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#BILLYPENNGRAM Mar. 24, 2023 Read More »
By John Russo, Press of Atlantic City
Wildwood Mayor Peter Byron admitted Friday to helping others commit tax fraud, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Byron, 67, pleaded guilty to two counts of willfully aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of false and fraudulent tax returns to the IRS for 2017 and 2018.
Related:
Wildwood Mayor Admits Tax Dodge
U.S. Attorney’s news release
On Friday, Byron said he would like to comment on the matter but could not.
Last year, he and City Commissioner Steven Mikulski, along with former Mayor Ernie Troiano, were charged with wrongfully taking state health benefits and falsifying public records.
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Wildwood, NJ mayor pleads guilty to tax Fraud Read More »
The media reported 390 waste and recycling facility fires in the U.S. and Canada in 2022, the highest number since Fire Rover started tracking reports. EPR laws and federal funding aim to reduce risk.
Fires at waste and recycling facilities continued to be a problem in 2022, with at least 390 incidents reported by the media in the United States and Canada, according to data from Fire Rover, a fire suppression system company.
During a recent webinar hosted by the National Waste & Recycling Association, Ryan Fogelman, a partner at Fire Rover, said that number is the highest since he started collecting fire incident data in 2016. That compares to 367 reported incidents in 2021 and 317 in 2020. In 2022, waste and recycling facility fires caused 56 reported injuries and 2 reported deaths, he said.
Related:
Lithium-ion battery fires are happening more often
New York mayor signs bill aimed at preventing lithium-ion battery fires
The industry has long suspected that lithium-ion batteries are a growing fire hazard because of their tendency to ignite when crushed or bent — and their increasing prevalence in everything from light-up shoes to birthday cards. Recent state and federal actions aim to curb fires by bolstering safe collection strategies.
Pinpointing the cause of these fires can be tough, Fogelman said, partly because media reports often don’t list a cause, but anecdotal reports show a significant portion of facility fires are related to batteries. Waste and recycling operations face other diverse fire hazards because of the nature of their facilities, he said, which often house large machinery, store combustible chemicals and perform hot work tasks that can emit sparks.
“We’re starting to see some really serious lithium-ion battery-specific fires,” he said.
In a recent example, operators of the Seminole County Central Transfer Station in Florida, which experienced a fire in December that caused almost $500,000 of damage, told local news station WESH that the fire was likely caused by lithium-ion batteries.
Batteries are also to blame for smaller fires. In February, a laptop caught fire inside a Rumpke Waste & Recycling truck in Columbus, Ohio, prompting the driver to pull into an empty parking lot to dump the load. Officials in both incidents urged residents not to put battery-containing items in the trash, instead asking them to take batteries to a nearby hazardous waste disposal facility or to a retailer that offers recycling options.
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Rate of solid waste facility fires prompts a renewed look at battery recycling efforts Read More »
Riley June Williams was investigated in connection with the theft of Nancy Pelosi’s laptop, and its possible sale to Russia, for months.
By Justin Heinze, Patch Staff
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The young Pennsylvania woman who helped break into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6, and whose age and actions brought her notoriety and made her one of the iconic faces of the insurrection, has been sentenced to three years in prison, a judge ruled on Thursday.
Riley June Williams, 23, of Harrisburg, had been convicted in November of interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder and related counts. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C.
RELATED: Where Jan. 6 Criminal Cases In PA Stand On Insurrection’s Anniversary
The charges she was convicted of held a maximum penalty of up to 25 years behind bars. Prosecutors had sought at least 7.
Williams was among the mob that broke into the Capitol through the Senate Wing door at about 2:15 p.m. on Jan. 6, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia said.
Authorities said Williams “directed” other rioters, pushed against officers and recorded videos of the incident. Once in Pelosi’s office, Williams filmed the theft of the laptop, authorities said. It was initially believed that Williams had stolen it herself, and she was investigated for months under possible suspicion of selling it to Russi
According to investigators, a tipster told the FBI that Williams intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell it to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the affidavit said.
Williams fled after Jan. 6, deleting all of her social media profiles and losing contact with friends and family, officials said. She was arrested on Jan. 18 in Harrisburg.
