EnviroPolitics Blog

More paid, wind-energy research fellowships for students at several New Jersey colleges

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.

By Matthew Fazelpoor, NJBIZ

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 program began in October by supporting 26 student researchers from Montclair State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Rowan University, and Rutgers University.

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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An Extraordinary Marine Heatwave That Could Threaten Antarctica’s Ice Shelves

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 calving from Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf in February 2021. Credit: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2021 — *An iceberg is calving from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in February 2021. Credit: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2021*

By Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News

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.

If you like 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.

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Federal funds enable cleanups at 22 Pa Superfund sites, along with 100 ongoing

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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Can local news startups overcome the evils of corporate chain ownership?

At a time of intense polarization at the national level, local news can be a way to bring us together

Staff members of The New Bedford Light, from left, Ken Hartnett, Jack Spillane, Peter Andrews, Will Sennott, Barbara Roessner, Stephen Taylor, Andy Tomolonis, and Toni Delgado-Green in their newsroom, which was under construction, in 2021.TONY LUONG/NYT

By Dan Kennedy, Boston Globe

By now it is widely understood that local news is in crisis. The United States has lost a fourth of its newspapers since 2005, and the loss has led to such ills as lower voter turnout in local elections, more political corruption, and the rise of ideologically driven “pink slime” websites that are designed to look like legitimate sources of community journalism.

Even in the face of this decline, though, hundreds of local news projects have been launched in recent years, from Denver, where The Colorado Sun was launched by 10 journalists who’d left The Denver Post in the face of devastating cuts, to MLK50, which focuses on social justice issues in Memphis. Some are nonprofit; some are for-profit. Most are new digital outlets; some are legacy newspapers. All of them are independent alternatives to the corporate chains that are stripping newsrooms and bleeding revenues in order to enrich their owners and pay down debt.

This trend is happening in the Boston suburbs, too, as Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, has closed many of its weekly newspapers and shifted most of those that remain from local to regional news. Affluent communities such as Marblehead, Concord, Bedford, and Lexington are all home to startups, with more scheduled to come online this year. So, too, is New Bedford, a gritty, working-class city where the nonprofit The New Bedford Light is filling much of the gap created by the shrinkage of Gannett’s daily The Standard-Times. (I’m also hoping to help facilitate a news startup in the community where I live.)

But these projects all must deal with the headwinds of chain owners. Gannett, a publicly traded company that controls about 200 daily papers, and the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, with about 100, have a stranglehold on readership and advertising in many communities, even where they offer little in the way of news and information.

Which raises a question: What if corporate chain ownership could somehow be made to disappear? As it happens, there are several Massachusetts examples that offer lessons for what happens when the slash-and-burn out-of-town owner sells to local interests.

Take Nantucket. Marianne Stanton, editor and publisher of The Inquirer and Mirror, purchased the weekly from Gannett in 2020 with the help of David Worth, a local businessman. Since then, she said in an interview, she’s expanded the editorial staff from four to seven full-time positions, upgraded the computer system, and boosted marketing and circulation efforts.

“We are doing this off of the revenues we earn,” she said, adding that Gannett had been planning to cut the budget and replace much of the local coverage with regional news even though “we were profitable, we were doing well.”

In Pittsfield, the story is similar. In 2016, a group of four local business leaders bought from Alden three small papers in southern Vermont as well as The Berkshire Eagle, once one of the most respected small dailies in the country, which had to slash much of its coverage following repeated budget cuts by Alden. They added staff, increased the size and improved the quality of the newsprint, and expanded coverage in areas such as investigative reporting and culture.

Read the full story here

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New Jersey releases $16M in grants to promote community recycling programs

From an NJDEP news release

The Murphy Administration is awarding nearly $16.2 million in grants to communities across the state to help them enhance waste reduction and recycling programs, Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn M. LaTourette announced today.

“New Jersey has long set a national example for recycling, starting with being the first state to enact a recycling law in 1987,” Commissioner LaTourette said. “This annual grant program provides an incentive for communities to strengthen their municipal recycling initiatives, encourage children and adults to keep our environment clean, and provide assistance in helping to reduce the local tax burden while also improving quality of life.”

The awards are based on 2020 recycling performance, the most recent year for which data is available. Municipalities must use their grants for various recycling initiatives that may include sponsoring household hazardous waste collection events, providing recycling receptacles in public places, or maintaining leaf composting operations. The 2020 awards maintain the amount distributed for 2019 performance.

