Trying to stop raw sewage flow and it’s 103 degrees!

NYC treatment plant  where a pump fire caused the release of raw sewage 

Maybe it wasn’t the worst job in the world but it had to be up there among them.

Employees at New York City’s North River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Harlem, joined by employees of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and outside contractors from Ohio worked round the clock for two days to try to get the plant working again following a fire on Wednesday.

The resulting damage shut down the plant and forced its managers to divert the flow of  untreated sewage into pipes that feed directly into the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. One onlooker said the smell that hung over the area was “like a dead rat.”

Teams of two dozen EPA employees followed 20-minute shifts in the engine room with 20 minutes of cooling down. Still, three reportedly were treated for heat exhaustion. 

The EPA declared that it had succeeded in ending the flow of sewage into the rivers as of 9:30 p.m. Friday.

But it will take more time for the wastewater treatment plant to return to normal operations since the microbes that help break down the waste during normal processing had all died when the plant was shut down will have to be built back up.

New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection was taking water samples from the Hudson to test for possible impacts on crowded Garden State beaches this summer weekend.

Water sampling done on Thursday by the DEP’s Bureau of Marine Water Monitoring found elevated levels of fecal coliform. Samples taken at six locations, from Liberty State Park to Englewood, ranged from 290 to 740 colony forming units or cfu/per 100 ml. Beaches are normally closed when levels exceed reach 200 cfu/per 100 ml. Sampling was scheduled to continue today.

Related Environmental News Stories: 
Amid High Temperatures, Workers Stop Sewage Plant’s Flow Into River
Massive sewage spill sparks warning to stay out of Hudson River
Tons of raw sewage pours into Hudson River
Rivers not fit for recreational activity after sewage spill
N.J. DEP says Hudson sewage not affecting Jersey Shore beaches
|Raw Sewage Not Being Dumped Into Hudson Any More!
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Our most recent posts: 
PA-based PPL names William H. Spence as President 
Pennsylvania welcomes gas drillers to its parks and lakes 
NPR’s ‘This American Life’ on fracking: Act 1 and 2 
Take EnviroPolitics for a two-week vacation 
NJ’s solar growth confronts difficult land-use issues  


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PA-based PPL names William H. Spence as President

William Spence, PPL President
William H. Spence, executive vice president and chief operating officer of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) since 2006, today was named president of the multi-national, $16 billion corporation.

Based in Allentown, PA, PPL owns or controls about 19,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets, and delivers electricity and natural gas to about 10 million customers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Spence, who has more than three decades of utility sector experience, will continue to serve as the company’s chief operating officer.

James H. Miller, PPL’s president since 2005, will continue to serve as chairman and chief executive officer of the corporation, posts he has held since 2006.

"Since joining PPL as chief operating officer five years ago, Bill Spence has proven himself as a superb leader, improving the company’s operational performance and enabling the company to steer through the extremely challenging market conditions of the past several years," said Miller. "He also has been instrumental in PPL’s recent acquisitions of utility operations in Kentucky and England.

As president, Spence will oversee the operations of the company’s regulated utility operations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, PPL’s competitive-market power plants in the Mid-Atlantic region and in Montana and the company’s energy marketing organization.

Spence came to PPL from Pepco Holdings Inc. in Washington, D.C., where he was president of Pepco’s $3 billion competitive generation and retail marketing businesses, which included Conectiv Energy and Pepco Energy Services.

He joined Delmarva Power in 1987 in the company’s regulated gas business, where he held various positions before being named vice president of trading for Delmarva Power in 1996. Spence also served as senior vice president of Conectiv before being named president of the combined competitive-market businesses after Conectiv’s merger with Pepco.

Prior to joining Delmarva Power, Spence held engineering positions at Algonquin Gas Transmission Company, Boston, and for the U.S. Geological Survey in Farmington, N.M.

Spence holds a bachelor’s degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Penn State University and a master’s degree in business administration from Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. He also is a graduate of the Executive Development Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the Nuclear Technology Program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He serves on the boards of the National Nuclear Accreditation organization, the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley and the Delaware Museum of Natural History. He also is a member of the Electric Power Research Institutes’ Research Advisory Council.

