EnviroPolitics Blog

New Jersey’s road map to decarbonize homes, businesses

By TOM JOHNSON, NJ Spotlight

A state agency has crafted what it touts as a first step toward the large-scale transformation of New Jersey’s buildings, a plan to reduce emissions from the state’s second-largest source of global-warming pollution.

Building decarbonization — electrifying homes and commercial buildings — is perhaps the most contested climate strategy yet proposed by the Murphy administration. But it is seen as essential if New Jersey is to break its reliance on fossil fuels and convert to a clean-energy economy.

The strawman proposal produced by the state Board of Public Utilities offers a phased approach that directs the state’s four electric utilities to offer an array of programs encouraging customers to switch from using fossil fuels for heating spaces and warming water to electric heat pumps — energy-efficient alternatives to furnaces and air conditioners.

The four electric utilities would spend a total of $150 million during the three-year program, which would begin in 2024.

Read the full story here

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NJ Brownfields Quarterly Roundtable

This meeting will be a hybrid. You may join the meeting in one of two ways:

1. Join us at 401 East State Street in Trenton in the Public Hearing Room, or

2. Join us remotely via GoToWebinar. You may register for the meeting at the link below. If you receive an error message from the link, just copy and paste it into your browser to access the registration.

Registration (gotowebinar.com)

AGENDA

9:30 am – 9:40 am Introduction
Frank McLaughlin – NJDEP, Office of Brownfield and Community Revitalization, Manager
9:40 am – 10:00 am Environmental Justice (EJ) Law Update
Kandyce Perry – NJDEP, Office of Environmental Justice, Director
10:00 am – 10:20 am LSRPA Discussion
William Call – LSRPA, President
10:20 am – 10:25 am HDSRF Update
Rachel Stopper – NJDEP, Office of Brownfield and Community Revitalization, HDSRF
Coordinator
10:25 am – 10:45 am NJEDA Update
Michael Deely – NJEDA, Manager
▪ HDSRF presentation
Barbara Vadnais – NJEDA, Brownfields & Sustainable Systems, P.E.
▪ Brownfield Redevelopment Incentive Program (BRIP)
10:45 am – 11:00 am BREAK
11:00 am – 11:15 am BCONE Update
Anne Lazo – BCONE, Executive Director
11:15 am – 11:20 am Brownfield Development Area (BDA) Update
Frank McLaughlin – NJDEP, Office of Brownfield and Community Revitalization, Manager
▪ BDA Update and Q&A
11:20 am – 11:40 am Brownfield Redevelopment Partner Update
Frank McLaughlin – NJDEP, Office of Brownfield and Community Revitalization, Manager
Jeffrey Dey – Resource Renewal, President, LSRP
▪ National Park Landfill Renewable Energy Solar Project
11:40 am – 12:00 pm USEPA Update
Terry Wesley – USEPA, Brownfield Section Chief
Schenine Mitchell – USEPA, Brownfields Program Coordinator
12:00 pm-12:25 pm Open Discussion – Brownfield and Landfill Redevelopment
12:25 pm-12:30 pm Conclusion

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Large, floating solar array over NJ reservoir powers treatment plant

By Wayne Parry, Associated Press

Solar panels from a project at a water treatment plant are shown Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Millburn, N.J., that provides enough electricity to power 95% of the treatment facilities electrical needs. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

MILLBURN, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey’s Canoe Brook Water Treatment plant produces 14 millions gallons of drinking water a day.

Each one of those gallons weighs around 8 pounds , so it’s quickly apparent that a large amount of energy is needed to move water from a reservoir to the treatment plant and into the 84,000 homes and businesses that the New Jersey American Water Company serves in the area.

So the water utility partnered with NJR Clean Energy Ventures, the renewable energy subsidiary of the natural gas firm New Jersey Resources, for a solution.

NJR Clean Energy Ventures built a vast array of solar panels, linked them together, and placed them on the surface of the water at Canoe Brook Reservoir.

The companies say the 17-acre solar array, consisting of 16,510 solar panels, is the largest floating solar array in North America — about twice the size of the next-largest facility, an array of floating panels on a body of water in Sayreville, New Jersey owned by that municipality.

The Millburn facility, which began operating in January, produces 8.9 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1,400 homes.

But the power doesn’t go to residential customers. Instead, it provides 95% of the water treatment plant’s substantial energy requirements.

“It takes a lot of energy to pump that water,” said Mark McDonough, president of New Jersey American Water. “When we can use a cleaner, greener, more efficient energy source, we want to seize that opportunity.”

