MEMORIES

 ROGER HAASE

 One month after graduating from Kenyon I arrived at Greenville AFB, Miss., in my Volkswagon bug with New Jersey license plates.  I was sent there for six weeks to learn how to be a personnel officer. Upon completing the course I was asked to stay as an instructor in the course.  I accepted this offer and spent the rest of my three year military career teaching personnel management to officers at Greenville and Amarillo AFB, Texas.  This experience convinced me that being an Air Force ground officer for twenty years could be a very pleasant career.  The civilian environment surrounding the bases caused me to abandon my conservative  political stance and adopt a liberal position.. I have never regretted this decision and have been a loyal supporter of the Southern Poverty Law Center ever since.

Since I had decided to become a lawyer, I left the Air Force in 1965 and enrolled in Rutgers Law School.  There I learned the rudiments of law for the next three years.  While I succeeded in learning both legal substance and process, I found the study of law to be one of the most boring experiences in my life.  Upon graduating I took and passed the New Jersey Bar

For most of the next ten years I practiced general civil and real estate law. While the commercial real estate practice was interesting and it greatly improved my legal skills, I did not find it  fulfilling.  Fortunately in the late 1970s I became interested in environmental law which led to a position as an environmental lawyer in the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection(DEP). For the rest of my legal and working career I practiced environmental law in DEP and as a deputy attorney general in New Jersey’s Division of Law(DOL).

While a significant number of environmental laws had been enacted with both Democratic and Republican support at the federal level, when I started at DEP environmental law was in its infancy in New Jersey and most other states. From a career perspective this allowed me to be involved in determining the types of laws and programs needed and the drafting of the statutes needed to implement programs in water supply and quality, drinking water protection, solid waste disposal, a program to protect the State from toxic chemical disasters and programs to ensure that data used to make scientific decisions were accurate, etc. The actual passage of the laws was handled by the governor’s staff in conjunction with the legislature. After the laws were passed I worked with the management, environmental scientific and engineering staffs of the programs developing the policies and regulations needed to implement the laws. Once the DEP commissioner approved and proposed a regulation I was responsible for guiding it through the proposal process until it was adopted   The New Jersey Division of Law was responsible for defending adopted regulations in court, if challenged. Very few regulations were successfully challenged. Once programs were running I advised them on legal maters regarding permit approvals and enforcement.. This work involved working closely with DEP staff, the general public and  private sector staff, professionals, decision makers and their lawyers.

In the last eight years of my employment I served as a deputy attorney general and successfully defended permits and other approvals issued by programs I helped develop in administrative and State appellate courts. By 2002 I was ready to retire and due to a generous defined benefit retirement plan was able to do so on my preferred schedule.  My work at both DEP and DOL was very challenging, frustrating and sometimes maddening, but ultimately very satisfying.

My retirement makes it possible to live directly across the Hudson River from New York City and enjoy its many opportunities both cultural and educational. I spend a good deal of time studying and/or updating the subjects I should have studied while at Kenyon and other subjects that I am interested in. I am not involved in volunteer work except through lobbying on the internet. I simply do not have enough time to do all the things I would like to do.  I also am not a good staff member in groups I do not have any say in how they are run. Finally my retirement is good enough to protect me from most man made disasters.  It is time for the younger generation to make the decisions to protect their futures.