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Upcoming environmental events in NJ, PA, DE & NY

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Environmental Events Calendar – Feb. 26, 2011

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Our most recent posts:
PA lawmaker’s bill requires schools to recycle textbooks
Final hearings today on DRBC gas drilling rules

Troubling signs for PA shale gas drilling opponents?
Roll over Marcellus, the Utica is tomorrow’s gas news
Suppressing the acidic damage from coal mine drainage

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PA lawmaker’s bill requires schools to recycle textbooks

Photo: Times Union

Pennsylvania State Senator John Yudichak, a Democrat who represents parts of Carbon, Luzerne and Monroe counties, wants to be sure that schools are recycling–rather than just discarding–old textbooks.

So he’s introduced a bill, SB 624, that requires “public and nonpublic primary and secondary schools and institutions of the State System of Higher Education to use certified textbook recycling facilities for the collection and recycling of textbooks and other books that are to be discarded.”

The legislation authorizes the state Department of General Services to set up regulations for the program and to enter into three-year contracts with facilities that recycle textbooks. To qualify, the facilities must agree not to dispose of the books in landfills or incinerators, must compensate the schools for costs incurred in storing and shipping the books, and meet other requirements.

What do you think?

Is this good legislation? Is it necessary? Is it workable?

Share your opinion in the comment box below this post.

Our most recent posts:
Final hearings today on DRBC gas drilling rules

Troubling signs for PA shale gas drilling opponents?
Roll over Marcellus, the Utica is tomorrow’s gas news
Suppressing the acidic damage from coal mine drainage
New Jersey Environmental Legislation – Feb 16, 2011
Pennsylvania Environmental Legislation – Feb 16 2011

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Final hearings today on DRBC gas drilling rules

Photo:Keith R. Stevenson/Pocono Record

The Delaware River Basin Commission’s proposed rules to regulate the location and operation of natural gas drilling operations in the basin are generating plenty of public comment, much of it reportedly critical, from both the pro-drilling and anti-drilling sides of the controversial issue.

The commission completes its public hearings with separate afternoon and evening sessions today at Trenton’s War Memorial Building. Previous hearing were held on in Honesdale, Pa.and in Liberty, N.Y.

For more information on today’s hearings, check out our Enviro-Events Calendar.

The DRBC is a federal-interstate compact agency charged with managing the water resources of the Delaware Basin without regard to political boundaries. Its commissioners are the governors of the four basin states – Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania – and a federal representative, the North Atlantic Division Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Our most recent posts:
Troubling signs for PA shale gas drilling opponents?
Roll over Marcellus, the Utica is tomorrow’s gas news
Suppressing the acidic damage from coal mine drainage
New Jersey Environmental Legislation – Feb 16, 2011
Pennsylvania Environmental Legislation – Feb 16 2011

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Troubling signs for PA shale gas drilling opponents?

Many environmentalists worry that Pennsylvania’s new Republican Gov. Tom Corbett may be eager to help out his friends in the gas industry who pumped barrels of money into his election campaign. They won’t be any less fretful today after reading a post in John Micek’s Capitol Ideas.

The Morning Call‘s state house reporter notes that the Corbett Administration has dropped a Rendell-era policy mandating economic impact studies before natural gas drilling can take place on state parkland.
Micek writes:

“The state Department of Environmental Protection published a four-sentence announcement in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, an official government publication, saying it will continue to solicit public input on drilling when it reviews permit applications, the AP reports this morning.”

Micek also reminds us that Gov. Corbett has yet to announce his choice to run the Department of Conservation Resources, a major player in shale drilling.

Finding that a bid odd, Micek said he questioned the governor’s spokesman Kevin Harley about it yesterday. Here’s how that went:

“Harley tersely answered that the administration was working on it. Asked when they might announce an appointee, he said, “we anticipate naming someone in the near future.

“Asked to narrow that a bit, Harley responded again (this time sounding as if he might prefer a root canal to our line of questioning), “In the near future.”

Ouch. Looks like the enviros might be in for some tough times in Harrisburg.

If so, they certainly didn’t help themselves by turning up at Corbett’s inaugural and shouting slogans in an attempt to disrupt the ceremony.

After a long and bruising campaign, any successful candidate should be able to celebrate the finest day of his or her political life with family and well wishers–and a nice dose of pomp and circumstances, too. Organizing catcalls from the peanut gallery is no way to ingratiate yourself with the guy who’ll be calling the shots for the next four years.

Troubling signs for PA shale gas drilling opponents? Read More »

Roll over Marcellus, the Utica is tomorrow’s gas news

The Marcellus Shale, the bodacious layer of natural gas below New York and Pennsylvania that has gas drillers salivating over potential yields–and earnings–may be yesterday’s news.

The new pretender to the gas-profits throne is the Utica. Yes, the Utica.

It weighs in, on average, at 2,000 feet below the Marcellus formation, is 500 feet thick in places, and, formed some 440 million to 460 million year ago, is even older than Larry King.

Is it too deep to be commercially viable? No way, says Penn State University Geosciences Professor Terry Engelder, who notes that drillers using the same technology are pulling natural gas from the the Haynesville formation in Louisiana at depths as deep as 13,000 feet.

Some geologists estimate the Marcellus formation has 50 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, enough to supply the East Coast for 50 years. Imagine the implications if the Utica proves anywhere near as bountiful.

Kim Leonard has the promising Utica Shale story in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Drillers set sights on shale reserve deeper than the Marcellus

Our most recent posts:
Suppressing the acidic damage from coal mine drainage
New Jersey Environmental Legislation – Feb 16, 2011
Pennsylvania Environmental Legislation – Feb 16 2011
Bills today in PA Senate Environment Committee
Former PADEP chief sits down for a frank, fracking chat
Green (and blue) roofs top NJ enviro panel’s agenda

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Roll over Marcellus, the Utica is tomorrow’s gas news Read More »

Suppressing the acidic damage from coal mine drainage

A Temple University professor is working on a new technology to limit the damage to streams and lakes from coal mine effluent.

Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is a devastating environmental problem that is created when metal sulfides contained in mine waste are exposed to water and oxygen. The decomposition of the sulfide results in an a high level of acidic and toxic metal-laden runoff that’s harmful to surface and ground water.

US-based mines spend an estimated $1 million daily for the treatment of the waste effluent.

“When water fills a mine’s underground tunnels, it leaches the sulfuric acid off the walls and can get into the nearby groundwater,” said Temple Chemistry Professor Daniel Strongin.

Chemicals such as lime are used to neutralize acidic runoff, but they do not eliminate the root cause, Strongin said. So his lab is developing a technology that uses lipid molecules that bind to the metal sulfide, forming a hydrophobic layer that keeps water, oxygen and bacteria from causing it to decompose.

Potential commercial application for the technology include the remediation of submerged underground abandoned mining sites and above-ground waste piles, and protection of coal stores at power plants that generate AMD.

Learn more at:
Researchers focus attention on threats to Pa. water resources
Technology to Suppress Acidic Runoff from Coal Mines

Our most recent posts:
New Jersey Environmental Legislation – Feb 16, 2011
Pennsylvania Environmental Legislation – Feb 16 2011
Bills today in PA Senate Environment Committee
Former PADEP chief sits down for a frank, fracking chat
Green (and blue) roofs top NJ enviro panel’s agenda

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Like this post? You’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics
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Suppressing the acidic damage from coal mine drainage Read More »