Chemical manufacturer UCT will pay a $44,880 penalty to settle hazardous waste violations at its Bristol, Pennsylvania, facility, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.
EPA cited the company for violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the federal law governing the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. RCRA is designed to protect public health and the environment and avoid long and extensive cleanups, by requiring the safe, environmentally sound storage and disposal of hazardous waste.
UCT manufactures a variety of chemical products at its facility at 2731 Bartram Road in Bristol. These include solid phase extraction products for hospitals, clinical and toxicology labs, food safety testing labs, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and environmental testing facilities; and silane/silicone products used in the glass and fiber optic industries, medical device, cosmetics, paints and coatings, adhesives and electronics industries.
According to EPA, the company violated RCRA rules including storing hazardous waste for more than 90 days without a permit, failure to properly mark hazardous waste containers, failure to keep hazardous waste containers closed, failure to make waste determinations and failure to provide annual RCRA training.
The settlement reflects the company’s compliance efforts, and its cooperation with EPA in the investigation and resolution of this matter. As part of the settlement, the company has certified its compliance with applicable RCRA requirements.
Absent federal benchmark, advocates praise state for setting a limit
File photo
By Jon Hurdle, NJ Spotlight
Environmental activists welcomed a new recommendation by state scientists to regulate a toxic chemical, calling it the latest evidence of New Jersey’s efforts to curb contaminants in drinking water.
The Drinking Water Quality Institute, a panel of scientists and water company executives that advises the Department of Environmental Protection, has recommended one of the nation’s strictest standards for 1,4 dioxane, which is commonly used in solvents, paint strippers, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. The chemical is unregulated by the federal government even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls it a “likely” carcinogen.
The panel said DEP should set a Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL) of 0.33 parts per billion (ppb) in drinking water as the upper limit for safe consumption by humans. The standard is based on the risk of one person in a million getting cancer if exposed to 0.35 parts per billion over a lifetime.
If confirmed, the proposed regulation would require water companies to keep their supplies below that level, if necessary installing technology that would control the chemical. DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe asked the water quality panel in December 2018 to develop a recommendation for that maximum limit.
Limits on other chemicals
It was the latest action by the panel which in the last six years has recommended tough limits on three kinds of PFAS chemicals, which are also linked to cancer, as well as immune system disorders and other health conditions. All the earlier recommendations have been accepted by DEP and are now the basis of regulations that have established New Jersey as a national leader in protecting public health from the chemicals.
The latest proposal is a “really important recommendation,” said Tracy Carluccio of the environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network and a long-time campaigner for tighter regulation of chemicals in drinking water. She said the proposed limit is stricter than in most of the 13 states that already have a drinking water or groundwater health standard for the chemical.
But she urged the DEP to act quickly on the proposal to minimize the time that consumers are exposed to the chemical. Its recent regulation of PFAS chemicals has taken as much as three years to be finalized after the initial recommendation by water quality panel.
“We don’t want there to be a delay in the DEP rulemaking and the adoption of a MCL because we’ve got to get this very dangerous material out of people’s drinking water,” Carluccio said.
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Small business owners and representatives hit the New Jersey Senate Fiscal Recovery Strategists Committee with some daunting numbers during a Zoom conference Tuesday, which the lawmakers hosted to speak publicly with businesses affected by COVID-19 shutdowns.
New car sales have dropped 70 to 80 percent for April year over year as a result of New Jersey’s stay at home order, and May 2020 sales are expected to be just slightly north of half of May 2019’s, but New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers Jim Appleton told lawmakers Tuesday that this has been a time of lessons learned.
“If there is a silver lining here, it’s that consumers and retailers are becoming more comfortable with online shopping with cars,” Appleton said during the Zoom hearing hosted by Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-36th District.
Market research shows that older consumers, the most acquisitive and reliable consumers in the car sales world, according to Appleton, “stayed away in droves in the lockdown.” But now, car dealerships are sharpening their online services, and issues have been unearthed within the Motor Vehicle Commission’s online system that can now be addressed.
John Holub, president of the New Jersey Retail Merchants Association, told the committee that retail sales are down across almost the entire board: Health stores are down 10 percent, general merchandise stores are down 13 percent; sporting goods store sales are down 48 percent; electronics, 64 percent; upholstery and appliance, 66 percent; and most dramatically, clothing and accessory store sales are down 89 percent.
