New York sued over Long Island Sound pollution

 Long Island Sound

The Connecticut-based environmental organization, Soundkeeper, has filed a lawsuit alleging that the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation isn’t doing enough to control stormwater dumped into Long Island Sound and other water bodies. Based in Norwalk, Conn., Soundkeeper filed the suit on June 28  in state Supreme Court in White Plains this week along with the New York City based National Resources Defense Council and several local environmental groups such as Riverkeeper in Tarrytown and Waterkeeper Alliance in Irvington. The suit alleges the state is violating pollution regulations outlined by the federal Clean Water Act. “Summer is here. New Yorker’s are headed to the beaches to fish, swim and boat. Yet the water’s of Long Island Sound and hundreds of lakes and rivers continue to be polluted from urban run off. The permit’s requirements issued by New York State in April fall far short of protecting and improving our waters” said Soundkeeper Terry Backer.  “Green roofs and other smart water practices are available today and will provide environmental and economic benefits that are simply not possible if we continue business as usual." A DEC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on issues that are the subject of law suits.  More more on the lawsuit:
State sued over Long Island Sound stormwater pollution by environmental groups 
Soundkeeper sues New York State Our most recent posts:
Legislation puffs up NJ’s offshore wind prospects
Natural Gas as Panacea? This prof’s not so sure 
Appalachian power line PATH misses another deadline 
Environmental bills up for votes Monday in NJ
Shale gas drilling controversy no longer local 

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Legislation puffs up NJ’s offshore wind prospects

Offshore wind farm

Governor Chris Christie is expected soon to sign into law a bill written to boost New Jersey’s chances of developing  the nation’s first offshore wind energy farms. The Garden State is competing with Delaware, Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts to become the first to break waves on a sizable offshore wind energy facility.  And the race to be the Number One is not just for bragging rights. The real prize is the ability to attract the financial investment to support not only the at-sea installation of  wind turbines but also the on-land plants to manufacture turbine blades and other equipment essential for such projects. Also standing to benefit are port facilities with the berths and loading facilities for ships ferrying equipment and workers to and from the ocean construction sites. New Jersey not only has plenty of old manufacturing and port properties but it also has four serious developers vying for the chance to build one.    

The legislation, (S-2036), establishes a program of Offshore Renewable Energy Certificates (ORECs) that wind energy developers say are necessary to attract financial investors to the expensive projects. The ORECs would be purchased by utilities who are required by state law to supply a certain percentage of their electricity from alternative energy sources like wind and solar.  The bill anticipates that at least 1,100 megawatts of that electricity would be generated by qualified offshore wind projects. The legislation allows developers to earn the credits for each megawatt of electricity the turbines produce over 20 years.

It also authorizes the state’s Economic Development Authority to provide up to $100 million in tax credits to wind energy support businesses, like wind turbine manufacturers, that set up shop in New Jersey.

Estimates of the cost for a New Jersey offshore wind farm range from $7 billion to as high as $20 billion. It’s the size and unpredictability of project costs that had some business lobbyists asking questions as the bill sped through both houses of the state Legislature.  The state’s heavy energy users already pay the highest energy bills in the nation. But advocates like Matt Elliott, a clean-energy advocate for Environment New Jersey, predict that renewable energy will  become more competitive with fossil fuels over time. “There is a myth that fossil fuels are cheap. The only reason they cost less is that we subsidized them for decades and we don’t consider any of the environmental or public-health costs they create,” he said. Related:
Offshore Wind Bill Sails Through the Legislature
Bill would require utilities to purchase a portion of their energy from offshore wind farms
New Jersey paving path for offshore wind 
Offshore Wind Energy Gets Double-Barreled Boost Our most recent posts:
Natural Gas as Panacea? This prof’s not so sure 
Appalachian power line PATH misses another deadline 
Environmental bills up for votes Monday in NJ
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NJ Chamber of Commerce elects new directors 
What’s in fracking fluid? Wyoming wants to know  

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Natural Gas as Panacea? This prof’s not so sure

 natural gas - stove ring

Writing in the latest issue of Yale Environment 360, Daniel B. Botkin, professor emeritus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the fact that shale gas exists in abundance is beyond question.  But what is the reality behind the optimistic claims for shale gas?

The U.S. Geological Survey, Botkin writes, lists natural gas “reserves” — the amount believed to be in the ground — in four categories: readily available with current technologies, which accounts for only 1 percent of the known natural gas in U.S. territorial limits; technically recoverable (5 percent); marginal targets for accelerated technology (6 percent); and unknown but probable (84 percent). Shale gas shares the fourth category with coal gas and methyl hydrates. The latter are a kind of water ice with methane embedded in it and occur only where it is very cold, in Arctic permafrost and below 3,000 feet in the oceans.
In researching how best to make the transition to the green energy future, one of the first calculations Botkin made was to find out how long the natural gas in each of the four categories would last if we obtained it independently — that is, only from U.S. territory.

