EnviroPolitics Blog

Sediment-laying aims to add ground for Intercoastal Roadway

Scientists hope a sediment-laying strategy can help preserve the marine highway while restoring marshlands

By Mac Carey, Undark

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along with other experts, hopes that placing a thin layer of dredged sediment over the top of the marsh will help them gain ground, literally, in the fight to save the saltwater marshes that flank the Intracoastal Waterway. The 3,000-mile water passage runs along the East and Gulf Coast, and it’s one of the busiest inland waterways in the United States.

“It would be a benefit for both worlds,” said Army Corps of Engineers biologist Erica Janocha, who helped manage the project. She was referring to the two-fold opportunity: find a use for sediment dredged from the increasingly shallow Intracoastal Waterway to ensure it’s deep enough to navigate, and build up the drowning marshlands surrounding it.

*Material dredged from Jekyll creek is discharged into the adjacent salt marsh, with the goal of raising the marsh by 15 to 20 centimeters. Visual: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District*

Salt marshes like the one along Jekyll Creek serve as buffers between water and land, putting them on the frontlines of climate change; over the last century, salt marsh habitats lost half their global coverage, due in part to rising seas. And in Georgia, the state’s low shoreline geology means some marsh areas may soon get overtaken by the sea.

After dredging and TLP is complete, the salt marsh is covered in a mixture of fine-grain sediment called pluff mud. Visual: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District

Dredging itself can exacerbate the erosion of marsh edges, since it encourages faster and more extreme tidal changes. However, the biggest challenge with dredging is where to put all the resulting sediment. As government funding has increased for the waterway— the Corps has devoted roughly $150 million to operating and maintaining the southern portion since 2022, according to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association — so has the amount of sediment.

Read the full story here

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Pa. legislators back to work after email threats and evacuation

By Gillian McGoldrick, Philadelphia Inquirer

HARRISBURG — Members of the Pennsylvania legislature returned to work Monday, following two email threats made over the weekend that led the Capitol building to be evacuated on Saturday.

An anonymous email address sent a bomb threat “in the name of Palestine” to every member of the state legislature on Saturday evening, according to the email shared with The Inquirer. It came ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to Harrisburg on Sunday.

Capitol Police evacuated the building, which was largely vacant as lawmakers had gone home for the weekend while legislative leaders continue to negotiate a budget deal. The threat was also made against the Pennsylvania Judicial Center, which houses the state’s appellate courts and was closed for the weekend.

“I plan on triggering one device every few hours until Joe Biden goes on national television and publicly denounces the illegitimate state of Israel,” the email to lawmakers stated. “Keep in mind I am inside one of the 2 buildings armed w/ a knife, and plan on remaining here to my dying breath!”

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Fireworks caused Pinelands blaze that is still raging

By Jean Mikle, Asbury Park Press

Fireworks have been identified as the cause of a wildfire that has torched 4,000 acres of pinelands in Burlington County and was about 65% contained on Sunday afternoon, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

A firework device lighted inside the forest ignited the fire late Thursday, July 4, and the Apple Pie Hill Fire Tower discovered the fire shortly after 9 a.m. Friday, July 5, according to the forest fire service, which led the investigation into the origin of the fire, assisted by the New Jersey State Park Police, the New Jersey Division of Fire Safety, and the Burlington County Fire Marshal’s Office.

The Tea Time Hill fire in Wharton State Forest started in Tabernacle. It is located in the area of Batona Campground and Apple Pie Hill, the forest fire service said.

The fire led to the evacuation of the Batona Campground, but no residences have been evacuated, and no structures are threatened, officials said.

Anyone with further information about the fire that could aid in the investigation should call the New Jersey State Park Police tip line, 844-PARK-TIP (844-727-5847).

Road closures in the area of the fire include Carranza Road from the Carranza Memorial to Speedwell Road at Friendship Field. There are also local road closures in Wharton State Forest.

What’s the Carranza Memorial? ‘Mexican Lindbergh’ crashed in the Pine Barrens

Read the full story here

Previous fire coverage:
Wild fire continues to spread in South Jersey Pinelands
Pinelands wild fire continues to spread in Burlington County, NJ

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Milestone reached in Gowanus Canal cleanup

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it has amended its administrative cleanup order for the Gowanus Canal Superfund site in Brooklyn, New York on June 27, 2024, to address the middle segment of the canal – known as Remediation Target Area (RTA) 2.

“Dredging and capping of the upper segment of the Gowanus Canal started in late 2020 and will be completed in July. This is a major milestone in cleaning up the canal and improving water quality,” said EPA Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. “Together with the extensive dredging, capping, and bulkhead repair work that has already been completed, this order will ensure the cleanup of the next portion of the heavily contaminated Gowanus Canal, which will be a huge benefit to the Gowanus and Red Hook communities.”

Dredging and capping of RTA 1, the upper segment of the Canal, started in late 2020 and will be completed in July. Initial RTA 2 work, which began in late June, includes access dredging to facilitate the mobilization and use of equipment needed to conduct work in this portion of the canal, followed by debris removal and bulkhead construction. The full-scale dredging and capping required by the newly amended order will follow. That work is estimated to cost $369 million and will take several years to complete. The detailed engineering and design work for RTA 2 was performed in parallel with the RTA 1 work to accelerate its progress. RTA 3, the lower segment of the Canal, is expected to be implemented after the completion of RTA2.

