Temporary shellfish closures in New York’s Suffolk and Nassau counties

From the New York Department of Environmental Conservation

The extremely heavy rainfall and extraordinary amounts of stormwater runoff and localized street flooding associated with the rainfall event of October 2, 2022 and continuing through October 5, 2022, has resulted in conditions that may cause shellfish to be hazardous for use as food. To protect public health, DEC is temporarily closing the south shore areas noted below to the harvest of shellfish.

Towns of Hempstead, South Oyster Bay, and Babylon: Effective October 4, 2022, all that area of Hempstead Bay, East Bay, and South Oyster Bay including their tributaries lying westerly of a line extending southerly from Amityville Creek Entrance Light “1” along the western edge of the Amityville Cut to State Boat Channel Light “29” then extending to the northeasternmost point of land on the western side of the entrance to West Gilgo Beach.

Temporary Shellfish Closures in Towns of Hempstead, South Oyster Bay and Babylon

Town of Babylon: Effective on October 5, 2022, all that area of Great South Bay including its tributaries lying westerly of a line extending southerly from the southernmost point of land at Bergen Point to Fox Creek Channel Lighted Buoy “6”, then continuing from Fox Creek Channel Lighted Buoy “6” along the eastern side of Fox Creek Channel (known locally as the Lindenhurst Cut) to State Boat Channel Light “49”, and then extending southwesterly from State Boat Channel Light “49” to the northeasternmost point of land on the western side of the entrance to Garbage Cove (local name, local landmark).

Temporary Shellfish Closures in Town Babylon

Information about temporary closures and re-openings will be available on a recorded message available at 631-444-0480 and on DEC’s website. Contact DEC Bureau of Shellfisheries at 631-444-0492 during regular office hours M-F 8:00 to 4:00.

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EPA issues two-year report on Chesapeake Bay cleanup progress

From the Environmental Protection Agency

PHILADELPHIA (Oct. 4, 2022) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the results of its evaluation of the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions’ two-year milestones today, noting that although most of the Bay states are not on track to meet the 2025 water quality restoration goals, 2022 saw new significant successes at the state level that will improve the restoration trajectory.

The two-year milestone reports are prepared by the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions – Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. These two-year milestone reports represent key check-in points on the way to having all pollutant reduction measures in place by 2025, a goal established by the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Partnership.  The CBP Partnership is composed of the seven Bay jurisdictions, and dozens of local governments, federal partners, organizations, and academic institutions.

“Although the results are mixed overall, there are more positive developments in the mix than ever. Most of the partnership is not on track for the 2025 targets, but we are encouraged by significant recent progress made in the states,” said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Adam Ortiz. “We applaud the historic new programs, laws, and funding in Pennsylvania to help farmers.  Those achievements will help us accelerate restoration in the local streams that need it the most.”

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Based on EPA’s review, the District of Columbia and West Virginia are on track to meet their overall cleanup goals by 2025, but the other jurisdictions are not on track to meet all the cleanup goals.

“We applaud West Virginia and the District of Columbia, and we will continue to partner with the other states to keep accelerating to expand on our successes,” said Ortiz. “More than two decades ago, virtually no streams were getting healthier. Now 40% of them are getting better thanks to our interstate collaboration.”

Overall, the Partnership has already achieved 100% of targeted sediment reductions, and practices are in place to achieve 49% of nitrogen reductions and 64% of phosphorus reductions.

“We are dedicated to reducing pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and we also understand the complexities each state faces with technical assistance, data verification, staffing, and funding,” added Chesapeake Bay Program Director Dr. Kandis Boyd.  “Although there is good news, there are also new challenges – such as addressing our evolving climate, increased population in the watershed, and advancing air/land/water monitoring and modeling – that hinder sustainable environmental and economic progress. We are committed to working with our partner states and agencies to address these challenges to restore our national treasure.”

For more details on the milestone reports and ongoing Bay cleanup efforts, visit https://www.epa.gov/chesapeake-bay-tmdl

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Jersey shore’s Long Beach Township gets funding to help with restoration of five bay islands

(File Photo by Ryan Morrill)

By Juliet Kaszas-Hoch, The Sandpaper

Long Beach Township has been awarded a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation community resiliency grant in the amount of $87,065.68, to fund the restoration of five bay islands located in the waters west of the municipality. At its September meeting, the township board of commissioners passed a resolution accepting the grant, with Mayor Joseph Mancini signing and executing the grant agreement.

“I think it’s vitally important that we protect the existing sedge island boundaries and areas like Clam Cove,” which is located near the bayside LBT Field Station for Marine Education and Research, in Holgate, said Mancini. “We must use dredge spoils and other materials that are rich in organics to place behind these living shorelines to allow the marsh grasses and other vegetation to grow through.

“By doing this, 1 foot at a time,” the mayor added, “it will maintain the vegetation and achieve the preservation of the shorelines and bay islands.”

Township Sustainability Director Angela Andersen, who applied for the grant funding, joined preliminary assessment efforts at Clam Cove earlier this month, led by project manager Kim McKenna, associate director of the Stockton University Coastal Research Center, and Matthew Deibert, who is pursuing his master’s degree from the university’s Coastal Zone Management graduate program.

“Clam Cove has become an island,” Andersen pointed out. “It’s eroding along the west-northwest side and actually growing on the east-northeast side – with sand shifting all over the place. This leads into the sediment migration we are starting to monitor as we begin looking at how the marsh islands are behaving in the system.”

While on site, McKenna and Deibert “set pressure sensors to determine water levels and duration of flood events on the island marsh edge,” as McKenna explained.