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Our most recent posts:
Pennsylvania welcomes gas drillers to its parks and lakes
NPR’s ‘This American Life’ on fracking: Act 1 and 2
Take EnviroPolitics for a two-week vacation
NJ’s solar growth confronts difficult land-use issues
The EPA is updating its hazardous waste recycling rule
Will NJ’s governor limit the legislature’s fracking ban?

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PA spending $99M to take a lot of crap out of its water

stormwater infrastructure project in Johnsonburg, PA

PENNVEST, the public body in Pennsylvania that decides which infrastructure projects quality for public grants and loans, has released its latest round of funding selections—twenty seven non-point source, drinking water, and wastewater projects in 20 counties.

Of the $99 million total targeted for water projects, $73 million will be awarded as low-interest loans, while an additional $26 million will be distributed as grants that require no repayment. A chunk of the money is for projects aimed at keeping crap from washing into brooks and streams that feed the rivers whose waters eventually wind up Chesapeake Bay. The Bay, as we are reminded quite frequently by our environmental friends, is slowly succumbing to an overload of the stuff.

The construction of six manure storage facilities and one manure composing facility at farms in Lancaster County are examples of such prophylactic projects that will receive funding. Other (more expensive) projects will endeavor to keep the crap in sewer systems from bypassing treatment plants during heavy storms. When it does, it ends up in some of the same books and streams mentioned above. Still other projects will help existing treatment plants do a better job of removing crap so the water which those facilities discharge to brooks, streams and rivers does little or no damage. A lot of the spending–but not all—involves crap containment, control and treatment.  It’s a nasty job but someone has to do it and Chesapeake Bay’s fish and fowl will thank you.

Where the money comes from
(No, not the government. Well, OK, but only technically the government)

The funding has three main sources:

1. Long-term loans (bonding) that you, Mr., Mrs. and Ms. Taxpayer, approved in the voting booth during past elections.  You repay those loans, in installments (plus interest), as part of your Pennsylvania state taxes.

2. Federal grants. Yes, you also paid for them–as part of that portion of your federal taxes that does not go for Medicare, Medicaid, excellent health care for members of Congress, or to underwrite the three wars we’re waging in foreign countries..

3. Repayments of previous PENNVEST funding awards. Yep. Some of this stuff actually gets repaid. But don’t get too excited. The lion’s share of that is paid by the local governments and sewer authorities that benefitted from the financial aid–and guess where they get their money? So, thank PENNVEST for sorting through what must have been tons of project applications and deciding which merited the financial help and how much of it will be going their way. But congratulate yourself as well, fellow taxpayer. Without you, government would be, well, ____out of luck.  ———————————————————————————————————————————– [If you’re interested in who got how much and for what, see PENNVEST’s news release.
You’ll note that Governor Tom Corbett, who had little or nothing to do with the process, gets to make the announcement. When it’s good news, the governor breaks the story.The next time a gas-drilling rig explodes, you can bet who won’t be quoted in the first paragraph**). ————————————————————————————————————————————- Our most recent posts:
Pennsylvania welcomes gas drillers to its parks and lakes
NPR’s ‘This American Life’ on fracking: Act 1 and 2
Take EnviroPolitics for a two-week vacation
NJ’s solar growth confronts difficult land-use issues
The EPA is updating its hazardous waste recycling rule
Will NJ’s governor limit the legislature’s fracking ban?

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Final hearing tonight on Oyster Creek emergency plan


Calendar_and_coffee_mug


July 19, 2011
Final NJDEP Public Hearing on Oyster Creek Emergency Response Plan
6 p.m. – Information session
7 p.m. – Public hearing
Ocean County Administration Building
Room 119
101 Hooper Avenue
Toms River, NJ
The NJ Department of Environmental Protection and State Police will hold a public information session and public hearing on the New Jersey Radiological Emergency Response Plan for the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey Township, Ocean County. It is the last of three such sessions on response plans for the state’s four nuclear reactors. As required by the State’s Radiation Accident Response Act, public hearings are required annually to determine the adequacy and effectiveness of the State’s emergency response plan. Representatives from DEP will conduct information sessions prior to the hearings.  Representatives of the DEP’s Bureau of Nuclear Engineering, Department of Health and Senior Services, and the State Police will attend the hearings and respond to questions and comments from the public. Copies of the New Jersey Radiological Emergency Response Plan will be available at the session. It is also available for review at the Ocean County Office of Emergency Management, Robert J. Miller Air Park, Route 530, Berkeley Township.
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Pennsylvania welcomes gas drillers to its parks and lakes

How short-sighted can a state be?

