Water privatization contract for Dover Air Force Base awarded to a subsidiary of Middlesex Water Company

New Jersey-based Middlesex Water Company announced today in a news release that it has entered into an agreement through its subsidiary, Tidewater Utilities, Inc. with the U.S. Department of Defense for the privatization of the water system of Dover Air Force Base (DAFB) in Dover, Delaware.
Tidewater, also located in Dover, will provide DAFB with potable water service under a 50-year agreement. Tidewater intends to integrate the DAFB water system into its regulated utility operations, subject to Delaware Public Service Commission regulatory approval. Tidewater will own and maintain all DAFB water utility assets and make all necessary capital improvements to provide continued reliable utility service to the Base. Once implemented, the privatization is expected to be accretive to earnings immediately.
DAFB executes hundreds of missions throughout the world and provides 25 percent of the Nation’s strategic airlift capability, projecting global reach to over 100 countries around the world. The Base operates the largest and busiest air freight terminal in the Department of Defense and is also home to the Air Mobility Command Museum, which welcomes thousands of visitors each year.

Middlesex Water Company, Tidewater’s parent company, organized in 1897, is one of nine U.S. based publicly-traded investor-owned water and wastewater companies. The Company provides regulated and unregulated water and wastewater utility services in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania through various subsidiary companies. 


—————————————————————————————————————————–  
For more information like this, try a FREE subscription to EnviroPolitics.  
Our daily newsletter also tracks NJ & PA legislation—from introduction to enactment


Water privatization contract for Dover Air Force Base awarded to a subsidiary of Middlesex Water Company Read More »

North Jersey also felt Superstorm Sandy’s punch


State lawmakers learned last night that Superstorm Sandy not only punished the Jersey Shore. Big cities up north also felt her punch.

 Members of the environmental committees of the state Senate and Assembly, meeting jointly in Jersey City, heard that the state’s second-largest city suffered damage to 6,100 residential housing units (mostly not covered by basic insurance) and 15 high-rise office buildings. The waterfront was flooded and damage to city properties totaled $22 million.

 Jersey City Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security Director Greg Kierce said the storm highlighted the need for better evacuation procedures, better communication — especially with non-English speakers — and more communication between agencies to coordinate relief efforts

 But in the end, there are some things that simply can’t be changed. “I still haven’t found out how you can elevate a brownstone,” he said, referring to the building elevation requirements on FEMA’s new flood maps.

NJ Spotlight’s Scott Gurion covered the hearing and filed this story: North Jersey Still Struggling to Recover from Hurricane Sandy 

It was the second meeting held by the twin committees on the state’s recovery efforts. EnviroPolitics attended the first meeting in Atlantic City in August. See our stories and videos here and here. 

If you or your organization testified last night and did not make it into the NJSpotlight story, send us a link to your testimony and we may use it in an update to this post.

—————————————————————————————————————————–  
For more information like this, try a FREE subscription to EnviroPolitics.  
Our daily newsletter also tracks NJ & PA legislation—from introduction to enactment

North Jersey also felt Superstorm Sandy’s punch Read More »

New study finds lower methane leaks from fracking

Whether it will quell the fears of environmental opponents remains to be seen, but a new study finds that lesser amounts than feared of the greenhouse gas, methane, are being released to the air at natural gas drilling sites.

A long-awaited study led by the University of Texas at Austin shows that methane emissions are about 10 percent lower than recent estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Associated Press reports today that the findings “bolster a big selling point for natural gas, that it’s not as bad for global warming as coal. And they undercut a major environmental argument against fracking, a process that breaks apart deep rock to recover more gas.”

The results were published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A best-case scenario

About 90% of the study funding came from nine energy companies that drill for natural gas with the rest coming from an environmental group. But study authors said they controlled how the research was done and how the wells were chosen for study. And even Robert Howarth of Cornell University, 1 of the scientists who first raised the methane leak alarm, calls the results “good news.”

Howarth, who didn’t participate in the new work, did caution that the results may represent a “best-case scenario.” It might be, he said, that industry can produce gas with very low emissions, “but they very often do not do so. They do better when they know they are being carefully watched.”

He and the study authors say more research is needed to explain why some studies have found high rates of leaking methane and others have not.


Not comprehensive, but it produced hard numbers

The University of Texas study wasn’t a comprehensive study of all the places natural gas can leak. But Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at the market-oriented Environmental Defense Fund, which helped fund the study, noted that it presents “direct measures of things that everyone’s been hand-waving about before. These are hard numbers using the best scientific approach that we can.”

The study found that during the process of extracting natural gas from the ground, total leakage at the study sites was 0.42% of all produced gas. That is a bit less than what the EPA suggested is the national average. The U.S. produced 24.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2012, so that means about 101 billion cubic feet of methane leaked into the air during the first stage of production. Additional leaks occur in the second half of the process: delivery from wells to homes and power plants.


Related environmental news stories:
Gas Leaks in Fracking Disputed in Study – New York Times
Fracking May Emit Less Methane Than Previous Estimates – Climate Central

—————————————————————————————————————————–  
For more information like this, try a FREE subscription to EnviroPolitics.  
Our daily newsletter also tracks NJ & PA legislation—from introduction to enactment


New study finds lower methane leaks from fracking Read More »

NJ Legislature continues hearings on Sandy recovery

USA Today photo 

The focus of the Legislature’s review of New Jersey’s response to Superstorm Sandy moves from the shore to hard-hit northern cities tonight as the Senate and Assembly environmental committees convene for a joint meeting in Jersey City.