EPA and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) are closely coordinating the cleanup of the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding area. EPA, NYSDEC, and the New York State Department of Health have been and will continue to oversee the work, which includes plans for community health and safety monitoring. The order amendment has been issued to six parties that EPA determined have the largest shares of responsibility for the contamination at the Gowanus Canal site: Brooklyn Union Gas Co. d/b/a National Grid New York; the City of New York; Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Inc.; Hess Corp.; Honeywell International Inc., and The Brooklyn Improvement Co.

More than a dozen contaminants, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and heavy metals, including mercury, lead, and copper, are present at high levels in the Gowanus Canal sediments. The 2013 cleanup plan for the Gowanus Canal Superfund site includes dredging to remove contaminated sediment from the bottom of the Canal that has accumulated because of industrial and combined sewer overflow (CSO) discharges.

Following dredging, construction of a multilayer cap in dredged areas will isolate and prevent migration of any remaining chemicals in the deep native sediment. Certain areas of the native sediment, below the original canal bottom, that contain mobile liquid tar and are too deep to excavate, will be mixed with cement and solidified to prevent the spread of the tar into the water of the Canal. Two CSO retention tanks are being constructed by the City of New York will prevent the hazardous substances found in CSO solids from re-contaminating the Canal. The current cost of the overall cleanup plan is estimated to be over $2 billion, including both the in-Canal work and CSO controls.

Visit the Gowanus Canal Superfund site profile page for additional background and site documents.

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NJ firefighters among 20,000 with cancer suing makers of PFAS

By Megan Burrow, NorthJersey.com

During fire training exercises twice a year at Kennedy International Airport in the 1970s and ’80s, Charles O’Neill, a retired Port Authority police officer who worked out of Newark Airport, would repeatedly spray simulated aircraft fires with firefighting foam over the intense weeklong sessions.

O’Neill and his colleagues would use the foam to fight five or six simulated fires a day, as part of their required fire and rescue certification. Once one blaze was extinguished, they would set it up and do it again.

The equipment worn as they sprayed the foam was one-size-fits-all, O’Neill said, and after “one guy sloshed around in that stuff,” the next person would change into the same suit.

Charles O’Neill, a retired Port Authority Police Officer who worked out of Newark Airport. — *Charles C. O’Neill*

O’Neill, 78, was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer 20 years ago. But it wasn’t until recently that he made a possible connection between his cancer diagnosis and the equipment he used during his long career in the fire service.

“We just did it because it was our job. Nobody ever said, ‘Be careful or don’t get it on your skin,’ none of that was explained to us,” said O’Neill, who retired in 1997 from the Port Authority Police and served for more than 20 years as a volunteer firefighter in New Milford until the mid-90s. “Now, from what I understand, the exposure to those chemicals could do that to you.”

Read the full story here

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A relocated Arizona gas plant ignites questions

By Joan Meiners, Arizona Republic

MOHAVE VALLEY (ARIZONA)– At the corner of King Street and Aquarius Drive, on a dilapidated structure used for farmworker housing, a piece of a particle-board sign patches up a hole in one window where an air conditioning unit likely used to be. What’s left spells out the words “Energy Efficient.”

This building nestled among dusty alfalfa fields is now the closest residence to the new proposed location for the Mohave Energy Park, Mohave Electric Cooperative’s natural gas peaker plant project that has been fueling unrest across Arizona’s Mohave County since the beginning of the year.

Last December, senior residents of the Sunrise Hills neighborhood in nearby Fort Mohave found out about plans by local electricity distributor MEC and its regional provider AEPCO, the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, to construct two quick-start turbines half a mile from their homes. The retirees spoke out against what they saw as deceitful skirting of zoning and notification procedures that left them mistrustful of the utilities’ intentions.

Kim Qualey and her granddaughter, Scarlet, look out over the site where the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative wants to build a gas-fired peaker plant less than a mile from their home in Mohave Valley, on May 3, 2024.

MEC vowed to search for another location. But on March 18, the cooperative’s CEO, Tyler Carlson, told the Mohave County Board of Supervisors they had been unable to find a suitable alternative site for the peaker plant, which the utility partners say is essential to maintaining energy reliability as this rural desert region south of Las Vegas continues to grow.

Weeks later, after coverage of the dispute by The Arizona Republic following months of interviews and inquiries, MEC pivoted and announced on April 12 to an invite-only group of member ratepayers and elected leaders that they had shifted plans for the natural gas facility to a site a few miles away.

Read the full first chapter here: A solar ban, a gas power plant and the rural retirees firing back at dirty energy

Now, people living near the new proposed location — a lower-income agricultural area close to tribal lands and several schools — are echoing Sunrise Hills residents’ concerns about how the peaker plant may endanger human and environmental health, but fear they’re up against an energy Goliath with renewed determination.

Read the full story here

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