NJ enviro group ready to rip LNG plans

Clean Ocean Action (COA), a New Jersey shore environmental group that had big success years ago in curbing waste dumping off the coast, is focusing its attention on plans by three separate developers who want to install liquefied natural gas facilities off the coast.

Several other state environmental groups say they are studying the issue with an open mind, recognizing the short-term need for new energy supplies in the expanding northeast market while alternative energy sources are being developed. They haven’t immediately opposed the LNG idea since natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel than oil or coal.

COA has scheduled a news conference tomorrow in Trenton to unveil a study entitled: “LNG: An Un-American Energy Source, Liquefied Natural Gas: An Expensive, Dirty, Foreign Fossil Fuel that Threatens Our Natural Gas Energy Independence.”

Sounds like COA folks have made up their mind, doesn’t it?

Share your thoughts on the LNG plans by clicking below on the comment line.

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Nuclear plant developer suing enviros over ‘slur’

Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc, which is seeking to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho, has filed a defamation suit against the SnakeRiver Alliance, an environmental group opposed to the project, after the enviro group’s director called the company “scammers.”

“We have passed two independent financial audits and if anything were even slightly amiss, we’d have heard about it,” said AEHI President and CEO Donald Gillispie. “These radical groups are allowed to make almost any claim they wish, regardless of the facts, and the media rarely questions them. Someone has to hold them accountable. “

If corporations in New Jersey filed suit every time critics like the Sierra Club’s Jeff Tittle said something nasty about them, the court calendar would be clogged with defamation actions. Tittle would be so busy answering interrogatories that the state’s media would have to file an amicus brief in hopes of preserving their most cherished source of story-making quotes.

Hey, maybe that’s the point. The Big Chill. Close down the opposition through legal intimidation. Bleed your opponents dry with court costs. Send them to the sidelines, regardless of the merits of your case, while your project chases its permits.

Or maybe the environmental Davids have gone overboard in using a compliant media to slay corporate Goliaths. Maybe the tactics that win you easy headlines–hyperbole, half-truths and sometimes outright inaccuracies–are beginning to take their toll on the environmental movement’s credibility.

What do you think? Click on the “comment” line below and share your thoughts.

NOTE: While attribution is admired, you can choose to answer anonymously if you’re afraid of a corporate lawsuit or an environmental tongue-lashing.

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A Call for a Summit on the Delaware Estuary

Jennifer Corbett/News Journal

The governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania convene every year to evaluate the progress of joint efforts to insure a positive environmental future for the Chesapeake Bay.

W. Michael McCabe, who served as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic regional administrator and deputy administrator from 1995 to 2001, thinks it’s time that the states devote equal attention to the Delaware River and its estuary.

In an Aug. 24 op-ed piece in the (Wilmington) News Journal, McCabe notes that 50 years ago industrial pollution had turned the Delaware River into “a biological dead zone,” so bad that the U.S. Navy was able to reduce ship maintenance by anchoring vessels its waters “because it was so polluted nothing would grow on the hulls.”

But times have changed. Marine scientists from the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies and Rutgers University recently discovered a colony of sponges and reef-building worms stretching for more than a mile along the bay floor.

McCabe says the fact that rich pockets of aquatic life still exist in what once was one of the nation’s most polluted industrial rivers is
“a tribute to pollution control laws and the tenacity of nature.”

Additional progress is noted in a recent report by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary which examined not only just the Delaware River and Bay, but the whole estuary system, including the tributaries that feed into it.


News Journal file photo
McCabe says the study found “dramatic reductions in oxygen-robbing sewage and chemicals and dangerous toxins.”
Anyone who’s tempted to run up a “Mission Accomplished” banner should note that the State of the Estuary Report also found that “run-off from pesticides, fertilizers, sediment and transportation-linked pollutants” are now the greatest threat to the estuary’s water quality and that “contaminants derived from chemicals that aren’t regulated under water quality programs — such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products” are an emerging concern.

In addition, the Partnership reports that the Delaware’s extensive wetlands are under tremendous pressure from development, with an analysis showing a 12 percent loss of tidal marshes over the last decade.

Delaware residents will select a new governor in November who will face a number of important issues relating to the river, including “a proposal to deepen the ship channel to 45 feet, the location of a disposal site for dredging the Port of Wilmington, and recent lawsuits requiring industry to use the best available technology to limit the discharge of heated wastewater.”

McCabe recognizes that the Delaware River “is not only a living resource supporting a diverse environment, but also a working river supporting a population of almost 8 million people and the commerce they generate.”

The challenge for the incoming governor will be to balance all interests while engage neighboring states in a cooperative effort to assist the river’s environmental rebound.

Anyone for a summit meeting?

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Court ruling could shake up garbage flow

A federal appeals court ruled this month that Lebanon County, PA and its affiliated Greater Lebanon Refuse Authority (GLRA) did not act improperly when they required a private municipal trash hauler to use the county’s landfill even though there were cheaper disposal alternatives outside the county.

