The Cost of the Destruction of 1500 acres of Land in New Jersey

According to a report in yesterday’s New York Times, the New Jersey prosecutor has settled a ten year environmental damage case against Exxon Mobil when the case was on the verge of being decided by a judge.  The settlement is for a small fraction of what the state had originally demanded: $250 million as against $8.9 billion.

This settlement seems odd, when the judge in the case was almost ready to announce his assessment of damages.  However, the governor of New Jersey is Republican Chris Christie, long known for his bizarre behavior.  Just last year, he shut down most of the entrance lanes to a heavily used bridge into New York for four days, creating massive traffic jams that tied up commuters for hours at a time.  He denied responsibility for this action, blaming high level staff members, but it seems obvious that it could not be done without his express approval.   The reason: the Democratic mayor of the town at the entrance to the bridge had refused to endorse him.

No direct contributions from Exxon to Christie have been uncovered, but they did contribute $500,000 to the Republican Governor’s Association last year while Christie was serving a one-year term as its chairman.

Some observers would suggest that Christie would be willing to do Exxon a favor for free, considering the possibility that he will be without a job soon and his prospects for a Republican nomination for President have been poisoned by the bridge scandal.  But that would be cynical.

All this information is not really public, but has been based on anonymous sources who learned of the amount of the settlement recently.  Read the story and decide for yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/nyregion/exxon-mobil-settles-with-new-jersey-over-environmental-damage.html