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Pennsylvania woman who broke into Pelosi’s office draws a three-year prison sentence Read More »
The utility spent ratepayer money on lobbying, other expenses
By TOM JOHNSON, ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT WRITER, NJ Spotlight News
Jersey Central Power & Light owes customers $9.6 million after improper costs were allocated to ratepayers, including funds possibly spent in a bribery scandal in Ohio, according to audits of its parent company, FirstEnergy of Akron, Ohio.
New Jersey’s second-largest utility mentioned paying out the refunds, which include interest, in a filing for a $185 million rate increase for its 1.1 million customers with the state Board of Public Utilities last week. If granted, the typical residential customer would see their monthly bill increase by $8.45, or 7.5%.
Chris Hoenig, a JCP&L spokesman denied that any of the money raised from ratepayers in New Jersey was spent in Ohio. “What we are refunding is money that was spent in New Jersey,’’ he said. It included, among other things, advertising, sponsorships, and lobbying. “The $9 million has nothing to do with Ohio,’’ he added.
Related:
FirstEnergy Fined $3.9M in Scandal Involving Nuke Plants
JCP&L faces more questions about Ohio bribery scandal
Earlier this month, the former speaker of the Ohio House and former Republican state chairman were convicted in a $60 million bribery and lobbying scheme to pass a bailout bill for FirstEnergy, the utility’s parent, and its nuclear power plants.
‘There is going to be a lot of forensic digging in this rate case. We are going to make sure what happened in Ohio doesn’t impact New Jersey ratepayers.’ — Brian Lipman, New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel
An audit made public in February by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found FirstEnergy included costs for the Ohio bribery investigation in all rates for all 10 of its franchised public utilities, including JCP&L, according to Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog on clean energy and utility interests.
That audit spurred the agency to look into changes in accounting procedures governing utilities, Anderson said. Meanwhile, reports about the Ohio bribery investigation led the New Jersey BPU to launch an audit of JCP&L in May of 2021.
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JCP&L to pay back customers after audit of its parent company, FirstEnergy of Akron Read More »
The research claims that if solar panel manufacturing were to return to the U.S. by 2035, emissions resulting from panel creation would be reduced by 30%, and energy consumption would be cut by 13%, compared to 2020.
Solar Panel Manufacturing and Testing. (Archive Photo)Bookmark
By DERICK LILA, pvbuzz
Domestic production of solar panels – most of which are now made in Asia – can speed up decarbonization in the U.S. and reduce climate change faster, according to new Cornell Engineering research published March 8 by Nature Communications.
“If we bring the solar panel manufacturing back to the U.S., it helps us realize decarbonization goals faster,” said Haoyue Liang, a doctoral student in systems engineering, who co-authored “Reshoring Silicon Photovoltaics Manufacturing Contributes to Decarbonization and Climate Change Mitigation” with Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering.
“As solar photovoltaic panels emerge as a major power source that will characterize the U.S. energy market for the remainder of the 21st century,” Liang said, “manufacturing and sourcing panels here will align with our climate targets and our energy policy goals.”
Manufacturing crystalline silicon photovoltaic panels in the U.S. solves logistical challenges and eases greenhouse gas problems, according to the paper.
The scientists analyzed production in the U.S. to learn how it could shrink greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. If solar panel manufacturing can return to the U.S. by 2035, the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from panel creation would be reduced by 30% and energy consumption would be cut by 13%, compared to 2020, when the U.S. relied almost entirely on international trading partners.
By 2050, the solar panels made and used in the U.S. will be more efficient and will reduce the carbon footprint by 33%, and use 17% less energy than solar panels sourced globally in 2020.
The climate-change mitigation forecast would be fulfilled by both reshoring the solar panel manufacturing back to the U.S. and having mostly renewable energy on the power grid, which is anticipated in the next decades.
Based on projections about the energy decarbonization transition that happens alongside reshoring, You said, the U.S. will see a larger share of renewable power accounting for primary energy consumption and an overall lower primary energy consumption over the years for solar panel manufacturing.
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