Remember when EPA regs did not trigger Olympian rage?

Nathanael Johnson writes in Grist:

The Environmental Protection Agency Wednesday released a long-awaited and long-debated rule for interpreting the Clean Water Act. The EPA has regulated rivers since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, but Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 reduced the scope of government authority to protect water against pollution. Since that time, it has been unclear what the government is allowed to regulate. A New York Times article in 2010 suggested that this rollback was allowing pollution that previously would have been illegal:
“This is a huge deal,” James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected”…
“Cases now are lost because the company is discharging into a stream that flows into a river, rather than the river itself,” said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan who led the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department during the last administration.
The new EPA rule doesn’t give the agency as much authority as it previously wielded under the Clean Water Act. But it says the EPA will regulate tributaries of navigable rivers, wetlands, and a few other environmentally important bodies of water, like prairie potholes and vernal pools in California.

If you haven’t been following this, you may wonder why it’s controversial. That’s a fair question. As Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) pointed out in an op-ed, these regulations used to seem like common sense to both Republicans and Democrats:

The draft rule relies on more than 1,200 pieces of peer-reviewed scientific literature that evaluate the critical functions that various types of water bodies perform. It restores protections that the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush championed.
Still, the EPA’s critics were outraged by the rule. House Speaker John Boehner called it “a raw and tyrannical power grab.”

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No fracking in NJ but pipelines are changing its landscape

This is an excerpt from the first in a week-long series of reports produced by NJ Spotlight in collaboration with WHYY public radio of Philadelphia. It looks at the upheaval that’s occurring in New Jersey due to the discovery of enormous natural gas reserves beneath the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and the need for thousands of miles of new interstate pipelines to get the gas to market. The series will culminate with a roundtable on Friday morning. 

Pennsylvania’s pipeline building boom could expand the nations’ and perhaps the world’s, supply of natural gas. And this boom includes an estimated 4,600 miles of new interstate pipes, tunneling under Pennsylvania’s farms, wetlands, waterways, and backyards. That’s on top of 6800 miles of existing interstate natural gas pipes, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Drillers eager to reach new markets are frustrated right now, because there’s just not enough room in the current pipeline system to transport their gas beyond regional markets. “That gas languishes and it builds up and now that price will drop,” said Rob Boulware, a spokesman for Seneca Resources.
Today, Marcellus Shale gas sold at less than $2/MMBtu, which is about a dollar lower than gas sold in other parts of the country.
While producers and utilities try to expand their infrastructure, the pipeline construction boom has run up against opposition in small towns and rural areas where environmentalists and residents are pushing back. Some opponents simply don’t want their land disturbed, or taken by eminent domain. But other activists see pipelines as part of a larger mission to end drilling altogether.
“The pipelines are being built in order to induce more drilling and fracking,” said Maya van Rossum with the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. “And of course more drilling and fracking results in the need for more pipelines. So the two are inextricably intertwined and if you oppose one, truthfully, you have to oppose the other.”

Natural Gas Drilling in Pennsylvania

The Marcellus Shale has been underneath Pennsylvania for centuries, but the extraction of natural gas began only recently.
The “fracking” boom is changing the landscape of northeastern and southwestern Pennsylvania. Use this tool to learn which operators are drilling, and where. Find active wells in your county or municipality — and see whether the drillers have been cited for violating state environmental regulations.
Read More ▶
Luke Jackson is an analyst with Bentek Energy, a firm that specializes in natural gas. Jackson says that just 5 years ago, the Marcellus Shale, which is made up primarily of Pennsylvania’s gas fields was producing two billion cubic feet of gas a day. Today that’s jumped to 19 billion cubic feet every day. And he predicts, in just 4 years, there will be 30 billion cubic feet of gas coming out of the region. That’s a 1400 percentage rise in just 10 years.
“There’s so [many] molecules out there, whether its gas, whether its oil, whether it’s natural gas liquids, you just have a ton of supply on the market at the moment,” said Jackson.
And that massive supply is too much for the current system of pipelines to carry. There’s a traffic jam of gas molecules in the pipeline system. Seneca Resources is a natural gas driller, one of the many trying to expand their number of customers by delivering gas to new markets. Their spokesman Rob Boulware says demand for new pipes to carry all that gas, and to ease the traffic jam, are so high, the new routes for that gas is already sold out. And some of those pipelines won’t come online for another couple of years.
“Think of it like a turnpike that no one is driving on but people are lined up at the gate to go through it,” said Boulware.