(7 p.m. in City Council Chambers at City Hall, 280
Grove Street)


The two committees held a similar session on August in Atlantic City where they heard from shore area residents who were struggling with the task of repairing their homes or finding new apartments. Many blamed the delay on a frustratingly slow response by insurance companies and government agencies. 

Lawmakers hear other side of NJ’s Sandy recovery story

Environmental groups also recommended measures they said the state should implement to minimize the impact of future storms.  

New Jersey environmentalists on what Sandy taught us


——————————————————————————————————————————–  
For more information like this, try a FREE subscription to EnviroPolitics.  
Our daily newsletter also tracks NJ & PA legislation—from introduction to enactment










NJ Legislature continues hearings on Sandy recovery Read More »

Judge upholds EPA’s cleanup rules for Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay Watershed


A federal judge on Friday rejected a bid by farm industry groups to block federal and state pollution limits designed to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay by more tightly regulating wastewater treatment, construction along waterways and agricultural runoff.

The Associated Press reports:

U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo in Harrisburg ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was within its authority to work with six states and Washington, D.C., to set and enforce standards to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that drain from rivers into the bay and harm the ecology of the nation’s largest estuary.

In her 99-page decision Friday, Rambo rejected arguments that the EPA overstepped its bounds under the federal Clean Water Act, created an unfair process and used standards that were flawed or unlawfully complicated.
The EPA and the group of Chesapeake Bay states “undertook significant efforts to preserve the framework of cooperative federalism, as envisioned by the (Clean Water Act),” Rambo wrote. The act is “an ‘all-compassing’ and ‘comprehensive’ statute that envisions a strong federal role for ensuring pollution reduction.”
The American Farm Bureau, which originally filed the suit in 2011, was still reviewing the decision Saturday and did not immediately say whether it would appeal.

——————————————————————————————————————————– 
For more information like this, try a FREE subscription to EnviroPolitics. 
Our daily newsletter also tracks NJ & PA legislation—from introduction to enactment

Judge upholds EPA’s cleanup rules for Chesapeake Bay Read More »

State researchers to help NJ prepare for future floods

Faculty members at New Jersey colleges and universities have been awarded a total of $1.3 million to conduct research studies designed to help protect the state against flooding from future superstorms like Hurricane Sandy.

The Department of Environmental Protection yesterday announced it had approved 10 projects to be undertaken at include Rutgers University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Researchers will collaborate on flood mitigation strategies for communities along portions of the Hudson River, Hackensack River, Arthur Kill, Barnegat Bay and Delaware Bay.
“Incorporating perspectives from local communities and stakeholders, the research projects will examine a range of solutions for communities like Hoboken, Little Ferry and Moonachie in northern New Jersey; to Linden and Woodbridge in central New Jersey; from Brick and Toms River at the Jersey Shore; to Lawrence and Downe in the southern part of the state,” the DEP said in a news release.

“It is also anticipated that strategies developed for these regions could be applied to similarly situated communities throughout the State.”

The post-Sandy studies will analyze flood-prone areas that were impacted by unexpected tidal surges during Sandy, resulting in severe damage to homes and businesses, but which are not the focus of current or planned future U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood-impact projects.
The DEP expects the studies to be developed over the next six months. The results will be shared with  U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"These (research projects) are the kinds of things some people have been critical of us not doing, and we think using the universities and tapping into their talent will give us quite a leg up on moving forward on this," DEP spokesman Larry Ragonese told the Atlantic City Press.
———————————————————————————————————————————- 
For more information like this, try a FREE subscription to EnviroPolitics. 
Our daily newsletter also tracks NJ & PA legislation—from introduction to enactment

Last month, the state launched a $100 million home elevation program in the nine counties hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy, providing eligible applicants up to $30,000 to help finance the elevations of single-family homes under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

In July, Gov. Chris Christie announced the first buyout offers of Sayreville homes, part of the Administration’s plan to acquire 1,000 homes impacted by Superstorm Sandy and another 300 repetitively flood-damaged homes in the Passaic River Basin through the DEP’s Blue Acres program.

Here’s a summary of the research projects:

Stevens University: Flood adaptation strategies for the Hudson River Waterfront in Hoboken, Jersey City, Weehawken and Bayonne; storm surge reduction alternatives for Barnegat Bay.

Rutgers University: Identification, modeling and green practices for developing flood risk reduction strategies through drainage systems along the Hudson River at Hoboken and Jersey City, the Hackensack River at Moonachie and Little Ferry and along Barnegat Bay; strategies for flood risk reductions on the Arthur Kill at Elizabeth, Linden, Rahway and Woodbridge and the Delaware Bay in Salem and Cumberland counties.

New Jersey Institute of Technology: Modeling potential flood impacts and assess alternatives for hard structures for flood protection on Hackensack River; preparation of ecosystem inventory for natural resources and start of environmental constraints analysis and risk assessment statewide.

Stockton College: Analysis of potential wetlands enhancement in Barnegat Bay estuary, including the use of dredge material to enhance wetlands for surge protection.

Monmouth University: Various assistance on Stevens University and Rutgers University Hudson River projects; development of final report in Stockton’s Barnegat Bay project.

DEP’s Flood Control Section and Office of Engineering and Construction are administering the projects. Funding will come from the DEP’s annual flood control appropriations.

Click here for a detailed description of the flood mitigation research Our most recent posts:
NJ developers ready to get giddy as incentives bill nears 
Enviros concede legal battle against PA-to-NJ power line 
EPA’s new web tool helps you track proposed projects 
Q. When will NY decide on fracking? A. Uh, uh…      
Hurricane season coming but some still block NJ dunes 
 

State researchers to help NJ prepare for future floods Read More »