PHILADELPHIA (Feb. 14, 2023) – Capital Region Water will make substantial upgrades to the sewer and stormwater systems that serve the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area under a proposed modified consent decree announced today with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
The modified consent decree updates a 2015 consent decree that resolved violations of the Clean Water Act and the Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law for unauthorized discharges into the Susquehanna River and its tributary, Paxton Creek.
Capital Region Water owns and operates the Harrisburg sewer and stormwater systems, including an Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility located on Cameron Steet in Harrisburg. The Facility discharges treated wastewater from Harrisburg and the surrounding area into the Susquehanna River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.
The EPA said the proposed modified consent decree is needed to ensure that Capital Region Water’s treatment facility and sewer system are functioning adequately to address continued problems with combined sewage overflows and support a sufficient plan for controlling overflows in the long term.
“It is so important for treatment plants to make the necessary and required upgrades so that local waterways and the Susquehanna River can be protected from harmful pathogens,” said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Adam Ortiz. “And by protecting local waterways, we will also be protecting the treasured Chesapeake Bay.”
The modified consent decree also requires Capital Region Water to incorporate green infrastructure planning, provide more robust public notice of any sewer overflows, and post submissions required under the modified consent decree to its website.
Click here for more information on the important role that municipal wastewater treatment plants play in protecting waterways.
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Francis L. Bodine, who spent thirteen years in the New Jersey State Assembly, most of it as a Republican, died on January 11. He was 87.
“Fran was a class act and a good friend,” said State Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), who served with Bodine in the Assembly for more than five years. “He was a man who treated people with respect and kindness.”
From the Lewis Funeral Home obituary:
Fran was a graduate of Moorestown High School Class of “53” and received a degree in Marketing from La Salle University He served in the US Army from 954-1956. He served in politics for most of his career serving on Moorestown Town Council and serving as Mayor of Moorestown. He served as a Burlington County Freeholder, as a commissioner on the Delaware River Port Authority, and Member of the New Jersey State Assembly Fran was a member of Pine Valley Golf Club as well as numerous civic and charitable organizations. Fran was a loving husband, devoted father and grandfather, and the epitome of a dedicated public servant. He enriched the lives of all who knew him with his love, generosity, and guidance. He was a dedicated member of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Moorestown, where he served as an altar boy as a young man. Fran was a lifelong golfer who was proud to be a member of Pine Valley Golf Club. In his later years, Fran cherished time with his children and grandchildren. He also loved time spent in and around Long Beach Island with Karen and his “LBI Family”.
Burlington County Republicans decided not to support Bodine for re-election to his 8th district seat in 2007. Instead, he switched parties, lost a race for State Senate, and spent his final nine months in the legislature as a Democrat.
A proponent of transportation funding for South Jersey and sustainable tax credits for businesses, Bodine served as mayor of Moorestown and as a Burlington County freeholder before winning a special election convention in 1994 after Assemblyman Robert Shinn, Jr. (R-Hainesport) resigned to join Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s cabinet as Commissioner of Environmental Protection.
He entered politics in 1976 as a candidate for the Moorestown Township Council after incumbents William Angus and Joseph Carson declined to seek re-election; Angus instead sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1977, finishing last in a field of four candidates with 3.3%.
Running with James Palmer and newcomer Walter Maahs, Bodine defeated Democrats Barbara Green, Cully Miller, and David Beam. Bodine ran about 500 votes ahead of the top Democratic vote-getter.
Bodine became deputy mayor in 1979 and mayor in 1980. He served as mayor again in 1985. Bodine was re-elected by decisive margins in 1980 and 1984.
After Shinn declined to seek re-election as a Burlington County freeholder in 1985 – he was also serving as an assemblyman at the time – Republicans picked Bodine to run on a slate with three-term incumbent Michael Conda. Shinn resigned after the primary, and Bodine was appointed to fill his seat.
Bodine and Conda easily defeated Democrats Paul Guidry, a councilman in Edgewater Par, and Evesham businessman Larry Steinberg.