“It’s been a very uneven impact,” Holub said. “Obviously certain retail categories have been decimated [while] others have been okay, if you can even say that. It’s critically important that we reopen our main streets.”
Small business owners and association representatives took turns explaining the economic impact on their industries to the lawmakers on the Zoom conference as lawmakers asked them questions.
Obviously certain retail categories have been decimated [while] others have been okay, if you can even say that. It’s critically important that we reopen our main streets. – John Holub, president, New Jersey Retail Merchants Association
The committee, comprised of Sens. Troy Singleton, D-7th District; Steve Oroho, R-24th District; and President Pro Tempore M. Teresa Ruiz, in addition to Sarlo, is tasked with developing a plan to reopen New Jersey’s economy safely as the COVID-19 crisis progresses toward an end.
According to a recent survey by the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, 71 percent of businesses say they can openly safely and follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
“We need to know if we are within 10 percent of the goal post or are we still 50 percent out?” said NJBIA President Michele Siekerka. “No business can sit and do a business plan when you don’t know when you are opening and how you’re opening.”
For Frank Rizzieri, owner of Rizzieri Spa and Salon, which has three salons and a beauty school in South Jersey and locations in other states, acquiring PPE has meant going to multiple suppliers to get all that’s necessary.
“We started back in March to acquire basic PPE products, and what we’re finding is you can’t go to one supplier. You get some masks from one, some from another, some hand sanitizer,” Rizzieri said. “We’ve been able to acquire a good bit of PPE, but our suppliers aren’t able to keep adequate inventory…”
The cost of PPE per client is $5.40, Rizzieri said. Masks used to be 10 cents apiece, and now they’re $1.25 each.
Singleton noted that while Rizzieri might not have had issues getting PPE, smaller players might. This is where the state can step in, he explained, and be able to source and provide the PPE to the businesses.
He also posed a question to Appleton about the possibility of testing car dealership employees, to which Appleton shared the great expense it could be: “We don’t know what the protocols will be. We don’t know which test, and at what expense …i t could cost an average size dealer as much as $3,000 a day to do this kind of testing, and I’m not sure that’s economically feasible.”
Small businesses need guidance from government and timelines to work with, said Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey President Christina Renna.
Using shore restaurants as an example, Renna mentioned how a boardwalk pizza place that can’t have guests inside doesn’t know whether or not it can allow people to sit on the picnic tables in front of the restaurant.
Timelines are crucial too, she said, as small retailers can’t “flip the switch over night” and go back to business as usual. They need to restock their shelves, need time to train people, and need time to prepare.
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The United States recorded an estimated 37,100 excess deaths as the novel coronavirus spread across the country in March and the first two weeks of April, nearly 13,500 more than are now attributed to covid-19 for that same period, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.
The Yale team’s analysis suggests that the number of excess deaths accelerated as the pandemic took hold. There were 16,600 estimated excess deaths just in the week of April 5 to April 11, compared with 20,500 over the prior five weeks.
Though the team’s estimate of the impact early in the outbreak already paints a picture of unusually high mortality, the number is certain to grow as more deaths are reported to the federal government on a rolling basis.
“I think people need to be aware that the data they’re seeing on deaths is very incomplete,” said Dan Weinberger, a Yale professor of epidemiology who led the analysis for The Post.
Those excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people with unrelated maladies who avoided hospitals for fear of being exposed or who couldn’t get the care they needed from overwhelmed health systems, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The number is affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as traffic fatalities and homicides.
But excess deaths are a starting point for scientists to assess the overall impact of the pandemic.
The nation surpassed 64,000 coronavirus deaths on Friday, according to The Post’s compilation of state health department data. Weinberger said his team’s estimates of excess deaths indicate that the pandemic’s true toll to date is likely substantially higher.
“It’s hard to say how much higher, but our best guess might be it’s in the range of one and a half times higher,” he said.
The analysis is based on death certificate data that states compile and send to the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It often takes weeks for a death to be counted in these federal numbers, so tallies for the most recent weeks are provisional and inevitably missing many deaths. As time passes and more information becomes available, NCHS backfills data for those weeks — and the death totals grow.
Read the full story
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States are changing policies as an old debate gains new traction. Research shows consumers could wash reusables more, but there’s no clear proof single-use bags are less likely to spread coronavirus.
Permission granted by Kroeger
Leslie Nemo reports for WasteDive
Coronavirus upheaval has halted evictions, converted factories into ventilator and hand sanitizer producers and reshaped lives. The virus also seems to be disrupting something unexpected: Plastic bag bans.