Ignoring the disastrous, potential impacts for wildlife and the environment, the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission is opening up state parks and lakes to the natural gas drilling industry.

The commission plans to lease thousands of acres of public land around streams and lakes for gas drilling rigs. It also will sell water from state owned lakes to drilling companies for use in hydro-fracturing, or fracking. That, as you probably know, involves the blasting of millions of gallons of water, sand and hazardous chemicals into buried shale rock to allow natural gas to escape.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that it would be irresponsible not to lease,” said John Arway, the commission’s executive director. 

Yes, the man actually used the word “irresponsible” to justify the decision to turn portions of state parks into industrial zones.

You might think you’re dreaming.  A bad dream. 

This can not really be happening, can it? 

Especially in a state where, not to many decades ago, leaders of another energy industry–coal–promised development and jobs. Like the current band of energy executives, they also spread around a lot of money, making damn sure the right political leaders were kept happy.

In the end, the coal barons left, sticking the state and its residents with the bill–thousands of acres of useless, destroyed land, collapsing surfaces, mountains of coal waste, and millions of gallons of acidic mine discharges that continue to poison streams to this day.

Considering that pitiful legacy and after all the money that taxpayers have spent to develop state parks and lakes, and with all the benefits they  provided for hunters, hikers, campers, boaters and swimmers, this can’t really be happening. Can it?

Oh, yes it can.  Read it and weep:

Pa. Fish & Boat Commission to sell gas leases
Fish and Boat Commission hopes to share in Marcellus fees
Fish and Boat Commission Establishes Natural Gas Leasing and Water Access Programs
Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission teams with gas drillers



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NPR’s ‘This American Life’ on fracking: Act 1 and 2

A friend called last night. “Quick, turn on NPR. They’re doing fracking.”

That quickly, she was gone. Not near a radio, I went to National Public Radio’s website, then linked to the award-winning “This American Life” and found Episode 440: GAME CHANGER.

Here’s how the site describes what a listener will hear:

Prologue.

Host Ira Glass tells the stories of two professors, each making a calculation that no one had made before. One gets acclaim. One ends up out of a job. The first, Terry Engelder, a geologist at Penn State, was estimating the amount of natural gas that’s recoverable from the Marcellus shale, a giant rock formation that’s under Pennsylvania and several other Eastern states. The second, Conrad “Dan” Volz, at the University of Pittsburgh, estimated how much toxic crap—chemicals and pollution from gas exploration—might be getting into water supplies. (6 1/2 minutes)


Act One. You’ve Got Shale.

Producer Sarah Koenig continues the story Terry Engelder and Dan Volz, their rival calculations about natural gas in Pennsylvania, and how each was treated by his university. She explains how Pennsylvania’s universities, politicians and industry have united to develop natural gas. Other states have been more cautious. (26 1/2 minutes)

 
Act Two. Ground War.
Sarah takes us to Mt. Pleasant, PA, where a gas exploration company called Range Resources has leased 95% of the township’s land. This led to a standoff between Mt. Pleasant and Range, starting with zoning disputes and ending in a full scale PR war—a war in which the town was seriously outgunned. (23 1/2 minutes)
Our view:  You can read dozens of print news stories and get a pretty good idea of  what economic, environmental and political forces are at war over natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

Listening to the voices of people who playing parts in this American drama is quite another thing. Listening deepens your understanding.  It raises new questions in your mind. It makes it difficult to turn the page and let your focus wander off to the next topic, the next crisis, the next pop-culture diversion.

Don’t be put off by the length of the podcast . It’s something you can save on your computer, pause when you need to and start up again when you have time. That’s how I intended to approach it.  But I found it so compelling that, once it started, there was no possibility of stopping.

Like our friend said: Quick, turn on NPR.  They’re doing fracking.

After you do, use the comment box below to let us know what you think. 

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