The two Republicans won lopsided re-election victories in 1988 and 1991. He was freeholder director in 1988 and 1993.
Bodine had no opposition in a February 1994 special election convention to replace Shinn in the Assembly. In a 1994 special election to fill Shinn’s unexpired term, Bodine faced a primary challenge from Jack Ward, who had supported Ross Perot’s 1992 independent presidential campaign; Bodine won with 75%. He won the general election by more than 19 percentage points, 57.5% to 38.1%, against Democrat Mary McKeon Stosuy, an insurance lawyer and political newcomer from Southampton.
After six-term Assemblyman Harold “Doc” Colburn retired in 1995, Bodine teamed up with Martha Bark, a Burlington County freeholder. They defeated Democrats Russell Bates and Michael Kwasnik by over 3,000 votes.
Following the death of 68-year-old State Sen. C. William Haines (R-Mount Laurel) in December 1996 — Haines had announced a few weeks before his death of esophageal cancer that he would step down on January 1 – Bodine had expressed interest in the Senate seat. But Whitman pushed for more Republican women in the Senate, and Republicans gave the seat to Bark.
Bark’s Assembly seat went to Larry Chatzidakis, a freeholder and mayor of Mount Laurel.
Against former Mount Holly Mayor James Smith, who had run races for Congress and State Senate in the 1980s, Bodine won by over 9,000 votes in 1997.
In 2001, Bodine faced a fight for re-election from Carol Murphy, a young Democratic operative, but won by ten points. Murphy won an Assembly seat in 2017 and is now the Assembly Majority Whip.
Wind turbine maker Vestas today announced that it’s figured out how to recycle all wind turbine blades – even ones already sitting in landfills.
The Danish company says it has discovered a solution that “renders epoxy-based turbine blades as circular, without the need for changing the design or composition of blade material.”
Vestas, Aarhus University, Danish Technological Institute, and epoxy maker Olin have developed a novel process that can chemically break down epoxy resin into virgin-grade materials. The four industry and academic partners formed a coalition called the CETEC project – Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites – in May 2021.
Lisa Ekstrand, vice president and head of sustainability at Vestas, said:
Until now, the wind industry has believed that turbine blade material calls for a new approach to design and manufacture to be either recyclable, or beyond this, circular, at end of life. Going forward, we can now view old epoxy-based blades as a source of raw material.
Once this new technology is implemented at scale, legacy blade material currently sitting in landfill, as well as blade material in active wind farms, can be disassembled and reused. This signals a new era for the wind industry, and accelerates our journey towards achieving circularity.
Vestas says it will now scale up the chemical disassembly process into a commercial solution through a newly established value chain, supported by Nordic recycling firm Stena Recycling and Olin. Once mature, Vestas says, “the solution will signal the beginning of a circular economy for all existing, and future epoxy-based turbine blades.”
Up to now, turbine blades have been challenging to recycle due to the chemical properties of epoxy resin, a resilient substance that was believed to be impossible to break down into reusable components.
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The fellowships run between 25 and 40 weeks through the fall, spring, and summer semesters with juniors and seniors eligible for $15,000 undergraduate awards and graduate and doctoral students eligible for $30,000 awards. Fellows will also receive $1,000 for related expenses.
During its Feb. 9 meeting, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) approved the expansion of its Wind Institute Fellowship Program, which offers students at select Garden State universities paid research fellowships to prepare them for careers in the burgeoning offshore wind industry.
The NJEDA says the expansion will enable students who attend those schools, along with Stockton University and selected private, research universities in the state, to apply to their home institution for the fellowship.
Tim Sullivan, NJEDA CEO, said in a statement that as this sector builds momentum here in the Garden State, it is essential to foster the growth of a talent pipeline.
The fellowships run between 25 and 40 weeks through the fall, spring, and summer semesters with juniors and seniors eligible for $15,000 undergraduate awards and graduate and doctoral students eligible for $30,000 awards. Fellows will also receive $1,000 for related expenses.
Each school can receive up to four fellowships, while Rutgers can earn 12.
