The Associated Press reports that McDonald’s will be scouring its fry pits for leftover oil and recycling it into biodiesel to power its fleet of British delivery vehicles.
The Oak Brook, Illinois-based, fast-food giant says it expects the move to save about 1,700 tons of carbon annually, which is the equivalent of removing about 2,400 cars from the road each year.
Fries with your fuel, Mac? Read More »
Penn Future and the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit today in federal appeals court, claiming the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is failing to protect citizens against harmful health effects of the industrial uses of such solvents as perc (perchloroethylene) and TCE (trichloroethylene).
The groups are being represented by the public interest law firm, EarthJustice, which is based in Oakland, CA.
In a news release, the groups linked two industrial firms–Superior Tube and Accellent–to higher than normal levels of TCE in the Collegeville, PA area and blamed the EPA for backtracking on a previous decision to regulate the use of the solvent.
The PA-DEP has confirmed the TCE findings and is negotiating with Superior Tube over voluntary reductions. The company has proposed two projects that DEP said “should produce a 30-percent decrease in TCE emissions this year.” A public hearing on the company’s air permit is scheduled for August 8.
The environmentalists apparently are not impressed by the state’s response.
“Hundreds of our 10,000 area members are put at risk by these emissions,” said Dennis Winters, Conservation Chair of the Sierra Club’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Group. “We are not surprised that the EPA has not acted to protect Montgomery County residents living around these facilities, but we expect more from our own Department of Environmental Protection.”
That criticism, however, appears harsh, considering the fact that the state DEP, on May 17, beat the enviros to federal court, with a petition challenging the controversial EPA rule that exempted the two local companies, and other narrow tube manufacturers, from new EPA standards requiring reductions in TCE emissions in many other industries.
PA enviro groups sue over TCE emissions Read More »
New Jersey expects to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental resource damages from companies named in some 120 separate lawsuits filed on Friday, one day short of a legislative deadline.
Known as Natural Resource Damage (NRD) claims, the lawsuits seek compensation above and beyond fines and cleanup costs that already might have been paid by the companies.
One of the lawsuits specifically targets scores of designers and manufacturers of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether as well as major-brand refiners and marketers of gasoline that used MTBE, including Amerada Hess, Atlantic Richfield Co., BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Getty, Shell, Texaco and Valero Energy. New Jersey is now the third state to seek NRD damages for the recovery of all past and future costs to investigate, remediate and restore natural resources damaged by the discharge of MTBE.
Other companies facing NRD claims are: Ciba Geigy Specialty Chemicals in Dover, Ocean County; the Bayway refinery in Linden, Union County; Gloucester City Titanium in Gloucester City, Camden County; Landfill & Development Co. in Lumberton, Mount Holly and Eastampton, Burlington County; as well as Dow/Union Carbide in Middlesex Borough and Piscataway Township, Middlesex County.
[See Asbury Park Press story on the Ciba Geigy suit and Bergen Record and NJ-DEP news release on the general filing]
DEP says its lawsuits also focus on polluters that have damaged river resources. Included in this category are ISP Environmental Services and G-I Holdings Inc., located in Linden along Piles Creek near the Arthur Kill; Mallinckrodt Baker, along the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, Warren County; Genstar Gypsum, located along the Delaware River in Camden, Camden County; and Rhone Poulenc along the Raritan River in Middlesex Borough.
Click here for a list of the companies and electronic copies of the individual suits.
Since 1994, the state has recovered more than $51 million and preserved approximately 6,000 acres of open space as wildlife habitat and ground water recharge areas as compensation for pollution resulting from 1,500 contaminated sites and oil spills.
Under DEP’s technical rules, all parties responsible for polluting a site must conduct an analysis to determine the nature and extent of pollution. Once this remedial investigation is completed, DEP has 5 ½ years to file a lawsuit to recover damages to natural resources if the responsible party does not restore the injured resource before then.
Recognizing that remedial investigations were completed at some sites many years ago without the filing of natural resource damage lawsuits, the state Legislature required the state to file of lawsuits within 5 ½ years of Jan. 1, 2002. The filing of the 120 lawsuits on Friday came on the last day prior to the Legislature’s July 1, 2007 deadline.
Related information: Drinking water supply contaminated in Ringwood, NJ; EPA document: MTBE (methyl-t-butyl ether)in Drinking Water ; Feb 23 2007 AP story: GAO: Cleaning up gas-station leaks will cost $12 billion
NJ sues 120 for natural resource damages Read More »
In an 11-page opinion, written in April but only released this week, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office says the Highlands Council’s rules land-use rules will supersede local and county zoning, as well as the land-use guides of the State Planning Commission in the Highlands’ preservation area. That area comprises roughly half of the 850,000-acre region.
The opinion was written as the result of a request by the State Planning Commission for legal advice from the Attorney General’s Office on how provisions of the Highlands Act would affect the commission’s duties. “
How do you see the opinion affect planning and development in the area? Share you views by clicking on the “comment” line below.
Highlands Council trumps Planning Commission Read More »
Want to check on a pollution-generating site anywhere in North America? Now you can on Google Earth.
Government environmental agencies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico are providing the search engine company with toxic-inventory-styled data that is being added as a layer to Google’s free mapping service.
The three nation Commission for Environmental Cooperation explains that the new mapping tool allows anyone with access to a computer–whether in Manitoba, Mississippi, or Michoacán—”to find industrial facilities located near their homes, their workplaces, or their schools.”
When you click on a specific industrial site, the map also generates a profile of the facility, including which pollutants are generated there and how the facility handles them. Users can also compare the performance of facilities in their community to similar facilities elsewhere in North America.
To access the map, visit the CEC’s website here
Putting pollution on the (Google) map Read More »
By now, most freshmen students of alternative fuels know that ethanol is primarily made from corn, sorghum or sugarcane and that biodiesel comes from vegetable oils.
But did you know that a less expensive source of biodiesel comes out of animal rendering plants?
That’s right. The old gray mare is already providing horsepower (we couldn’t resist) for diesel-powered trucks and sedans, and other animals are giving their parts, too, to help American reduce its dependency on imported petroleum.
Writing in the July issue of Biodiesel Magazine, Nicholas Zeman informs us that “material from rendering plants is considered a choice feedstock for the production of renewable diesel.”
Apparently, there’s lots of it around. Zeman says that “With 273 facilities in the United States, the rendering industry processes 60 billion pounds of raw materials a year and generates billions of dollars in revenue.”
His article, “Recycling for Renewables” is an interesting piece. We recomend, however, that you don’t read it over lunch, especially if you packed a nice Spam sandwich.
Gimme a tank full of ole gray mare! Read More »
