Kevin Baker, a maintenance technician, refuels a hydrogen fuel-cell transit bus in Canton, Ohio, in 2021. The technology is increasingly seen as a potential fighter of emissions that contribute to climate change. Photo credit: Tony Dejak / AP
By Thomas Fitzgerald, Philadelphia Inquirer
Before too long, you may be riding a bus that generates its own electricity and emits nothing but water vapor from the tailpipe.
SEPTA is spending $17 million on 10 fuel-cell electric transit buses that run on compressed hydrogen gas as part of the agency’s transition to a zero-emissions fleet.
“A lot of the advantage comes back to just the additional range that hydrogen affords the vehicle,” said Tyler Ladd, director of power engineering for SEPTA.
A fully charged electric battery bus can travel 150 to 200 miles, depending on the temperature and how hilly a route is, Ladd said. A tank of hydrogen, converted to electricity by fuel cells on board, will carry a bus 300 miles or more, he said.
It also takes 12 to 15 minutes to gas up a bus with hydrogen vs. a couple of hours to charge the batteries, he said. Battery charging also requires transit systems to build generating stations.
Almost all of the agency’s 1,447 buses are hybrids. Just 120 burn only diesel.
Battery-powered electric buses had been SEPTA’s preferred option for cleaner energy. But its first 25 all-electric coaches, bought in 2016, had to be pulled from the road in February 2020 after cracks were discovered in their frames.
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Bobby Henon served on City Council for a decade prior to his conviction on bribery and fraud charges.
Former Philadelphia City Councilman Bobby Henon arrives at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia Wednesday morning for sentencing in his bribery case. Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
From the Philadelphia Inquirer
Former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon was sentenced Wednesday to 3½ years in prison following his 2021 bribery conviction.
Henon has until April 17 to report to start his prison term.
Prosecutors had urged the judge to impose a sentence of roughly eight to 10 years, in line with federal sentencing guidelines. Henon’s lawyers argued for a “minimal” prison term.
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Heavy snowfall near Pine Mountain Club, Calif., on Friday. Credit…Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times
By JOHN ANTCZAK, AMY TAXIN and ED WHITE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A powerful winter storm that lashed California with heavy rain and frigid temperatures shifted its focus Saturday to wind and heavy snow, although forecasters said the risk of life-threatening flash floods in the Los Angeles area has passed.
The National Weather Service said blizzard conditions were expected at higher elevations, with wind gusts of up to 100 mph (160 kph) and several feet of snow in isolated areas.
“There’s already been reports of 2 to 3 feet (60 to 90 centimeters) across some of the higher peaks, and we’re looking at an additional foot, maybe two, of additional snowfall through the rest of the day,” said meteorologist Zach Taylor.
Overnight lows fell below freezing in some areas while downtown San Francisco approached record-cold temperatures. A drop to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) would have been the coldest since 2009, but it didn’t get colder than 41 Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.
Read the full story here
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Pump jacks at the Belridge Oil Field and hydraulic fracking site in Kern County, California. Credit: Citizens of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
By Liza Gross, Inside Climate News February 21, 2023
Extracting fossil fuels from underground reservoirs requires so much water a Chevron scientist once referred to its operations in California’s Kern River Oilfield “as a water company that skims oil.”
Fracking operations use roughly 1.5 million to 16 million gallons per well to release oil and gas from shale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. All that water returns to the surface as wastewater called flowback and produced water, or FPW, contaminated by a complex jumble of hazardous substances in fluids injected to enhance production, salts, metals and other harmful elements once sequestered deep underground, along with their toxic breakdown products.
Concerns that spills could damage sensitive ecosystems skyrocketed with the rapid expansion of fracking across the United States and Canada almost two decades ago, as technological advances allowed energy companies to exploit previously inaccessible shale oil and gas reserves.
Those concerns are well founded new research shows. Exposing animals that play a critical role in freshwater food webs to diluted samples of flowback and produced water from fracked wells causes lasting harm, scientists reported earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.
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HARRISBURG, PA (February 22, 2023) – Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a major decision in two suits where the public sought reimbursement for legal costs in environmental cases: the Clean Air Council, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Mountain Watershed Association v. DEP and Sunoco Pipeline and Gerhart v. DEP and Sunoco Pipeline cases.
The Supreme Court’s decision reversed a lower court ruling that had put up a major barrier to reimbursement of legal costs for environmental lawsuits brought by non-profits and residents.
Now, members of the public, who are harmed by permits allowing industrial activities, and who successfully appeal those permits, are more easily able to get reimbursement for their legal costs. The reimbursement can come not only from the state, which issued the permit, but from the company holding the permits, and profiting from the permitted activity. Legal experts, fees, and other costs necessary for these cases can easily reach tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the cases can go on for years or even decades, making appeals like this out of reach for most absent the ability to recoup costs.
The decision is a victory for the environmental organizations, who had sought but been denied reimbursement for their legal costs from Sunoco Pipeline, the builder of the controversial Mariner East pipelines. It is also a victory for the Gerhart family, landowners along the pipeline route who stood up to the company and also had success at the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board.
“Today’s ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a huge win for the public,” said Joseph Minott, Executive Director, and Chief Counsel of Clean Air Council. “Too often, when members of the public have been harmed by big polluters, they are unable to afford legal support. Today’s ruling makes it easier for the public to be compensated for their legal costs when their lawsuits are successful. This opens the door for the public to finally have their day in court and for justice to be restored.”
Melissa Marshall, Community Advocate with the Mountain Watershed Association stated, “We are pleased with the decision for two reasons. Not only does it remedy a bad standard, but it also clarifies, for the first time, that it is the permittees – often exploitative industries, such as mining and fracking — and not just the taxpayers, who should bear the financial burden when environmental groups bring protective lawsuits.”
“Today’s decision appropriately recognizes the significant role that citizen objectors play in the vindication of environmental rights and the General Assembly’s laws protecting the public natural resources. This ruling helps support legal action against bad permitting decisions, and holds accountable the parties who stand to benefit financially from those decisions,” said Kacy Manahan, Senior Attorney for the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
“Today’s opinion shows that Pennsylvanians who enforce the Clean Streams Law have a voice and that applicants who submit faulty permit applications to DEP can be held responsible for their sloppy or incompetent work,” said Rich Raiders, attorney for Stephen and Ellen Gerhart, Huntingdon County landowners who won a fee award from DEP, but not Sunoco, in a case decided with the Clean Air Council matter in today’s opinion. The Gerharts successfully challenged a wetlands determination on their Huntingdon County property where Sunoco was required to remediate a parcel of forested wetland disturbed during construction.
In March of 2022, Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to overturn that lower court decision, which made it nearly impossible for residents or advocacy organizations to be compensated for their legal expenses from the permit holder when appealing a DEP permit. The Commonwealth Court decision affirmed the Environmental Hearing Board’s decision that denied the groups’ request for Energy Transfer (Sunoco Pipeline’s parent) to compensate parties for their legal fees stemming from an appeal of Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 pipeline permits.
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