The ruling that could have impacts in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey where so-called “waste-flow” rules directing all haulers to specific county transfer stations or landfills have been the subject of numerous challenges in federal court.

The landmark “Carbone” decision in 1994 invalidated the bulk of government waste-flow plans as violations of interstate commerce, but subsequent decisions have allowed local governments to direct waste to their facilities under certain conditions.

James J. Kutz, Esq., a Partner in the Harrisburg Office of Philadelphia-based law firm Post & Schell, P.C., which defended GLRA in the complaint brought against it by hauler Lebanon Farms Disposal, Inc., of Schaefferstown, Pa., said the ruling reverses a July 2006 U.S. District Court decision that found the county’s comprehensive solid waste plan unconstitutional because it discriminated against interstate commerce.

“The appeals court decision constitutes a clear change in Third Circuit (Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey) precedent,” commented Kutz. “Counties can now require that all waste generated within the county be disposed of at their municipal landfill.

“Previously, counties were prohibited from imposing such a restriction absent compelling circumstances.” Kutz added, “The ruling gives the Commonwealth and its counties a new, reasonable option with which to finance, monitor, and enforce environmentally sound waste disposal practices without running afoul of the federal Commerce Clause.” He noted that the appeals court remanded the matter to the lower court.

This blog counts among its subscribers numerous environmental attorneys and consultants who are experts in the area of solid waste management. If you’re one of them, we’d love to hear your
opinion on the decision and its possible impacts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

To share your views with our readers, click on the “comment” line below.

If you’re not already a subscriber to our blog, sign up today by sending a blank email to: epfreeblog@aweber.com There is no cost or obligation and you can cancel at any time.

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NJDEP escapes worst of early retirements

The Department of Environmental Protection was one of the sectors of state government sweating the most when New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed legislation on June 24 offering extra pay and health benefits to state workers who would agree to take early retirement as a way of reducing overall state spending.

Two months earlier, DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson had candidly told members of the Assembly Budget Committee that, unlike in the previous tight budget year when she testified that her Department could learn to “do more with less,” this time she faced a “do less with less” situation.

Jackson’s projected operating budget of $230 million for FY 2009 was taking a hit of $19.6 million from the previous-year level and, though she didn’t mention it, she had to be well aware that the governor’s early retirement proposal held the potential for real disaster.

In all, 85 percent of the DEP’s workforce would have been eligible for early retirement under the governor’s original plan which would have been open to qualified workers as young as 52.

Fortunately for the DEP, the Legislature raised the qualifying age to 58, which shrunk the size of the potential retiree pool. And then something happened that few expected–the offer failed to interest anywhere near as many as workers as the governor’s staff had anticipated.

In fact, only a little more than one-third (1,488) of the eligible 3,828 state workers overall took the deal, leaving Corzine with some 6,540 more employees than he had hoped for.

At the DEP, 121 of 250 eligible workers said adios, leaving the department with about 3,090 employees, almost 300 short of its total when Jackson took over for Bradley Campbell on Feb. 28, 2006.

The retirements will hurt the agency for sure. Gone are 24 permit writers in its land use section which gets 7,000 applications each year. But it could have been much worse.

“We could have lost the entire seasoned cadre in our air quality section,” a senior DEP official told us, “but only one–Lou Mikolajczyk–took the offer.”

Of the 121 who will be departing, most are not high-profile names recognizable in the business community. Exceptions are Frank Coolick, who had served as administrator of the Solid and Hazardous Waste Management Program, and Frank Peluso, a long-time member of the Department’s Office of Recycling. Another, Barker Hamill, who has a national reputation in water supply circles, also is departing but has agreed to a seven-month extension.

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Cleaning up New York’s Brownfield law

The idea behind state brownfield laws has always been to encourage the development of former industrial sites and other contaminated properties which otherwise would sit idle or abandoned.

Through state subsidies and tax credits, developers could clean up stagnant properties and return them to the local tax rolls as shopping centers, office complexes, sports facilities…you name it.

One of the major problems with New York State’s brownfield law, according to Gibbons attorney Eileen D. Millett, was that “credits for cleanup and development had been lumped together, so a company that spent the bulk of its money on redevelopment rather than cleanup would still get a lucrative package,” according to Gibbons attorney

“Companies thus had little incentive to go beyond minimum standards for cleanup. Indeed, the old program had not achieved the desired result in struggling areas, and had provided large windfalls to large projects that were not meeting the state’s goals of assuring environmental cleanup while spurring economic development,” Millett writes in an alert to her firm’s clients. (You can read it here.)

To fix this and other problems with the cleanup program, state lawmakers passed S-8717 prior to leaving Albany for their summer recess. The measure is designed to overhaul the cleanup program by tilting incentives more toward cleanup and less to redevelopment.
In signing the legislation, Governor Peterson said:”The purpose of the brownfields law was to clean up the environment, not clean out the state treasury.” MORE:
New Law Turns Brown Into Green for New York State (NY Times)
Governor Paterson Signs Brownfields Reform Legislation (NYDEC)

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