EnviroPolitics Blog

Adirondack Park Agency goes 0-for-2 in lawsuits in 1 week

By RY RIVARD, Politico 03/06/2023 10:00 AM EST

ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY LOSES TWO — The Adirondack Park Agency, tasked with overseeing six million acres of New York state, suffered two significant court losses last week in lawsuits challenging separate decisions the agency took and stood by in spite of controversy and major opposition.

On Friday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Robert Muller ruled that the agency improperly approved the use of a chemical herbicide in Lake George. The APA, as the agency is known in the North Country, last year issued permits to allow the application of the chemical ProcellaCOR in two parts of the lake to go after Eurasian watermilfoil, a tricky weed. The judge found the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously by not holding a public hearing on the issue.

“It was the second of two court decisions this week rebuking how the agency, charged with long-range planning and overseeing public and private development in the 6-million-acre park, conducts business,” the Adirondack Explorer’s Gwendolyn Craig wrote.

The other decision, issued Thursday, invalidated a permit the agency had approved to expand a marina at Lower Saranac Lake. That case pitted the former head of the state Department of Environmental Protection, Thomas Jorling, against current state officials and dredged up years of uncomfortable questions about whether the state has know-how and will to protect the Adirondacks.

“While the decision from the state Supreme Court Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, called the state’s failure to conduct a carrying capacity study of the lake ‘inexplicable,’ the court ruled that that failure did not prevent APA from determining the project would not have an adverse impact on the park’s surrounding environment,” the Explorer’s Zachary Matson reported.

Read the full column here

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Federal aid prefers Iowa corn over Jersey tomatoes

Unmasked — *People shopping at Astede Farms stand at Duke Farms Market in Hillsborough in July 2020. Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media*

By Jonathan D. Salant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

If you farmed in Nebraska, Illinois, or Iowa and needed help from the federal government because the coronavirus pandemic cut into your business, you likely got aid. After all, more than 9 out of 10 farmers did in those states.

But if you farmed in New Jersey, New Hampshire or Connecticut, no such luck. Fewer than 2 in 10 farmers in those states saw any federal help.

That’s because the COVID-19 assistance program funds were doled out according to existing farm formulas, which shortchanges New Jersey and other states without huge agribusinesses. The lion’s share of federal farm assistance goes to farms that grow wheat, corn, and soybeans at the expense of smaller farmers who grow fruits and vegetables.

In short, the feds say yes to sending aid for Iowa corn and no for Jersey tomatoes.

NJ Senator Cory Booker says he’s looking to even things out

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Buried under 12 feet of snow, Northern Californians hope their blizzard will alleviate the state’s drought

Monster snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has shut down national parks and buried neighborhoods.

By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post

SODA SPRINGS, Calif. — To keep out the snow, most of the windows of Andrew Schwartz’s cabin are boarded up with plywood, creating a gloom so persistent that he keeps his house plant alive with a grow light and consumes daily vitamin D from a pillbox in his desk.

Snow falls in such abundance around Schwartz’s home — which doubles as the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory — that prior residents of his research station have been known to ski directly into a third-story window. The drifts bury cars, warp walls and pile up in monstrous mushroom caps on his roof, before sliding off with startling violence.

But even Schwartz, who has chased hailstorms in Australia and tornadoes in Oklahoma, faced weather this week unlike any he has known. The blizzard that blanketed California’s inland mountains hit Schwartz’s cabin with 70-mile-per-hour winds and blinding snow that covered up his snowshoe tracks minutes after he made them. On Tuesday afternoon, as he went to check his instruments, he slipped and plunged into a drift up to his neck.

More wintry weather looms as Californians struggle to dig out

The amount of snow that has fallen on California is rivaling some of the most bountiful years on record. Just in the past two weeks, more than a dozen feet of snow fell in this area, pushing the snowpack in the Central and Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains to roughly twice the amount of a normal year. The whiteout shut down national parks and interstates, buried neighborhoods, collapsed roofs, stranded motorists, trapped residents and knocked out power to thousands in mountain communities throughout the state.

*UPS driver Juan Hernandez delivers a package to a snow-covered home in Truckee, Calif. (Josh Edelson/For The Washington Post)*

Read the full story here

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Will the Other Midwestern States Follow Illinois in stripping local governments of veto power over solar and wind projects?

The state recently joined New York and California in passing such laws, eliciting both support and pushback.

*Randy DeBaillie walks toward his solar panels at his farm in Orion, Illinois on Feb. 3, 2019. Credit: Youngrae Kim for The Washington Post via Getty Images*

By Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa, Inside Climate News, Feb. 27, 2023

Two years ago, Illinois had adopted a landmark clean energy law that called for building vast amounts of renewable power. At the same time, 15 counties with some of the most land available for wind and solar had passed, or were about to pass, restrictions on new development that made the state’s goals more difficult to reach.

Something had to give.

That something came last month, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill that took away the ability of local governments to limit or ban wind and solar power, a measure that follows similar actions in California and New York.

Now, officials from places that had restricted development of renewables projects—like Ford County, located in the rural area between Chicago and Champaign-Urbana—are livid about what they view as a power grab by majority Democrats.

“My concern is for the health, safety and general welfare of our citizens, something the state has seemingly lost sight of,” said Cindy Ihrke, vice chairman of the Ford County Board, in an email.

“This bill takes away a county’s ability to regulate siting in each of our unique areas,” she added. “What is good for one county is not always good for the one next door.”

Supporters of the law respond that they had little choice but to take action because local governments have relied on misleading or false information about the safety and economics of renewable energy to pass rules that are not in the public interest.

Read the full story here

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In face of a state energy supply crunch, California’s last nuclear power plant gets a life extension

FILE - An aerial photo of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, south of Los Osos, in Avila Beach, Calif., is seen on June 20, 2010. Federal regulators on Thursday, March 2, 2023, granted California's largest utility an unusual exemption that could allow the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant to continue running after the expiration of its operating licenses, a key piece of a contentious proposal that could keep the reactors producing electricity for years to come. (Joe Johnston/The Tribune via AP, File)

By Michael R. Blood, AP, March 2, 2023

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Government regulators Thursday granted California’s largest utility an unusual exemption that could allow the state’s last nuclear power plant to continue running after the expiration of its federal operating licenses, a key piece of a contentious propposal to keep the reactors producing electricity for years to come.

The twin-reactor Diablo Canyon plant is scheduled to shut down by 2025. But the federal exemption will permit operator Pacific Gas & Electric to keep producing power while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews an expected application from the utility to extend the plant’s operating run by up to two decades.

Read the full story here

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In face of a state energy supply crunch, California’s last nuclear power plant gets a life extension Read More »