Alert: NJ’s Licensed Site Professional bill signed

Governor Jon Corzine today signed into law controversial legislation authorizing the state Department of Environmental Protection to license environmental engineers and others as Licensed Site Professionals who would be empowered to oversee the cleanup of contaminated properties.

The governor concurrently issued an Executive Order designed to address some of the concerns raised by environmental groups who have vigorously opposed the legislation .

Prior to the signing, Acting DEP Commissioner Mark Mauriello told members of the Assembly Budget Committee this morning that his department was preparing for the LSP bill’s enactment. He predicted that an interim program would be up and operating within three months of the bill’s signing.
We’ll have the details in tomorrow’s edition of or daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics. For a free, 30-day trial click here.

Previous posts on the LSP legislation:
Where’s NJ’s Licensed Site Professional bill?
NJ Gov. gets Licensed Site Professional bill
Licensed Site Professional vote Monday in NJ
NJ Licensed Site Professional bills advance
NJ Licensed Site Professional bill’s encore
Will New Jersey see Licensed Site Professionals?

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‘Carbon Sequestration’ coming to NJ & PA?

Carbon sequestration–an ungainly phrase that some environmentalists hope we never need to master–has made its debut, at least conceptually, in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Carbon sequestration itself has been used successfully in limited applications by oil drillers who inject carbon dioxide into wells to help force oil to the surface.

These days, however, the big plan for carbon sequestration involves the capture and injection of carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-burning power plants into deep underground voids, like abandoned coal or salt mines or even deep under the ocean floor where it presumably would be ‘stored’ forever.

The payoff is that energy companies would be able to continue burning plentiful American coal without being criticized for contributing to global warming by releasing CO2, one of the major greenhouse gases, up their smokestacks.

In New Jersey, the concept of carbon sequestration was floated last week in a proposal for a new coal-fired energy plant in the industrial city of Linden. The plan calls for piping the CO2 to a deep grave at sea. Several noted environmental organizations, within days, announced plans for a coalition to oppose the project.

The term has been discussed more frequently in recent years in Pennsylvania, a state which stands to benefit from carbon sequestration because it has both plentiful amounts of coal to be mined and a plentiful supply of abandoned mines to be filled.

A recent report by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources says that the Keystone State has an estimated geologic capacity to store hundreds of years’ worth of carbon emissions at present rates.

The report identified four “potential geologic sequestration reservoirs in western and north-central Pennsylvania, each of which meet the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s criteria for consideration as a target for permanent sequestration of CO2, that is, occurring at a minimum depth of 2,500 feet.”

While cautioning that numerous questions and concerns about the technology remain and need to be explored, the report notes that carbon sequestration offers Pennsylvania the opportunity to “substantially reduce… global warming emissions and protect our environment, our economy, and public health” while preserving Pennsylvania’s “position as a net energy exporter and creating jobs in the process.”

Obviously, carbon sequestration, is something we’re going to be hearing a lot more about.

MORE:
A good old New Jersey environmental controversy
Geologic Carbon Sequestration Opportunities in Pennsylvania
INSIGHTS: Carbon Sequestration

Recent posts:
Where’s NJ’s Licensed Site Professional bill?
Sierra Club’s Earth Day New Jersey Report Card
PSEG offers enviros a paid forum…they accept
An Earth Day Q&A with EPA’s Lisa Jackson
Stimulus funds use for NJ Turnpike illegal?

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Suburbs still growing but region’s cities are too

A report today from New Jersey Future informs us that Cumberland County’s population growth was nearly triple that of the NJ statewide average between 2007 and 2008.

No surprise? Well, did you know that Staten Island grew faster than all but five New Jersey counties?

The smart-growth organization’s Future Facts publication cites a number of trends behind the census numbers, including:

“… aging Baby Boomers seeking to downsize and relocate to more walkable environments; more single people delaying or forgoing marriage and seeking urban amenities in the meantime; and more couples choosing not to have children, thus inoculating themselves against the usual deterrent effect of low-quality urban schools.”

It’s interesting reading. You’ll find the full article here.

Our most recent posts:
A good old New Jersey environmental controversy
Where’s NJ’s Licensed Site Professional bill?
Sierra Club’s Earth Day New Jersey Report Card
PSEG offers enviros a paid forum…they accept
An Earth Day Q&A with EPA’s Lisa Jackson
Stimulus funds use for NJ Turnpike illegal?

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A good old New Jersey environmental controversy

Oh what we would give for a good old-fashioned environmental controversy.

The kind that folks, pro and con, can really get worked up about.

One that generates dozens of op-eds, thousands of letters to the editor. One that drives industry lobbyists to fundraisers and causes enviros to descend on the Statehouse, with props and costumes, chasing legislators through the corridors and threatening to canvas in their home districts.

But what, really, is there to get worked up about these days?

Artificial turf is so 2008. So are the offshore LNG platforms.
The windmills vs. birds thing hasn’t evolved enough to be interesting.
Ditto: the annually rumored rebirth of nuclear power.
Most of the wind has leaked out of the Highlands balloon and the Pinelands ‘taking’ issue is ancient history.
Drilling off the shore is still more Texas dream-figment than fact.
Sprawl was a bore even before the economy took out development.
The dearth of manufacturing is so severe that one can get teary-eyed with nostalgia for the days when editorials demanded tighter and tighter controls on emissions and hazardous byproducts.

