EnviroPolitics Blog

Millions spent to help some coho salmon get where they’d like to go

The coho salmon has already conquered the Ballard Locks fish ladder, swum 17 miles through urban Seattle waterways, and powered through a tunnel under nine lanes of Interstate 405.

It faces a gantlet of pipes and concrete tunnels ahead, the legacy of human development over a once-pristine habitat. Next up is a nearly 300-foot pipe beneath an indoor shooting range and a parking lot.

If the coho makes it through, all the way to the upper reaches of this obscure stream in Bellevue, it will find the single most expensive construction project in the state’s costliest-ever salmon-recovery undertaking: $110 million for new bridges to carry Interstate 90 and local traffic high above a restored creek.

But just a third of a mile farther upstream, the fish will slam into a pile of boulders and junk metal, before confronting two concrete pipes perched 5 feet above the streambed. Surveyors determined no salmon could make that leap.

Yet the Washington State Department of Transportation ignored those barriers on Sunset Creek and hundreds of others like them across Western Washington in its massive effort to restore salmon habitat. And the estimate has now doubled to as much as $7.8 billion — the cost of replacing the Highway 99 viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront, twice over, plus change.

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Minnesota landfill experiments target harmful PFAS in trash

By Chloe Johnson, Star Tribune

ROSEMOUNT, MINN – The white trailer blends into the winter landscape at SKB Environmental’s landfill, but inside, machinery is working to capture one of the most pervasive environmental pollutants of our time.

The landfill is the final stop for industrial waste, incinerator ash, and demolition garbage, where all of that material is mixed into massive, lined cells. Like in every landfill, moisture in the trash that’s trucked in mixes with rainfall and collects into a polluted soup known as leachate.

A dump truck disposes of industrial waste Feb. 19 at SKB Environment in Rosemount, Minnesota. SKB Environmental is testing multiple technologies to filter PFAS chemicals out of their wastewater and to either destroy the durable chemicals or lock them up, so they don't float through the environment.

SKB is experimenting with filtering PFAS chemicals out of that liquid. The leachate is pumped inside the trailer, where it travels through several tanks that repeatedly froth it up. These chemicals bubble into a super-concentrated foam – much like soap would. Then that foam is siphoned off, and the cleaned water continues on to a sewage plant.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are thousands of chemicals used to make frying pans nonstick, clothes and carpets stain resistant, and even to snuff out dangerous fires. The chemicals’ almost unbreakable carbon-fluorine bonds make them useful but also ensure they don’t break down. They have been found in the environment across the globe, including in the bodies of people and animals.

Growing research also shows that these chemicals are toxic, and linked to some cancers and reproductive, developmental, and immune system issues.

In the past few years, regulation of these chemicals is finally starting to catch up – the EPA set new limits for six PFAS in drinking water last year, and private startups are racing to find a way to destroy them. But decades’ worth of the compounds are sitting in landfills right now – presenting a new contaminant for waste handlers who didn’t create the pollution, but now find themselves awash in it.

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Prosecutors widen their probe of NJ power broker George Norcross

Authorities have issued a subpoena to the South Jersey Transportation Authority over votes to delay payments to a contractor whose executive crossed Norcross politically, sources say.

George Norcross, photographed in Camden in 2015.

By Andrew Seidman and Jeremy Roebuck, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 7, 2024

Months into a state and federal investigation into South Jersey Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III, authorities have expanded their focus beyond his involvement in real estate deals in Camden.

In recent weeks, investigators with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and FBI have begun scrutinizing whether the 67-year-old insurance executive played a role in a state agency’s decision to temporarily stop payments to a contractor after one of the company’s executives reportedly defied Norcross with an endorsement in a local election last year, according to sources familiar with the probe.

The South Jersey Transportation Authority’s board voted on multiple occasions in early 2023 not to approve invoices from Middletown, N.J.-based firm T&M Associates, which held a contract for engineering and construction management work, according to the agency’s meeting minutes. All other vendors were paid during that period.

The decision to halt payments came weeks after a meeting between Norcross and T&M vice president John Cimino, who is also a Mercer County commissioner, about a local political race.

Politico reported last year that in December 2022, Norcross urged Cimino not to endorse a candidate in the contested race for Mercer County executive. Cimino did anyway, and Norcross’ insurance brokerage, Conner Strong & Buckelew, abruptly dropped T&M as a client, the news site reported.

Now, authorities are looking into whether Norcross, who does not hold elected office but is widely seen as one of the state’s most influential political figures, also influenced the SJTA’s decision to stop paying the company in retaliation, according to three sources briefed on the investigation.

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Talkin’ Turkey in New Jersey

Move Over Deer, Turkeys Are Here!

Join New Jersey Fish and Wildlife’s R3 Program in partnering with members of the New Jersey National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) for two FREE turkey hunting and calling seminars introducing YOU to the wonderful world of the wild turkey.

This seminar is designed to provide participants with an informative and welcoming environment in which to learn new outdoor skills while learning about one of New Jersey’s favorite springtime game species, the wild turkey.

When:

Session 1
March 7 @ 1:00 pm
Batsto Village Historic Site, Burlington County

Session 2
(To Be Determined)
Pequest Trout Hatchery & Education Center

Registration: You MUST register.

Each person attending the seminar must register. Registration is first come, first serve. Once the maximum capacity is filled, registration will be closed. Registration deadline is March 20, 2024.

To Register, complete this Registration Form .

Bring your turkey calls and your turkey questions.

Questions? Email r3mentoredhunt@dep.nj.gov

Program Information

For more information, please visit the R3 Program at New Jersey Fish & Wildlife.

Fish and Wildlife Events Calendar

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After 40 years, Alaska hydroelectric project wins $27M in fed funds

*The Thayer Creek Hydro project would use a 40-foot high dam to impound water over 7 acres.*

By Robert Woolsey, KCAW – Sitka

A hydroelectric project on Admiralty Island over 40 years in the making has won federal funding for construction.

Alaska Senators Murkowski and Sullivan announced on Tuesday that almost $27 million from the bipartisan infrastructure bill is headed toward the community of Angoon for the construction of a run-of-river hydro plant on Thayer Creek.

The plans for a hydroelectric project in Angoon go all the way back to the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, and the creation of the Admiralty Island National Monument on the ancestral lands of the Angoon Lingít. Angoon’s village corporation, Kootznoowoo Inc., was subsequently granted the right to develop Thayer Creek, but no funding came with it. Angoon’s 500 residents have relied on diesel generation ever since, paying somewhere between four and eight times more for electricity than the national average.

About Angoon – Angoon is a city on Admiralty Island in Hoonah-Angoon Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census, the population was 572; by the 2010 census, the population had declined to 459. The name in Tlingit, Aangóon, means roughly “isthmus town.” Wikipedia

Over the years, Kootznoowoo has pulled together other grants to design Thayer Creek until finally, last year, the corporation received a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service to build it.

But the millions of dollars needed to construct the project were still not there. The passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 included $1 billion for energy improvements in rural areas — called ERA — and this looked like Kootnoowoo’s chance.

Kootznoowoo’s director of natural resources, Jon Wunrow, spoke to KCAW last August.

“This is really the first, and potentially the only funding of this size, specifically for rural areas to do renewable energy,” Wunrow said. “So it’s kind of got Thayer written all over it. We’re hopeful.”

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