The Garden State was awarded more than $66 million in grants on Feb. 13 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address emerging contaminants in the state’s drinking water.
The funding comes from the EPA’s Emerging Contaminants in Small or Disadvantaged Communities Grant Program via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The effort promotes access to safe and clean water in small, rural, and disadvantaged communities while supporting local economies.
The $66.1 million the state received was part of a $2 billion round of funding allotted by the EPA, which they said can be used to prioritize infrastructure and source water treatment for pollutants, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other emerging contaminants, and to conduct water quality testing.
“EPA is working with our state’s partners to deliver clean water to communities, protect public health, and advance environmental justice across New Jersey and the nation,” said Garcia.
Gov. Phil Murphy said that the allocation demonstrates a shared commitment to clean water and healthy environments, thanking the state’s congressional delegation for their efforts to help secure the funding.
“New Jersey can now double its efforts to protect our children and families from emerging contaminants like PFAS,” said Murphy. “These efforts will prove especially vital for our state’s rural and underserved communities, which deserve equitable and reliable access to safe water regardless of their zip code.”
If you liked this post, you will love our daily EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Wind turbine giant Siemens Gamesa announced on February 13 that it’s going to build a large offshore wind nacelle factory in New York State – giving the fledgling yet mushrooming US offshore wind industry yet another boost.
A nacelle is the housing on top of a wind turbine’s tower that contains the rotor and generator. It contains all the major components, including the gearbox, control electronics, and braking system.
Ørsted and Eversource are going to use Siemens Gamesa wind turbines when they build the 130-megawatt (MW) South Fork, New York’s first offshore wind farm, and also the 924 MW Sunrise Wind, which is also in New York.
The factory will be sited at the Port of Coeymans, a fairly new marine terminal on the Hudson River, about 10 miles south of Albany. It will result in a $500 million investment in the region and will create around 420 direct jobs and a large number of indirect jobs.
The factory is subject to the company’s wind turbines being selected in New York State’s third offshore wind auction.
The 3D visualization of the facility is pictured above.
It would supply components for all Siemens Gamesa offshore wind power projects along the US East Coast.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Thousands of employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are lobbying this week for Congress to address staffing issues that they say are limiting their ability to meaningfully carry out the Biden administration’s ambitious climate goals.
Leaders of AFGE Council 238, a union representing roughly half of the EPA’s 14,000-member workforce, said in a memo that non-competitive salaries and a lack of career development opportunities are fueling attrition and overburdening staff. Congress could address these issues by expanding the EPA’s funding in the annual appropriations legislation, which it will write later this year. Failure to do so, the union warned, will jeopardize the implementation of President Joe Biden’s two major legislative achievements — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Union leaders began briefing members of Congress about the situation on Monday, presenting them with a series of demands that include the creation of a more robust promotion structure and the development of a program to support equity and inclusion. Staffers are also planning a rally at EPA headquarters on Wednesday.
Sources familiar with the EPA’s workforce told Grist that the actions on Capitol Hill this week have been a long time coming.
The EPA has spent the past six years embroiled in multiple crises. Hundreds of senior staff members departed after former President Donald Trump rolled back dozens of environmental safeguards, creating gaps in institutional knowledge that continue to haunt the agency today. The COVID-19 pandemic further hobbled enforcement programs, as on-the-ground inspection rates for power plants, refineries, and other pollution sources plunged.
Now, the threat of climate change is expanding the EPA’s mission in a way that Congress could not have imagined when the agency was founded in the early 1970s. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act will require staff members to dole out billions of dollars in grants to state and local initiatives and expand its Superfund cleanup program to protect communities of color living near sites of uncontrolled contamination. The agency will take on these efforts at the same time as it fulfills its regular statutory duties, which include developing complicated new rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and vehicles and increasing enforcement efforts to ensure companies are abiding by those regulations. But staffing levels have not kept up with these expanded duties.
Today, the workforce is around the size that it was under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The AFGE has said that the agency will need 20,000 full-time staff, a 40 percent increase, to carry out the programs it has been tasked with.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
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.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
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.
If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