The NJEDA will also provide participating schools with funding for any administrative or related expenses and will host a series of meetings during the academic year for fellows to learn more about the offshore wind industry.
Jen Becker, NJEDA vice president of offshore wind, said that the state’s renowned higher education institutions are ideal for cultivating a workforce to support this rapidly advancing sector.
“This fellowship program will create opportunities for students while helping us develop a robust, diverse, and local workforce for the offshore wind industry,” said Becker.
The application process will kick off in the spring.
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The inexorable rise of ocean heat is now evident off the coast of West Antarctica, potentially disrupting critical parts of the global climate system and accelerating sea level rise.
An iceberg is calving from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in February 2021. Credit: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2021
Research scientists on ships along Antarctica’s west coast said their recent voyages have been marked by an eerily warm ocean and record-low sea ice coverage—extreme climate conditions, even compared to the big changes of recent decades, when the region warmed much faster than the global average.
Despite “that extraordinary change, what we’ve seen this year is dramatic,” said University of Delaware oceanographer Carlos Moffat last week from Punta Arenas, Chile, after completing a research cruise aboard the RV Laurence M. Gould to collect data on penguin feeding, as well as on ice and oceans as chief scientist for the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research program.
“Even as somebody who’s been looking at these changing systems for a few decades, I was taken aback by what I saw, by the degree of warming that I saw,” he said. “We don’t know how long this is going to last. We don’t fully understand the consequences of this kind of event, but this looks like an extraordinary marine heatwave.”
If such conditions recur in the coming years, it could start a rapid destabilization of Antarctica’s critical underpinnings of the global climate system, including ice shelves, glaciers, coastal ecosystems, and even ocean currents. Such radical changes have already been sweeping the Arctic, starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the 2000s.
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Jackson Ceramix, Inc. and Ryeland Road Arsenic sites in Jefferson and Berks counties are among them
From the Environmental Protection Agency
WASHINGTON (Feb. 10, 2023) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the second wave of approximately $1 billion in funding today from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) to start new cleanup projects at 22 Superfund sites, including the Jackson Ceramix, Inc. and Ryeland Road Arsenic sites in Jefferson and Berks counties and expedite over 100 other ongoing cleanups across the country.
There are thousands of contaminated sites across the country due to hazardous waste being dumped, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed. Superfund cleanups help transform and repurpose contaminated properties into residences, retail and office space warehouses, solar power generation, and more. In addition, these sites can support natural areas, parks, and recreation facilities, providing greenspace and safe places for families to play outside.
The Jackson Ceramix, Inc. Superfund Site, located in Falls Creek, Jefferson County, is a former china manufacturing facility that operated until 1985. Historical operations resulted in primarily lead contamination in soils, sediments, surface water, and a nearby wetland. New BIL investments will be used to clean up the Site and will include repairing the existing soil cover, thermal treatment, and removal of contaminated soils and sediments.
“We are very excited to be moving forward with the cleanup of the Jackson Ceramix Superfund site. We feel that once this project is completed it will open up this property for economic development in our community, providing a facility that will offer jobs for our extended community, and an increased tax base for our Borough,” said Chuck Case, Borough Manager, Falls Creek, Pa.
The Ryeland Road Arsenic Superfund Site, located in Heidelberg Township, formerly housed facilities that made pesticides, fungicides, paints, and varnishes, and disposed of waste. Past operations contaminated soil and groundwater with arsenic, lead, and other chemicals. New federal dollars will be used to further the cleanup efforts, which will include removing soil contamination.
The $1 billion investment announced today is the second wave of funding from the $3.5 billion allocated for Superfund cleanup work. With the first wave of funding announced in December 2021, EPA deployed more than $1 billion for cleanup activities at more than 100 sites across the country. Thanks to this historic funding, EPA started 81 new cleanup projects in 2022, including projects at 44 sites previously on the backlog. By starting four times as many construction projects as the year before, EPA is aggressively bringing more sites across the country closer to finishing cleanup.
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