‘Zombie’ as pipeline raises environmental fear in New Jersey

By Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News

Opponents are on guard again over a revived proposal to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey — including along the seabed in Raritan Bay — into Queens, New York.

They call it the “zombie pipeline” because, after being killed twice by legal challenges and permit denials that spanned almost a decade, the project has come back to life.

Oklahoma-based Williams/Transco is behind the attempted revival of the Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline. The pipeline, which would generate energy only for New York, would also require a new compressor station in Franklin Township, Somerset County.

Revived natural gas pipeline plan includes major disturbances in Raritan Bay.

Opponents say the construction of an underwater pipeline would expose New Jersey to all of the risks and pollution with zero benefits. Greg Remaud, CEO of NY/NJ Baykeeper, said he believes Raritan Bay would be irreparably harmed.

“Raritan Bay, it’s just an incredible recreational and ecological treasure,” Remaud said. “I mean, there’s boating, sailing, crabbing, world-class fishing for bluefish, striped bass, fluke. It supports kelp, which is what whales feed on, and supports lots of other fish. There’s a commercial crabbing industry here. So, to run a needless pipeline across twenty-three miles of Raritan Bay, going through wetlands and then slicing through marine habitat and clam beds, it makes no sense to us.”

Remaud is concerned that construction would disturb toxic heavy metals, such as copper and mercury, buried in the bay’s sediments — a relic of New Jersey’s industrial past.

Undoing ‘good environmental work’

“Now $175 million is going to clean up the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund site, which is right adjacent to where the NESE pipeline would be going in,” Remaud said. “All this money is being spent to remove lead, but copper, mercury, and other contaminants are being re-suspended into the water column? So it really makes no sense, and the stakes are even higher because we’re undoing really good environmental work on the Raritan Bayshore,” he added.

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Homeowners scramble as solar tax credit deadline expires soon

File photo: Installing solar panels on a residential rooftop

By Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent, NJ Spotlight

WASHINGTON — After Congress voted to end a federal tax credit for rooftop solar installations, homeowners are galloping to buy, install, and hook up, panels to their houses before the year is out.

As part of President Donald Trump’s signature new domestic policy law, lawmakers voted to phase out a 30% tax credit for residential solar, which could defray about $9,000 of the cost of a project, on Dec. 31, roughly a decade before the scheduled date.

Now homeowners are racing to purchase, rack, and connect solar panels to the electric grid to meet that deadline.

“It is a rush,” Lyle Rawlings, president and co-founder of the Mid-Atlantic Solar & Storage Industries Association, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “Anybody who’s been thinking and dreaming of doing solar on their home understands that they have to do it now.”

Solar companies are struggling to keep up with demand, said Rawlings, president of Advanced Solar Projects, a commercial solar company based in Flemington. “Salespeople are overloaded.” 

Surge of interest in NJ

After Congress passed the new law, online solar marketplace EnergySage hit an “all-time high in customer inquiries in July,” the company said, and the number of New Jersey customers who registered to receive quotes from local installers increased 109% from June to July, according to data from the firm. “Pedal to the metal right now,” Emily Walker, director of content and insights at EnergySage, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

Expiration of the credit lands as the U.S. solar industry is under strain from Trump’s tariffs, trade disputes, a hazy business outlook, and a federal administration hostile to renewable energy, solar included.

Over the summer, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled $7 billion in funding for solar grants, hundreds of millions of which had been slated for New Jersey.

Even before the budget law took effect, the residential solar industry was already in trouble. Solar installations dropped 31% in 2024, versus the previous year, and large companies in the field — SunPower, Sunnova, and Mosaic Solar — filed for bankruptcy.

The new federal law, which almost every Republican in Congress voted for and every Democrat voted against, also phased out a 30% federal tax incentive for commercial-scale solar projects — the sort of installations that might go atop a big-box store.

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As Musk’s auto sales plunge, Tesla may offer him $1 Trillion to focus

Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company's Fremont, California, factory.
Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company’s Fremont, California, factory. | Noah Berger/AP

By DAVID FERRIS, Politico 

Tesla has been synonymous with electric vehicles for more than 15 years, elevating the company’s brand and CEO Elon Musk’s fortune.

But Tesla’s ambitions as an EV maker are shrinking as it pursues artificial intelligence — and faces the reality of a decreasing share of the car market.

Tesla’s vehicles made up only 38 percent of U.S. electric vehicle sales in August, according to data from Cox Automotive that was first reported by Reuters. Five years ago, Tesla sold more than 80 percent of America’s EVs.

Recent declines have been sharpest, tracking Musk’s plunging political popularity after leading President Donald Trump’s government-slashing efforts. As recently as May, Tesla sold more than half of U.S. EVs.

Meanwhile, Tesla recently released two milestone documents: a new master plan and a new proposed pay package for Musk. Neither puts electric vehicles in the foreground.

Musk’s pay package, which Tesla’s board unveiled last week and still needs investor approval, lays out the goals that Musk must hit to earn a titanic $1 trillion in the next decade.

It includes stretch goals in industries that, for now, barely exist.

For example, Musk could meet his targets by selling 1 million Optimus robots or putting 1 million robotaxis on the road. Both goals are difficult because, unlike when it began selling EVs, Tesla has serious competitors; it trails Waymo in robotaxi deployment, and other firms are developing humanoid robots.

