“The public had to know. This had to be out in the media. And it worked,” said whistleblower Dave Ofshinsky, the former business manager at the state-run veterans home in Paramus.
Ofshinsky contacted news reporters about the chaos, lack of management, and death overwhelming the vets’ home in April 2020, when COVID-19 roared through the facility, killing up to seven residents a day. Ofshinsky said the home needs new management instead of being run by officials from the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
Some state senators apparently agree and will meet on Monday to brainstorm a solution, said Sen. Patrick Diegnan. “No doubt about it, we need to do the post-mortem, but also more importantly we’ve got to fix this thing and we’ve got to fix it ASAP,” Diegnan said.
PHILADELPHIA (Nov. 18, 2022) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will host a virtual community meeting for residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to share information about health risks from the chemical, ethylene oxide, or EtO. The community meeting will take place virtually on December 1 at 6 p.m. During the meeting, EPA staff will discuss revised risk information related to the B. Braun commercial sterilizer facility, located at 901 Marcon Blvd. in Allentown.
Later this year, EPA expects to propose an air pollution regulation to protect public health by addressing EtO emissions at commercial sterilizers. EPA is sharing EtO emissions data and information with the public to solicit feedback. The agency aims to improve public understanding of the risk; help states, Tribes, communities and the industry reduce risk from EtO in the near term; and hear input as the agency continues to develop regulations to reduce air pollution from commercial sterilizers.
EPA will be joined by federal and state environmental and health officials to address questions, comments, and concerns from the public, including Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection staff who will discuss work they are doing in partnership with B. Braun to reduce emissions and risk.
A Spanish-speaking interpreter will be available. To register for this virtual meeting, visit:
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The sudden collapse of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges rattled the nation’s capital this week, as lawmakers grappled with the wide-ranging fallout — and began to confront the consequences of neglecting the surging financial sector.
Only a few weeks ago, top Democrats and Republicans alike had been cashing campaign checks and working side-by-side with the vanguards of the industry, including FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, as they labored to craft new regulation in the frenetic, cutting-edge digital space.
Instead, Bankman-Fried unexpectedly became a potential case study of the costs of congressional inaction. While Washington dithered, he appeared to place risky bets that incinerated his fortune, jeopardized billions of dollars in Silicon Valley capital, and upended an entire ecosystem of cryptocurrency start-ups. The lawyer tapped to lead FTX in restructuring, who previously oversaw the bankruptcy of Enron, described the situation Thursday as a “complete failure of corporate controls.”
Investigators in the United States and abroad have opened probes into Bankman-Fried and his holdings. The Treasury Department has quietly placed calls to other large crypto exchanges to assess the risks of a broader contagion. And a slew of congressional committees has readied their own reviews, including a House inquiry announced Wednesday that could see Bankman-Fried testify under oath next month.
In the process, federal policymakers have been left to ask themselves a familiar, if uncomfortable question: Could they have prevented a crisis if they had paid close attention sooner?
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An Ohio solar panel manufacturer is expanding with a new production facility in Northern Alabama. First Solar Inc. announced Wednesday, November 16 that it would spend $1.1 billion building a new solar panel manufacturing plant in Lawrence County of the state. The latest announcement follows previous announcements by First Solar that it would expand its R&D and manufacturing operations in Ohio.
The Alabama factory, First Solar’s fourth plant and its first outside of Ohio, is expected to employ about 700 people, produce 3.5 gigawatts DC of capacity per year, and come online by the middle of the decade.
In a statement, First Solar CEO gave credit to the infrastructure bill signed in August by President Biden, which included $369 billion in funding for energy security and climate change, and said the new plant would be part of a wider U.S. transition to renewable energy.
The offshore wind industry is facing new scrutiny as some initial proposals to build big wind farms off coastal waters are running into unforeseen fiscal challenges driven by high inflation, rising interest rates, and continued constraints in the supply chain.
Those factors have led one company to ask to renegotiate its contract to build a 1,200-megawatt offshore wind farm in Massachusetts, a bid so far rejected by regulators there. They have also spurred Public Service Enterprise Group to reconsider its 25% investment in Ørsted’s 1,100-MW project to be built 15 miles off the Atlantic City coast.
Whether those issues are significant enough to slow New Jersey’s aggressive push to be a leader in the emerging industry remains to be seen, but there are critics who hope it does.
“The dirty secret of offshore wind is the economics don’t make sense,’’ said Mike Makarski, a spokesman for Affordable Energy of New Jersey, an organization that has been a persistent critic of the Murphy administration’s plan to shift to 100% clean energy by mid-century.
“The returns on our U.S. projects, including Ocean Wind I (the first approved New Jersey offshore wind farm), are not where we want them to be,’’ said CEO Mads Nipper, but he added the company remains committed to those projects.
Ørsted, PSEG, and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities have discussed the status of the Ocean Wind project, according to Joseph Fiordaliso, president of the BPU, the state agency overseeing the offshore wind initiative.
“Nothing is in jeopardy,’’ he said, making a statement about the potential setbacks at an unrelated BPU meeting earlier this month. “We all want to work it out. We will work it out.’’
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