What’s an environmental news junkie to do?

Sure, there’s the flap in New Jersey over licensed site professionals, and the electric transmission line proposal that’s raising localized temperatures in Pennsylvania’s Poconos and New Jersey’s northwest. But neither issue has moved the needle much on the scale of public controversy.

We thought Pennsylvania and New York might rescue us with stories about the secret sauce that the well drillers were planning to ram through the subsurface to extract riches from the Marcellus Shale. But the economy has sidelined that one, too.

But despair not. Yesterday’s (Newark) Star-Ledger reported on a new proposal that has some of earmarks of a real controversy. Maybe even a big one.

It’s a $5 billion project called “PurGen,” described by reporter Brian T. Murray as a “500 megawatt, coal-fueled facility using a 100-mile, underground pipeline to push as much as 10 million tons of CO2 annually — emissions from the new plant and eventually neighboring industrial operations — to a point 70 miles off the coast and about 2,200 yards beneath the Atlantic Ocean.”

Now that, boys and girls, has a chance to raise some serious feathers!

First it’s big–$5 billion. And it involves ‘industry’ and is ‘coal burning’ and includes ‘gasification’ and a ‘pipeline’ and ‘CO2’ and ‘greenhouse gases,’ not to mention the ‘bay’ and the ‘ocean.’

Good grief, that’s half the hot buttons in the Sierra Club’s entire sewing box.

Perhaps best of all, the lawyer who will be trying to sell this thing is none other than former NJDEP Commissioner Brad Campbell who some environmental groups still blame for all kinds of things, even though he did kill off the bear hunt. Ingrates!

We hope the enviros take their time on this one. They need a good, long-running controversy as much as the rests of us.

With any luck, the issue will summer-over, get sucked into the governor’s race and keep on trucking right into next fall when the Legislature will be back in session. Then the enviros can get Rutgers students to dress up like dead fish and hold a Halloween teach-in outside Pur-Gen’s gates.

Pur-Gen. Pur-fect. I’m pumped. Are you?

Use the response box below–or click on the ‘comments’ line to tell us what you think.

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Where’s NJ’s Licensed Site Professional bill?

Over the strident objections of major environmental organizations, the New Jersey Legislature, back in mid March, overwhelmingly passed legislation allowing the DEP to attack the state’s mountain of contaminated sites by licensing environmental engineers to oversee the cleanups.

Today, more than a month later, the bill’s still sitting on Governor Jon Corzine’s desk.

Wait a minute, you ask. Didn’t the governor support the legislation from the get-go? Isn’t he aware that the backlog of 20,000 sites is a major embarrassment for New Jersey? Doesn’t he recognize that the chairmen of the environmental committees in the Senate and Assembly put their reputations on the line in sponsoring the spills and spent countless hours negotiating the details with a host of affected parties?

The answer is yes, yes and yes. Dumb guys don’t get to run Goldman Sachs.

So, what’s up, you ask.

What’s up is that the governor is running for re-election. And his polling numbers are scary bad and the state’s economy continues to slump and the enviros are labeling him as anti-environment.

So what, you ask. Corzine can’t possibly think for a minute that they’d endorse Republican Chris Christie over him.

Don’t be silly. Dick Cheney will join a gay rights march before the Sierra Club endorses a Republican for governor in New Jersey.

But remember this: former DEP Commissioner Chris Dagget also is running for governor as an independent. And the governor’s campaign folks know that a vote for Dagget is more likely a vote subtracted from Corzine, not Christie.

So, what’s likely to happen?

Well, the governor does have a few more days at least to sign the bill. He might just go ahead and do that. But he also could throw the enviros a bone.

What kind of bone?

He could conditionally veto the bill, demanding that the legislature amend it to make it more palatable to the Sierra Club, NJ Environmental Federation, NJ Environmental Lobby, et al.

Or?

Or he could sign it and simultaneously issue an executive order giving the enviros something they value highly.

Like what?

Well, let me turn the question around and ask it of you, dear reader.

What could the governor give up that might please the environmental community, or at least get them off his back until November? And should he do it?

Use the comment block below. If you don’t see one, click on the tiny “comments” line.

In the meanwhile, we recommend that you check out our earlier posts on this topic (below). Pay special attention to the interesting comments from folks involved in the site remediation process, both in New Jersey and in Massachusetts where a licensed site professional program has been operating for years.

NJ Gov. gets Licensed Site Professional bill
Licensed Site Professional vote Monday in NJ
NJ Licensed Site Professional bills advance
NJ Licensed Site Professional bill’s encore
Will New Jersey see Licensed Site Professionals?

Subscribe to EnviroPolitics for top environmental and political news in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York every business day.
PLUS: Proposed environmental regulation alerts.
PLUS: Full tracking of all environmental legislation.
See what you’ve been missing.
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Sierra Club’s Earth Day New Jersey Report Card

Yeah, we know. The last thing you need is another Earth Day story, especially two days late.

But this is different. It’s the Sierra Club’s annual Earth Day Report Card.

The club awards it annual cheers and jeers to New Jersey individuals and organizations that it has judged to have helped or hurt the environment in the past year.

Get ready to grin or groan. You’ll find it here

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Subscribe to EnviroPolitics for top environmental and political news in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York every business day.
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