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Matt Mowers – Gov. Christie’s man in New Hampshire

Christie advance man Matt Mowers – Mel Evans AP photo

Rutgers-grad Matt Mowers is Gov. Christie’s man in New Hampshire, working out of an apartment and coffee shops to build relationships for his boss in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

A GOP strategist says of Mowers work: “You get a sense they have thought through where they need to go to get the votes you need to win.”

Read Mattie Hanna’s Philadelphia Inquirer piece here  


    

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Memorial Day 2015

Thanks for your photos:

Ed Murray
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

___________________________________________________________________________

    

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Gov. nominates four to NJ Water Supply Advisory Council


Governor Chris Christie re-filed the following nominations with the State Senate. These nominations were filed during the 2014 annual session, but were not acted upon by the Senate. The Governor’s nominations are subject to the advice and consent of the State Senate. 

Water Supply Advisory Council
Nursery/Landscape Industry Representative
Nominate for reappointment Peter F. Haran (Marlton, Burlington)

Municipal/County Water Company Representative
Nominate for appointment Stephen R. Blankenship, P.E. (Williamstown, Gloucester)

Golf Course Superintendent Representative
Nominate for reappointment Michael A. Stachowski (Robbinsville, Mercer)

Academic Community Representative
Nominate for appointment Taha F. Marhaba, Ph.D., P.E. (Bridgewater, Somerset)

    

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‘A Beautiful MInd’ Princeton Prof dies in auto accident

[Additional news coverage added at 9 p.m.]


John Forbes Nash, Jr., the Nobel laureate known for his groundbreaking work on
game theory and differential equations, was killed along with his wife in a
taxi crash on the New Jersey Turnpike, police say. He was 86. 
National Public Radio has this to say about Mr. Nash: 

His death was first reported by NJ.com citing a police official. NPR has confirmed the report through longtime colleague Louis Nirenberg. The couple were killed on Saturday.
Nash is best known to the general public as the subject of the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, which depicted the troubled mathematician struggling with paranoid schizophrenia even as he pressed ahead with his research. Nash was played by actor Russell Crowe.
According to NJ.com, Nash and his wife of 60 years, 82-year-old Alicia Nash:
“[Were] in a taxi traveling southbound in the left lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams said. The driver of the Ford Crown Victoria lost control as he tried to pass a Chrysler in the center lane, crashing into a guard rail.
“The Nashes were ejected from the car, Williams said.
“‘It doesn’t appear that they were wearing sea tbelts,’ he said.”
Nirenberg, with whom Nash shared the 2015 Abel Prize, tells NPR’s Lauren Hodges that he and his colleague had just returned from Oslo where they received the award. Nirenberg said Nash and his wife were supposed to take a limo home but the driver never showed. So, instead, they took a cab.
Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber later issued a statement saying the university was “stunned and saddened by news of the untimely passing of John Nash and his wife and great champion, Alicia.”
“John’s remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists,” Eisgruber said.
A bio on Princeton University’s website, where Nash was a professor, notes that A Beautiful Mind was “loosely” based on his life. Nash received his doctorate from the institution in 1950.
According to the website:
“The impact of his 27 page dissertation on the fields of mathematics and economics was tremendous. In 1951 he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. His battle with schizophrenia began around 1958, and the struggle with this illness would continue for much of his life. Nash eventually returned to the community of Princeton.”

Read the full story here 
Other coverage: 

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015) | Big Think 

Russell Crowe Mourns John Forbes Nash Jr: A Beautiful Mind

Noble Laureate Professor John Nash Dies in Car Crash …

The Inspiring Case of John Forbes Nash, Jr. – Forensic Psych

    

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