Read the full story here

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Wildfire in Medford, NJ that had grown to 180 acres, threatening homes, is contained

It was the second wildfire in South Jersey in as many days.

By Harold Brubaker and Diane Mastrull, Philadelphia Inquirer

The New Jersey Forest Fire Service reported Saturday afternoon that a brush fire in Medford, Burlington County that had grown to 180 acres and threatened homes was 100% contained but that smoke conditions in the area were expected to linger into the overnight hours.

The so-called Flatiron Wildfire, near the intersection of Elderberry Drive and Jackson Road, was reported as encompassing 120 acres around 8 a.m. but just after noon, the Forest Fire Service announced that the affected area had increased to 180 acres.

With the winds blowing from the east, the Fire Service said the worst smoke conditions would affect areas just to the west of the fire site, and they could affect visibility. Jackson Road remained closed to through traffic.

The Fire Service said staff would remain at the scene.

The fire, the second in South Jersey in as many days, had threatened four homes, officials said.

While fighting a larger forest fire Friday in Bass River State Forest, officials closed the Garden State Parkway for several hours, but that fire did not threaten houses. The Forest Fire Service’s latest update said that 5,000-acre fire was contained.

Read the full story here

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Beneath towering turbines, US energy secretary says Block Island Wind Farm is nation’s model

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on the Rhode Island Fast Ferry, touring the Block Island Wind Farm tour

By Antonia Noori Farzan, Province Journal, June 3, 2023

THREE MILES OFF THE SOUTHEAST COAST OF BLOCK ISLAND – The Block Island Wind Farm should serve as a model for the rest of the country, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters during a tour of the first-in-the-nation offshore wind facility on Friday.

“We want to replicate this, even bigger, all up and down the Atlantic seaboard, but also in the Pacific and in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Great Lakes,” Granholm said, standing aboard a ferry that rolled gently in the ocean swells. “We want to be able to generate clean energy all across America.”

Granholm was joined Friday by elected officials including Gov. Dan McKee, Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, and Rep. Seth Magaziner, as well as representatives from Ørsted, which owns the wind farm. Only three of the five turbines were spinning: Routine maintenance will be taking place throughout the summer, while there are lighter winds and calmer conditions, Ørsted representatives said.

Ørsted is also behind the South Fork Wind Farm, which is under construction. Spokeswoman Meaghan Wims said the project is approaching “steel in the water” – the wind-farm equivalent of “cranes in the sky” or “shovels in the ground.” In fact, as the Rhode Island Fast Ferry sped toward Block Island, the Living Stone, a cable-laying ship deployed on the South Fork project, could be seen on the horizon.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm – with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, third from right, and other federal and state officials and representatives from wind-power company Ørsted – gets a closer look beneath one of the five turbines of the Block Island Wind Farm, first offshore wind farm in the nation.

Read the full story here

The Providence Journal

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Solano rejoins Gibbons to help launch new White Collar & Investigations Group

From left: Peter Torcicollo, Gibbons PC managing director, and Ricardo Solano Jr. and Lawrence Lustberg, co-chairs of the firm’s White Collar & Investigations Group – GIBBONS PC

By Kimberly Redmond/June 2, 2023

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney and First Assistant Attorney General of New Jersey Ricardo Solano Jr. is rejoining Gibbons PC to help launch, lead and build the Newark-based firm’s standalone White Collar & Investigations Group.

In a June 1 press release, Solano, who began his legal career as an associate in Gibbons’ criminal defense practice and later returned as a director for the unit, described his return as “a real homecoming.”

“At various points over the past two decades, I have worked at Gibbons as a summer associate, associate, and director, and I have worked with Gibbons attorneys as colleagues, adversaries, and co-counsel,” said Solano.

He went on to say that co-chairing the new practice with longtime Gibbons attorney Lawrence Lustberg “feels like a natural next step, and I look forward to helping direct the White Collar & Investigations Group and ensure its continued growth.”

Until recently, Gibbons’ white collar criminal and investigations practice operated under the administrative umbrella of the Commercial & Criminal Litigation Group. However, the firm decided to establish a separate group to better support and grow what is currently one of its most vibrant practices.

“By spinning off the practice into a full-fledged legal department, Gibbons is providing its white collar defense attorneys the administrative infrastructure and management resources they need to support a practice that is expanding in size and significance to the firm and its clients,” said Gibbons, noting that many of these cases are “often high-profile and precedent setting matters…not only in New Jersey, but throughout the region and nationally.”

Read the full story here

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