Like most responses to the pandemic, initial steps came at the local level, with cities and states pulling back on proposed or enacted bag bans. Some of these choices are based on logistical issues: Boston reinstated their use, citing a need for stores to serve customers any way they can, for example. Massachusetts followed suit with more drastic measures: banning reusable bags and preempting local bag bans across the entire state. Maine has delayed its planned ban, which was supposed to kick-off on April 22nd. Connecticut lifted a 10-cent fee on plastic bags that just went into place last year and Hawaii County, Hawaii has also suspended its own plastic bag ban.
Another state taking a stance during the pandemic linked its choice to sanitation concerns — something the Plastics Industry Association echoed in a letter to federal health authorities. New Hampshire temporarily banned reusable bag use, which Gov. Chris Sununu tweeted was because of concerns the bags could spread the virus. In a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Plastics Industry Association requested that the agency issue a statement on what the association calls “the health and safety benefits seen in single-use plastics.”
This claim comes despite the fact that experts Waste Dive spoke with aren’t aware of any scientific evidence that single-use plastic bags are less likely to spread SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, an industry association promoting plastic bag use, declined to offer any evidence proving its product is less prone to spreading the virus. While preexisting public health research indicates shoppers could be keeping their reusable bags cleaner, emerging research on the brand-new virus shows details are still evolving about where and how long the pathogen can survive.
As preliminary as much of the coronavirus information is, it is worth nothing that major public health bodies have yet to issue a statement on risks from reusable bags, John Hocevar, the oceans campaign director of Greenpeace, told Waste Dive. “Trust the health professionals first and foremost,” he said. “This is not an alarm they’re raising.”
Epidemiologists still have a lot to learn about COVID-19. Experts believe the primary transmission mode is via respiratory droplets, which people inhale from one another if they stand too close. It’s possible those specks of moisture land on surfaces, and that people could touch virus-laden materials and then touch their faces, giving themselves the disease. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t think this is the main way SARS-CoV-2 spreads, the risk is part of why the agency recommends frequent hand-washing and disinfecting regularly-touched items in the home.
As for how long the virus survives on surfaces without a soapy or disinfectant intervention, researchers only have preliminary estimates. Initial research in the New England Journal of Medicine showed the pathogen lingers on stainless steel and plastic for two to three days, and cardboard for about 24 hours. Other new research on viruses related to SARS-CoV-2, in the Journal of Hospital Infection, shows those pathogens can persist on paper or PVC for up to five days.
No published studies have assessed SARS-CoV-2 survival on textiles or paper, however. Lab tests also hold humidity and room temperature constant for an entire week. If those conditions change — as they do in real life — survival situations can change, as noted in a March 25 webinar by the American Society of Safety Professionals.
There’s also been little investigation into whether reusable shopping bags spread disease. In 2018, a team of public health researchers sprayed reusable grocery bags with fake norovirus particles, handed them to shoppers and swabbed every surface the customer touched. The researchers picked up the fake virus with every swab and found the highest concentrations on the shopper’s hands, the checkout stand and the clerk’s hands.
With hands serving as hot-spots for this fake virus, the study backs up how important hand washing and hygiene are. “That’s really boring, probably, to hear,” said Ryan Sinclair, study co-author and public health researcher at Loma Linda University. But the sanitation measure is important.
Because their work also showed that reusable bags spread the fake virus around the store, Sinclair said he thinks it’s worth switching to disposable bags for the time being. Bags from home touch cars, grocery carts, conveyor belts and people’s hands. Sinclair thinks it’s important to minimize the amount of crossover between public and private spaces during the current health crisis.
“We need to work to minimize the wasteful use of plastics,” he said, “but while we’re in this pandemic, we definitely need to find another solution.”
His 2018 research didn’t receive any outside funding, though a PR group recently reached out to Sinclair to write about his thoughts on reusable bag use during the pandemic. The Plastics Industry Association letter to HHS also mentioned an attached affidavit from Sinclair supporting its claim that disposable bags are more sanitary. When asked if those behind the Plastics letter hired the PR group to contact Sinclair for the statement, the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance declined to participate in this story.
The American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance also declined to comment when asked for scientific evidence indicating that single-use plastic bags are less likely to spread SARS-CoV-2 or other viruses. The lack of evidence presented has sustainability advocates skeptical of these claims.