He says he was shocked by the result:

“Just using our 2006 rates of use of natural gas consumption — not including any major transition to fueling our cars and trucks — the “readily available” gas within the United States would be exhausted in just one year. That, plus what is called “technically recoverable” gas, would be gone in less than a decade. What is termed ‘unknown but probable’ would last about a century.”
“This means that any significant increase in our consumption of natural gas will have to come from the ‘unknown but probable’ reserves, much of which will be from formations of shale, a sedimentary rock formed from muds in which bacteria released methane. Most of this gas is so deep underground or otherwise not very accessible that nobody is really sure that we can get at a lot of it, or of how high an environmental price we must pay to retrieve it.”

Click here to read the entire article

Is it just me or are you also hearing the echoes of issues associated with deep-sea oil drilling? 

To share your thoughts or pose your questions, use the comment box below.
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Appalachian power line PATH misses another deadline 
Environmental bills up for votes Monday in NJ
Shale gas drilling controversy no longer local 
NJ Chamber of Commerce elects new directors 
What’s in fracking fluid? Wyoming wants to know  

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Appalachian power line PATH misses another deadline

The in-service date for Allegheny Energy Inc.’s expansive transmission build-out has been postponed again, until June 2015. This is the fourth time the date has been moved, beginning with the original launch date of 2012 and inching up year by year. Greensburg, Pa-based Allegheny Energy is partnering with Ohio-based American Electric Power to develop a 275-mile, high-voltage transmission line that will run through Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

PATH open house meeting

PATH has held 24 public open houses in communities in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia at which more than 2,500 people have attended to seek information about the overall project, transmission line routing and engineering, property owner outreach and energy conservation.

The Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, or PATH project, is intended to help relieve the growing electricity congestion occurring on the East Coast. Allegheny Energy has been working to make the project a reality since 2007, but has faced several delays due to changing forecasts predicting future electricity demand and regulatory hurdles. Even so, Allegheny Energy is under a time squeeze. It is balancing a slew of regulatory approval applications for PATH, with preparing to get more than 1,485 right-of-way easements from landowners along the route of the proposed project. At the same time, the project’s latest cost estimate, $1.8 billion, is being revised upward, partly because of the delays, according to spokesman Doug Colafella. Meanwhile, Allegheny Energy’s legal minds and its management are appealing to some of the same regulatory agencies to approve folding the company into Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. The two utilities announced in February they were initiating an $8.5 billion stock swap merger, which they expect will close late next year. “Clearly, now with the 2015 in-service date, considering the regulatory approvals that you need to get, and the lengthy construction (time) table, we need to move ASAP,” Colafella said. See the full Pittsburgh Business Times story

Our most recent posts:
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What’s in fracking fluid? Wyoming wants to know 
SRPL nominees before NJ Judiciary panel today  

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Environmental bills up for votes Monday in NJ

 
Offshore wind farm  
      A major alternative energy bill designed to spur the financing of  wind energy farms off New Jersey’s coast is one of several environmental bills scheduled for a vote Monday in the state Senate.  Co-sponsored by the Senate’s Democratic and Republican leaders, Steve Sweeney and Tom Kean Jr.,  S-2036  would establish a program of Offshore Renewable Energy Certificates (ORECs) that wind energy developers say are necessary to attract financial investors to the expensive projects. The bill would allow developers to earn the credits for each megawatt of electricity the turbines produce over 20 years. It also authorizes the state’s Economic Development Authority to provide up to $100 million in tax credits to wind energy support businesses, like wind turbine manufacturers, that set up shop in New Jersey. The ORECs would be purchased by utilities who are required by state law to supply a certain percentage of their electricity from alternative energy sources like wind and solar.  The bill anticipates at least 1,100 megawatts of electricity generated by qualified offshore wind projects. An economist for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association estimates the cost of such an offshore wind farm at $7 billion. Other estimates run as high as $20 billion. It’s the size and unpredictability of project costs that has some business leaders questioning the wisdom of such legislation in a state where manufacturers and other heavy energy users already pay the highest energy bills in the nation. But advocates counter that offshore wind energy will offset its higher costs by generating new jobs in construction, turbine- manufacturing and supplies.  They also say it’s an opportunity that New Jersey can’t afford to lose to competing projects in Delaware and New York. 
 [UPDATE: A2873, the Assembly companion to the Senate offshore wind bill, S2036 (above), was added late Friday to the Assembly voting list for Monday. If the bills are merged and approved in both houses on Monday, the combined bill can be sent to Governor Chris Christie before the Legislature’s summer recess which begins after Monday’s sessions]