Grants are awarded through the state’s Recycling Enhancement Act and are funded through a $3 per ton surcharge on trash disposed statewide at solid waste facilities. As required under the state’s Recycling Enhancement Act, the DEP returns 60% of that money to municipalities based on how much recycling each community reports accomplishing during the calendar year. The remaining funds are divided, with 30% going to counties, 5% to colleges and universities, and 5% for administrative costs.

By The Numbers: Solid Waste

For the calendar year 2020, New Jersey generated 20,997,099 total tons of solid waste, which represents disposal (9,474,871 tons) and recycling (11,522,228 tons) reported by municipalities and, in limited instances, counties.

The overall tonnage of materials reported as recycled and as disposed of both decreased slightly in 2020 from 2019, leading to a slight decrease in the overall recycling rate, to 55% in 2020 from 56% in 2019. Solid waste includes municipal waste plus construction debris and other types of non-municipal waste.

By The Numbers: Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

For the calendar year 2020, New Jersey generated 9,474,871 tons of MSW, which represents disposal (6,005,468 tons) and recycling (3,837,039 tons) reported by municipalities and, in limited instances, counties.

Recycling increased in 2020, leading to a 39% MSW recycling rate compared to 38% in 2019.

Total tonnage of recycled MSW increased to 3,837,039 tons in 2020 from 3,685,664 tons in 2019. The tonnage of disposed MSW decreased from one year to the next, leading to the increase in the MSW recycling rate.

The amount of disposed MSW in 2020 was 6,005,468 tons, compared with 6,073,324 tons the year before.

By The Numbers: Grants

Local governments receiving grants of more than $100,000 for 2020 recycling efforts are:

Bergen County: Paramus, $126,835
Camden County: Camden, $102,291; Cherry Hill, $166,073
Cumberland County: Millville, $128,791; Vineland, $475,250
Essex County: Newark, $264,896
Gloucester County: Logan, $200,307
Hudson County: Bayonne, $133,677; Jersey City, $319,944; North Bergen, $194,090; Secaucus, $189,204; Union City, $107,408
Mercer County: Hamilton, $182,395; Robbinsville, $115,210
Middlesex County: Cranbury, $104,954; East Brunswick, $121,623; Edison, $217,583; Old Bridge, $116,123; Perth Amboy, $105,862; Piscataway, $111,758; South Brunswick, $197,631; Woodbridge, $261,930
Morris County: Parsippany-Troy Hills, $122,176
Ocean County: Brick, $129,047; Lakewood, $167,897; Toms River, $157,645
Passaic County: Clifton, $143,693; Passaic, $104,958; Paterson, $265,641; Wayne, $108,837
Somerset County: Bridgewater, $172,767

For a complete list of grants, by municipality, visit www.nj.gov/dep/dshw/recycling/stats.htm

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Federally assisted orphan well cleanup in Pa underscores the enormity of the task

An abandoned oil well in a residential yard in Ohio Township, Pa. Photographer: Bobby Magill/Bloomberg Law

By Bobby Magill, Bloomberg Law

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited the Pittsburgh area Thursday to announce the plugging of the first 10 abandoned oil and gas wells in the area paid for with funds from the 2021 infrastructure law.

But with 27,000 known abandoned oil wells to plug across Pennsylvania and possibly hundreds of thousands more left to discover, the announcement underscored the daunting task ahead for Congress and the federal and state agencies in charge of finding and capping oil and gas wells.

Haaland, standing in front of a derelict oil well in Ed and Mary Vojtas’ front yard in Ohio Township, Pa., said the well is leaking gas and will be one of the state’s first to be plugged with federal infrastructure money.

“These wells emit methane, they litter the landscape with rusted dangerous equipment posing safety hazards and threats to wildlife,” Haaland said. “Many of these wells have been left behind in backyards.”

Pennsylvania, the birthplace of America’s oil industry, has more documented orphaned wells than any other state. Its effort to plug the state’s orphaned wells using federal infrastructure funding starts soon, with 10 wells in the Pittsburgh area, Richard Negrin, acting director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said, speaking alongside Haaland.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks about orphaned oil wells in Ohio Township, Pa., on Feb. 9, 2023. Photographer: Bobby Magill/Bloomberg Law

Until now, Pennsylvania was able to plug “only a handful” of abandoned wells annually, but federal funding will allow the state to plug 235 wells in 2023, Negrin said.

Millions of Wells to Cap

Read the full story here

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