119) as possible, as soon as possible.

Next week, a coalition of groups shall come together, as New York did, for a press conference in New Jersey celebrating the prevention of dirty gas expansion through pipeline and compressor station, known as the North Eastern Supply Expansion (“NESE”) project. (Stay tuned here for more.) Diverse public opposition voiced clearly and creatively can make a difference.

Coming up? Poor people are gathering across the land, demonstrating the power of people on June 29th in D.C. Regardless of any outcome, these actions when taken consistently will matter across generations.

Our planet, experiencing record extreme heat in parts right now, is not growing more inhabitable; our situation requires that we take actions where we may to use this time wisely, as responsible watershed residents. To learn more about what you can do, visit our Calls to Action Page.

Get in touch with us, join us, visit our calendar, volunteer page and check out our programs. You make a difference when you show up!

Biden Administration While Increasing Standards, Still Investing in False Solution Fantasies

Waterspirit has been paying close attention to the investments and policies that are continuing to perpetuate fossil fuel. Even in the wake of broad announcements like yesterday’s breaking news update about the Biden-Harris Administration introducing standards toward the reduction of fossil fuel pollution, there is no full throated effort to prevent pollution from dirty gas.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s Department of Energy is still investing dollars into Carbon Capture and Storage or Sequestration, a false solution and waste of investment dollars and time. Our Public Policy & Justice Organizer has been warning against “carbon utilization” since she learned about it 15 years ago.

She was quoted in Common Dreams last year advising, "If we are to provide a livable future for current and future generations of young people and all creation, we must invest solely in renewable energy, not furthering fossil fuel fallacies," she emphasized. "Subsidies going to the most heinous polluters are only continuing through this legislation; congressional representatives must know better by now."“

Representatives and leaders may know better but they are not choosing to do their best in 2024. The new rules will do nothing to regulate existing power plants and the false solutions we constantly educate about are still included, supported, funded by the federal government.

Waterspirit spent all this Earth week partaking in the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council’s (NEJAC) convening which centered on cumulative impacts of environmental racism across the land. In New Jersey, we have a responsibility to push for the squeakiest clean energy and wholehearted community led oversight given the other states are looking to the landmark cumulative impacts law we have on the books.

While there is still no clarion call to cut ALL fossil fuel gas infrastructure at the source, it is incumbent upon advocates to speak truth to power and mobilize residents to use their voices. The experiences shared through storytelling are making a difference in places of power. As we closed up yesterday, it was clear to the NEJAC that carbon capture, PFAS, lead, and hydrogen hubs are what are most concerning to water advocates, to say nothing of water scarcity. This is still progress.

We continue to make a difference when we show up. Let’s use our opportunities to organize, speak and share written comments to move people into the climate action we know must take place for a livable future for future generations.

Visit Waterspirit’s Calls to Action Page today and get involved in our work!