Other environmental legislation up for a Senate vote:

S1977 (Smith) Revises the “Electronic Waste Management Act” S2006 (Smith) Prohibits municipal zoning ordinances from regulating solar panels under certain circumstances; limits fees for certain renewable energy installations.   S2089 (Pennacchio) Abolishes the Department of the Public Advocate and transfers certain functions, powers and duties A2217/S1004 (McKeon/Oroho) Extends expiration date of special appraisal process for Green Acres and farmland preservation programs from 2009 to 2014 for lands in Highlands Region. A2927/S2002 (Moriarty/Gordon) Authorizes New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust to expend certain sums to make loans for environmental infrastructure projects A2928/S2003 (Johnson/Bateman) Appropriates funds to DEP for environmental infrastructure projects. A2929/S2004 (McKeon/Smith) Makes certain changes to the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust Financing Program ACR135/SCR106 (Wisniewski/Beach) Makes certain changes to the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust Financing Program
  In the Assembly on Monday  [Updated at 8:30 p.m.]  

A1683/S1181 (Burzichelli/Van Drew) Changes perimeter for bow and arrow hunting around occupied building. A-2873  (Chivukula) The "Offshore Wind Economic Development Act"; establishes offshore wind renewable energy certificate program, and authorizes EDA to provide tax credits for qualified wind energy facilities in wind energy zones. Related: S-2036 (See Senate list above) A-2939  (Wagner) "Meadowlands Regionalization, Efficiency and Property Tax Relief Act of 2010." A-3055  (Coutinho) Extends suspension of Statewide non-residential development fee to October 30, 2010.
Related:
The US, Saying YES to Offshore Wind farms
Our most recent posts:
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What’s in fracking fluid? Wyoming wants to know 
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‘Gasland’ – Do the pictures tell the fracking story? 
Lawmakers in NY and PA weigh a gas-drilling moratorium 

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Shale gas drilling controversy no longer local

Fleet Street

Concerns about potential environmental and health impacts of the ‘fracking’ method of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale started out with a few reports in small Pennsylvania and New York newspapers about property owners near drilling sites who were complaining about polluted well water and sick pets.  

But now the story’s all grown up and gone international.
Rowena Mason, who writes about energy for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in London, today filed this story:
Shale gas pollution fears leave Americans with another energy headache.
Mason leads the piece with this:

“Still politically scorched from BP’s giant Gulf of Mexico spill, it couldn’t be a worse time for America’s oil giants to find themselves roasting in another environmental firestorm. “But new flames of controversy are on the horizon – in fact, literally emanating from the drinking water of US citizens living near so-called “shale gas” fields.”

 
Mason notes that the independent documentary film, Gasland, which sounds a shrill alarm about  fracking, has been drawing attention to the fracking issue.  She reports that a new   gas and oil industry website, Energy in Depth, is attempting to stem any injury by offering a rebuttal to the film.
Why might this be of interest to international readers?
Because drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale is no longer
a high-risk venture pursued by a score of small and moderate-sized, independent gas companies.  It’s now become big business—big international business.
Mason writes:

 
“We already know that energy companies, including BP, have been involved in lobbying against tighter shale gas regulation, asking that decisions are taken at state level, rather than being left to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“After all, they have a huge amount to lose if the US suddenly loses its fervour for shale. “The London-listed companies are exposed to the tune of billions: Shell bought up $4.7bn of assets in Marcellus last month, BG Group has a $2bn joint venture with Exco and BP has a $2.5bn partnership with Chesapeke. “They have all piled into shale drilling over the last couple of years, touting the technology as the answer to America’s energy thirst.”

To reinforce the point, Mason notes that BP’s  Tony Hayward  has hailed shale gas as a “complete game changer.”

 BRITAIN BP RESULTS
Yes, that BP and that Tony Hayward—the company and CEO that have dominated the 24-hour news cycle for weeks since one of their drilling rigs ruptured, trigging an oil spill that is devastating the Gulf of Mexico. 
We suspect that a lot more stories—local and international—will be written on the subject in the weeks ahead.  Should be plenty enough to keep the folks over at Energy in Depth quite busy.   Our most recent posts:
NJ Chamber of Commerce elects new directors 
What’s in fracking fluid? Wyoming wants to know 
SRPL nominees before NJ Judiciary panel today 
‘Gasland’ – Do the pictures tell the fracking story? 
Lawmakers in NY and PA weigh a gas-drilling moratorium 

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