If the pathogen lingers on plastic, disposable bags are as susceptible to hosting the virus as reusable plastic versions, said Judith Enck, founder of Beyond Plastics and a former U.S. EPA regional administrator. Plus, Enck said, “the bags have traveled the world and have been sitting in the store where a lot of people are,” and aren’t immune to being sneezed on or coughed over.
Additionally, reusable bags can get washed, a solution that public health researchers and waste reduction advocates agree on. A 2011 survey — which received support from the American Chemistry Council, an organization supported by plastics producers — found that 97% of shoppers never wash their reusable bags.
Since the research also found a sampling of reusable bags harbored potentially-harmful bacteria, Chuck Gerba, a University of Arizona researcher who wrote the paper along with Sinclair, agrees with his co-author. For now, shoppers should use disposable bags and eventually return to reusable options. When relying on reusables again, “treat them like your underwear,” Gerba said. Wash them after every use and don’t use them for anything besides groceries.
Enck points out that the bacteria Gerba found on reusable bags isn’t necessarily a stand-in for viruses, and thinks it’s worth simply advocating for better bag sanitation now.
“I am very concerned about the coronavirus, and if I saw anything to suggest that reusable bags are a problem, I would say let’s pause on them for a while,” she said. Without that evidence, Enck thinks it’s preferable to wash bags regularly and be mindful of where they go. “You know when you washed it and who else was touching it.”
Enck thinks this approach of more thoroughly and regularly cleaning reusable items can carry over into our post-pandemic life, too. Though the plastic industry paints reusables as unsanitary, the appeal of being in control of who touches and washes your mugs and bags might ultimately win over consumers, Enck said. In a sign that not every state shares long-term sanitation fears over reusable bags, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation last week enacting a plastic bag ban starting January 2021.
In the meantime, the lack of definitive evidence for the sanitary superiority of single-use bags indicates that the single-use plastic industry is trying to capitalize on people’s fear, in Greenpeace’s view. Without that proof, Hocevarsaid, perhaps conversations should be dedicated to clearer, pressing concerns.
“I would like to see the focus of our conversation about health and safety right now focused on the threats that we know are real,” he said.
Related news stories: NJ enviro groups support 54 towns in retaining plastic bag bans NJ’s leading environmental groups are reaching out to support and help NJ’s 54 mayors and towns defend their single use plastics bag bans in response to what they call a bullying and misinformation campaign by Plastics industry and the NJ Food Council InsiderNJ
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President Trump attends the coronavirus response daily briefing at the White House on March 20. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.
By Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post
The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Intelligence agencies “have been warning on this since January,” said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.Coronavirus cases rose as Trump said they were under controlAt least seven times over the past two months, President Trump said the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. were falling or contained even as they rose. (Video: JM Rieger/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”
Spokespeople for the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and a White House spokesman rebutted criticism of Trump’s response.
“President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.”
Public health experts have criticized China for being slow to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, and have said precious time was lost in the effort to slow the spread. At a White House briefing Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said officials had been alerted to the initial reports of the virus by discussions that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had with Chinese colleagues on Jan. 3.
The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February, said officials familiar with the reports. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19, said officials who have read the reports.
The surge in warnings coincided with a move by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to sell dozens of stocks worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was privy to virtually all of the highly classified reporting on the coronavirus. Burr issued a statement Friday defending his sell-off, saying he sold based entirely on publicly available information, and he called for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate.AD
A key task for analysts during disease outbreaks is to determine whether foreign officials are trying to minimize the effects of an outbreak or take steps to hide a public health crisis, according to current and former officials familiar with the process.
At the State Department, personnel had been nervously tracking early reports about the virus. One official noted that it was discussed at a meeting in the third week of January, around the time that cable traffic showed that U.S. diplomats in Wuhan were being brought home on chartered planes — a sign that the public health risk was significant. A colleague at the White House mentioned how concerned he was about the transmissibility of the virus.
“In January, there was obviously a lot of chatter,” the official said.
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president.
Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
On Jan. 27, White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.
Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.
By early February, Grogan and others worried that there weren’t enough tests to determine the rate of infection, according to people who spoke directly to Grogan. Other officials, including Matthew Pottinger, the president’s deputy national security adviser, began calling for a more forceful response, according to people briefed on White House meetings.
But Trump resisted and continued to assure Americans that the coronavirus would never run rampant as it had in other countries.