“We are utilizing the Bay Islands Restoration Planner (BIRP) – online at maps.coastalresilience.org/nj-bay-islands – to identify the five islands and to have a record of how most all of the marsh islands from Manasquan Inlet to Little Egg Harbor Inlet have behaved over the last few decades,” said Andersen.

Read the full story

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Anti-vax Marin County does a backflip

Marin, once known for vaccine skeptics, now tells them ‘you’re not welcome’

Dr. Matt Willis, the medical director of Marin County, who decided to administer COVID-19 vaccines for ages 5 to 11 largely at schools, in San Rafael, Calif., Sept. 2, 2022. The wealthy California county just north of San Francisco has one of the nation’s highest COVID-19 vaccination rates after years of being known for parents who opposed shots for childhood diseases. (Jim Wilson / The New York Times)
Dr. Matt Willis, the medical director of Marin County, decided to administer COVID-19 vaccines for ages 5 to 11 largely at schools, in San Rafael, Calif. (Jim Wilson / The NYTimes) 

By Soumya Karlamangla, The Seattle Times

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — For more than a decade, few places in the nation were associated with anti-vaccine movements as much as Marin County, the bluff-lined peninsula of coastal redwoods and stunning views just north of San Francisco.

This corner of the Bay Area had become a prime example of a highly educated, affluent community with low childhood vaccination rates, driven by a contingent of liberal parents skeptical of traditional medicine. Marin was something of a paradox to mainstream Democrats, and often a punching bag. In 2015, during a measles outbreak in California, comedian Jon Stewart blamed Marin parents for being guilty of a “mindful stupidity.”

But Marin is the anti-vaccine capital no more.

In the pandemic age, getting a COVID-19 shot has become the defining “vax” or “anti-vax” litmus test, and on that account, Marin County has embraced vaccines at rates that surpass the vast majority of communities in the nation. It comes after public health efforts to change parents’ opinions, as well as a strict state mandate that students get vaccinated for childhood diseases.

And as the nation has grown more polarized, Marin residents are less comfortable wearing the “anti-vax” label increasingly associated with conservatives. Americans who identify as Democrats are more than twice as likely to be vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 — and Marin County is one of the bluest enclaves in the United States.

“It kind of became the cool thing to do to get vaccinated,” said Naveen Kumar, physician-in-chief for Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Medical Center. Kumar said some Marin parents who were hesitant about the vaccines have been persuaded by their children’s enthusiasm, which he has witnessed among his teenage son and his friends. “I could hear him talking about, ‘Can you believe there’s this kid in my class and he’s not vaccinated?’” he said. “You almost become a little bit of an outcast if you’re not vaccinated.”

Read the full story here

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Op-Ed: NJ’s solar industry collapse puts thousands of jobs at risk

Here’s what Gov. Murphy and lawmakers must do to restore a once-thriving industry

By Rodger Ferguson in NJ Spotlight News

New Jersey’s solar industry is collapsing. Installations are down, the solar pipeline is shrinking and thousands of jobs are at risk. This distressing reality is set out in black and white in a recently released report prepared by Sustainable Energy Advantage, LLC (SEA).

Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2019 Energy Master Plan set the stage for New Jersey to achieve 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050. The master plan concluded that New Jersey could meet this goal by reaching 20.64 GW dc of solar installations by 2035. To get there, the state needs to incentivize the installation of approximately 1,140 MW dc, annually, from 2020 to 2035.

Unfortunately, New Jersey installations have declined by an average of 10%-15% per year for the past four years. The projection for 2022 is 280 MW dc — the lowest total since 2015 and only about 25% of the Energy Master Plan’s target. Unless something changes, drastically and immediately, it will be all but impossible for the state to meet its solar installation targets.

The solar industry is a multibillion-dollar industry in New Jersey, with over 6,000 people employed. In years past, the state ranked first in the country in solar installations. Based on current projections, it will fall to 21st within five years. According to the SEA report, whereas New Jersey once ranked first in the country in solar jobs, it has now slipped to 12th. In addition to Gov. Murphy’s ambitious and important clean-energy goals, thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of investment in the state are at risk.

Although many factors contribute to the rate of solar installations, including equipment costs and interconnection delays, the SEA report notes that, at the same time New Jersey’s solar market is contracting, installation rates across the country are rising. In fact, in the same period (2019-21) that New Jersey’s solar market contracted by 23%, the U.S. solar market expanded by 78%. The report concludes that “NJ-specific characteristics and policy choices are the primary drivers of recent trends.”

Read the full story here

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Four decades after Watergate, ‘Ozzie’ Meyers heads back to federal prison again for bribery

The former politician was sentenced to 2 1/2 years behind bars after pleading guilty to bribing election workers to stuff ballot boxes in South Philadelphia local elections.

Former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers at a 1976 Philadelphia campaign stop.


By Jeremy Roebuck, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 27, 2022

The last time former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers stood before a federal judge to face sentencing in a bribery case, Ronald Reagan was president, and Abscam — the 1970s scandal that sent Myers and a host of other elected officials to prison — dominated newspaper headlines.

The South Philadelphia politician emerged from the New York courtroom brimming with confidence that his conviction would be overturned on appeal.

But as the now 79-year-old found himself facing a similar predicament Tuesday — this time awaiting punishment for a separate bribery scheme involving ballot-stuffing in local elections — he didn’t emerge from the courthouse at all.

Saying he had little confidence Myers had learned anything in the four decades between his convictions, U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond sentenced the former congressman to 2½ years in prison and ordered him hauled off to prison immediately — a decision that hit the courtroom like a bomb.

Read the full story here

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