EnviroPolitics Blog

Mayors, enviros urge NJ Gov. Murphy to adopt NJDEP’s emergency flood regulations

*Flooding on South Main Street in Manville, NJ after winter storm on Jan. 20, 1996 Photo by Kerrie Hagy | for The Star-Ledger)*

By Mike Deak, MyCentralJersey.com

MANVILLE – Mayor Richard Onderko grew up on North Second Avenue and a half-century ago, he had to be rescued by boat from the floodwaters from Tropical Storm Doria.

On Wednesday he stood on the same street a block from the Raritan River before a house ruined by a natural gas explosion during the flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida a year ago and implored Gov. Phil Murphy to approve the state Department of Environmental Protection’s proposed rules to upgrade and update the state’s flood hazard and stormwater management regulations.

“We need a sense of urgency to help our residents get out of harm’s way,” he said. “Our residents deserve better.”

And the mayor repeated the plea he has been making on the first anniversary of the flood that inundated the borough last year, just as the floods from Hurricane Irene in 2011, Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and Doria in 1971 brought the town to the brink of survival

“Please help Manville,” Onderko said, adding the borough, bordered by the Raritan and Millstone rivers, is “ground zero” for floods caused not only by excessive rains but runoff from communities as far away as Mercer County.

Manville Mayor Richard Onderko speaks Wednesday at a press conference urging Gov. Phil Murphy to approve the state Department of Environmental Protection's new rules for flood hazard area and stormwater management. Onderko is speaking before what remains of a house destroyed in a natural gas explosion during Hurricane Ida last year in Manville. — *The mayor, other elected officials and environmentalists gathered Wednesday to deliver the message that the governor should implement the DEP’s proposed rules as soon as possible.*

The state has ignored the warnings from the previous floods, said Jim Waltman, executive director of The Watershed Institute.

He likened it to someone hitting the snooze button after the wake-up alarm sounds.

“It’s time to stop hitting the snooze button,” he said.

Read the full story here

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Report says Oath Keepers in New Jersey include 12 in law enforcement, 1 politician

FILE - Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, June 25, 2017. — *FILE – Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, June 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)*

By Josh Bakan, Patch staff

NEW JERSEY — Twelve members of law enforcement and one elected officials are among hundreds of New Jerseyans on the membership list of the Oath Keepers — a far-right militia accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6 insurrection — according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Several organizations that monitor domestic terrorism and hate groups have labeled the Oath Keepers as extremists, including the ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center. Few specifics about the group’s membership were publicly known until September 2021, when nonprofit journalist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) published more than 38,000 names on the Oath Keepers’ membership rolls.

The Oath Keepers differentiate themselves from other anti-government extremist groups in their explicit recruiting of current and former military, law enforcement and emergency services personnel, according to the ADL. But their beliefs don’t stray far from the norm in that sector of extremism.

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Ironworkers union passed Black members over for desirable jobs? Boss caught on tape using slurs

By S.P. Sullivan | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

A New Jersey chapter of the international ironworkers union faces allegations of discrimination and fostering a racist work environment after a Black female ironworker filed a complaint alleging that Blacks and other minority workers were regularly given less-desirable, short-term assignments, while major construction projects including jobs at Newark Airport and the American Dream mall went to white workers.

Ironworkers Local 11 was hit on Tuesday with the first step in a civil rights complaint from the state Division on Civil Rights, which found probable cause after investigating the worker’s complaint.

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NJ has itself another Superfund site — a river

*Photo credit: TOTARIQ ZEHAWI/NORTHJERSEY.COM*

By Brenda Flanigan, NJ Spotlight News

“Today is truly a win for the communities along the Lower Hackensack — and we deserve to take a moment to celebrate!” said the Environmental Protection Agency’s Walter Mugdan, Wednesday. Environmental officials triumphantly added the Lower Hackensack River — 19 miles of waterway — as Jersey’s newest federal Superfund site, number 115.

Making it onto the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List unlocks the federal toolbox and funding required to clean up the thick gumbo of toxic sediment that’s befouled the river bottom. “I was convinced that the only way this river was ever gonna get cleaned up was to unleash the almighty power of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They know how to do this work,” noted Riverkeeper Captain Billy Sheehan.

But rehabbing the Hackensack won’t be easy. It could cost $2 billion to $3 billion and take 20 years. For decades no fewer than six Superfund sites along the waterway dumped or leached arsenic, lead, mercury, and cancer-causing chemicals like PCBs into the river, and landfills dotted the landscape. Particles get eaten by wildlife — like crabs and fish. Signs warn folks not to eat their catch — but many ignore the advisory. “We counsel them not to do it — because it is dangerous. But we know that they do it anyhow. So that makes it even more urgent that we clean up these rivers,” Mugdan said.

See video report here

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Winter house warming costs heating up in NJ

By Tom Johnson, NJ Spotlight

The cost of heating a house with natural gas is rising sharply this winter, ranging from $21 a month to as much as $31 per month, depending on which of the state’s four gas utilities supply the fuel.

In unanimously approving the provisional increases that are effective next month, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities commissioners blamed global geopolitical events for the spike without mentioning the obvious — the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and its cutoff of most gas supplies to western Europe.

Higher commodity prices also factored into why customers will pay more, as did increases in transmission costs on interstate pipelines. The four utilities do not make a profit on purchasing gas, only on delivering it to customers through their local distribution systems.

Timing is everything

Nevertheless, the higher bills come at a time when consumers are paying more for food, gasoline, and other energy bills

“These steep increases are really going to hurt,’’ said Eveyn Liebman, an associate director of AARP in New Jersey, citing higher inflation and higher cost of living in the state. “This is only going to make life worse for people already facing hard times.’’

Read the full story here

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Mississippi River Basin could be in an ‘extreme heat belt’ in 30 years, study finds

*A woman buys ice cream ahead of a heat wave in downtown Chicago, the United States, on June 14, 2022. Credit: Vincent D. Johnson/Xinhua via Getty Images*

By Keely Brewer, The Daily Memphian, and Eva Tesfaye, Harvest Public Media

A climate study released during one of the hottest summers on record predicts a 125-degree “extreme heat belt” will stretch across a quarter of the country by 2053.

Within the next 30 years, 107 million people—mostly in the central U.S.—are expected to experience temperatures exceeding 125 degrees, a threshold that the National Weather Service categorizes as “Extreme Danger.” That’s 13 times more than the current population experiencing extreme heat.

The hottest cities, according to the study, will be Kansas City, Missouri.; St. Louis; Memphis, Tennessee; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Chicago.

“This is… really off the charts of the scales that we’ve developed to measure these kinds of things,” said Bradley Wilson, the director of research and development at First Street Foundation, the New York-based climate research nonprofit that developed the model.

Temperatures are expected to increase by 2.5 degrees over the next three decades. Warmer air retains water, creating more humid conditions and compounding heat indexes.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that human activity, in particular fossil fuel emissions, has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate in at least the last 2,000 years.

Read the full story here

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