Read the full story here

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EPA Pulls Proposed Effluent Guidelines for Meat and Poultry

By Christopher H. Dolan, Amani B. Khoury, Amy L. Waite, Faegre Drinker

At a Glance

  • The EPA’s decision to withdraw the proposed revisions to the Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines allows meat and poultry processing facilities to continue operating under their current discharge permits.
  • Facilities should be aware that existing state and local wastewater discharge requirements remain in effect and may be subject to future modifications.
  • Processors that discharge wastewater to publicly owned treatment works must monitor local pretreatment program requirements, which can be updated based on local conditions or evolving EPA guidance.

On August 28, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will not move forward with revising the Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELGs) or establishing new pretreatment standards for the Meat and Poultry Products (MPP) sector. This final action, signed by Administrator Lee Zeldin, means that no new federal wastewater discharge requirements will be imposed on meat and poultry processing facilities at this time. The EPA’s decision is grounded in its statutory discretion and analysis of the rule’s potential impacts on the sector and the broader U.S. economy.

Background

On January 23, 2024, the EPA announced its intent to revise the technology-based ELGs for the MPP point source category. The proposal considered options for imposing more stringent discharge limits on pollutants such as total nitrogen and phosphorus, updating requirements for other contaminants, establishing new pretreatment standards for facilities discharging indirectly, and revising production thresholds for existing subcategories. The 2024 proposal was, in part, the result of a settlement of litigation filed by environmental groups. After receiving public comments to the 2024 proposal, EPA has now decided not to proceed with finalizing these revisions.

Why Did EPA Withdraw the Proposal?

At the heart of EPA’s decision is the recognition that the meat and poultry processing industry is critical to the nation’s food supply chain. The agency concluded that imposing additional regulatory requirements would not be appropriate under the Clean Water Act, citing the factors that follow.

Industry Economic Stressors

The sector has faced significant disruptions, including COVID-19-related supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, and disease outbreaks, including highly pathogenic avian flu and New World screwworm. Additional compliance costs risk further plant closures and reduced production capacity, which could diminish industry competitiveness and threaten the stability of the food supply chain.

Read the full advisory here

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Pa plastics plant Styropek settles with enviro groups for $22.6 M

By Julie Grant, Allegheny Front

Three Rivers Waterkeeper and PennEnvironment, along with the DEP, announced a settlement Thursday with Houston-based polystyrene maker Styropek and its facility, BVPV Styrenics LLC, in Beaver County.

In 2022 and 2023, the Waterkeeper group monitored the Ohio River near the newly built Shell cracker plant in Monaca, looking for nurdles, which are tiny plastic pellets. And they found a lot of them.

“Not only would you find it in the water, you’d find it on the banks as well,” said David Mazur, executive director of PennEnvironment. “So, the vegetation on the stream banks would be coated with tiny pieces of plastic, these pellets.”

But the nurdles weren’t coming from the Shell plant. Instead, they were traced to the Styropek plant’s wastewater pipe at Raccoon Creek, near the confluence with the Ohio River.

“You could literally sit there in a boat and look down, and it almost looks like a fountain, like there’s that pressure and it’s pushing these little beads of plastic to the surface,” Mazur said. 

Read the full story

Pa DEP, environmental groups, reach $2.6M settlement with plastic maker Styropek (Post-Gazette)

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Did 25-year Princeton funding earn BP cover for its climate goals?

PRINCETON

By Saptakee S, Carbon Credits.com

For a quarter of a century, Princeton University partnered with one of the world’s biggest oil and gas giants, BP. The alliance poured money into the University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI), one of its most prominent climate research programs. On the surface, the deal brought prestige and resources. In reality, critics argue that it delayed the urgent work of phasing out fossil fuels.

Now, the partnership is ending, as reported by The Daily Princetonian. When the current contract expires in 2025, BP will no longer fund CMI. Both sides insist it’s a mutual decision, but the move comes after years of growing criticism, student protests, and investigations that raised serious questions about how fossil fuel companies use academia to protect their business model.

A Deal That Shaped Climate Research

The report further explained: when Princeton struck its deal with BP back in 2000, it was framed as a groundbreaking collaboration. BP’s funding supported research into carbon capture, storage, alternative fuels, and other mitigation strategies.

CMI quickly became one of the University’s flagship institutes, producing influential studies like the Net Zero America report, which mapped possible pathways for the U.S. to achieve net zero by 2050.

Of the five modeled scenarios, four kept fossil fuels in play through mid-century, relying heavily on carbon capture to offset emissions. Critics later pointed out that this conclusion closely mirrored BP’s corporate strategy: continue pumping oil and gas while showcasing carbon capture as a lifeline.

At the time, renewable energy was less developed and more expensive than it is today. But as wind, solar, geothermal, and battery technologies advanced rapidly, the wisdom of pouring billions into carbon capture began to look like a stalling tactic.

Prestige for BP, Problems for Princeton

For BP, the partnership was a communications jackpot. Having Princeton’s name attached to its climate efforts gave the company a veneer of credibility, even as it expanded drilling and exploration. Internal communications later revealed how BP staff highlighted Princeton’s research to bolster its case for carbon capture and hydrogen in U.S. policy circles.

Princeton and BP agree to end 25-year funding (Daily Princetonian)

For Princeton, the financial support was significant, but the cost was reputational. As the climate crisis worsened, the University found itself increasingly criticized for giving BP legitimacy. By 2022, Princeton announced it would divest from fossil fuels, yet the BP relationship remained—an uncomfortable contradiction for a campus under growing activist pressure.

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