“I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said on Feb. 19. “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Trump tweeted five days later. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
But earlier that month, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services delivered a starkly different message to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a classified briefing that four U.S. officials said covered the coronavirus and its global health implications.
Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response — who was joined by intelligence officials, including from the CIA — told committee members that the virus posed a “serious” threat, one of those officials said.
Kadlec didn’t provide specific recommendations, but he said that to get ahead of the virus and blunt its effects, Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives, the official said. “It was very alarming.”
Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.
Some of Trump’s advisers told him that Beijing was not providing accurate numbers of people who were infected or who had died, according to administration officials. Rather than press China to be more forthcoming, Trump publicly praised its response.
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A drinking water sample taken from a Bergen County, NJ town had one of the highest concentrations of an increasingly common group of toxic chemicals found across the nation in a survey of water systems, according to a report issued Wednesday.
The sample taken in Bergenfield in August detected 12 compounds of PFAS, a group of man-made chemicals used in everyday products for almost a century and which have been linked in recent years to cancer and other ailments.
The levels of PFAS, or polyfluoroalkyl substances, did not exceed a federal health standard for drinking water. Tests by the Suez water company, which supplies Bergenfield and dozens of other Bergen and Hudson County towns, also show PFAS levels below that standard.
But the results still ranked Bergen County number four in the nationwide survey conducted by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.
“It’s a snapshot of what’s happening locally, but it also shows the ubiquity of PFAS in our water nationally,” said Sydney Evans, an analyst for the advocacy group and an author of the report.
The chemicals are found in non-stick pans, polishes, waxes, paints, cleaning products and firefighting foams. Brand names that contain the chemicals include Stainmaster, Scotchgard, Teflon and Gore-Tex.
PFAS compounds like PFOA, PFOS and GenX, have been found in drinking water from such upscale towns as Ridgewood in Bergen County to shore towns like Toms River to sparsely populated communities at the southwestern tip of New Jersey.
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We reported on Saturday that time was running out on A3726, a bill that would require large-scale generators of food waste (think universities, restaurants, casinos, etc.) to send their material to state-approved recycling facilities.
Late today, the Senate announced that it will consider a motion on Thursday (Jan. 9) to accept the governor’s recommended amendments that would remove exemptions in the bill for landfills and waste incinerators. If the motion succeeds, as is expected, Governor Murphy will sign the bill into law.
That outcome would delight numerous recycling and other environmental organizations that have been fighting for years to get the bill enacted.
But don’t expect quick results. Currently, there are no recycling facilities in the state that fit the role anticipated by the legislation. Proposals to build such facilities can now be expected to surface since the new law would essentially guarantee a flow of food waste to them. Without a predictable and dependable supply, investors have not been willing to commit funding to build and operate full-scale, food-waste recycling plants.
Where will we likely see food waste plants? Those familiar with such projects expect the first proposals will come from areas of the state with the highest populations. More people=more food waste=greatest potential return on recycling facility investments.
Two potential hurdles both involve the NJDEP The agency’s ever-constricted budget doesn’t have much room to hire new employees to review recycling plant proposals. And, even if a proposal gets a DEP green light, the agency will still need to add staffers to oversee compliance. Why? See Boston Globe linkbelow.
From the Boston Globe, February 26, 2019 Five years ago, Massachusetts launched the nation’s most ambitious effort to curb commercial food waste by banning universities, hospitals, and large businesses from sending discarded food to landfills.
But critics like John Hanselman, who built a business based on the ban, say that state regulators have failed to enforce the restrictions, leading to a widespread lack of compliance.
Hanselman’s company invested $70 million to build five high-tech plants to convert food waste — a significant source of carbon emissions — into electricity, heat, and fertilizer. But now his company is scrounging to find a sufficient amount of waste for the plants.Click for more.
Big waste generators already seeking to be exempted
As the legislation moved through the Senate and Assembly, many insiders believed it would never reach the governor’s desk. Few of the ‘large generators’ who would be covered by the bill publically objected to it. But within days of the legislation’s late-session show of momentum, hospitals won the introduction of S4343 that would grant them a two-year exemption.
If the Senate passes and the Governor signs A3726, how many more exemption bills will be introduced in the next session? Stay tuned.
2019 ends with recyclers rejoicing
Despite the hurdles that the expected new food waste law might face, it still is a major victory for the state’s recycling industry that also is celebrating the expected final passage of:
S1683 Cracks down on phony ‘soil recyclers’ including organized-crime types who pedaled contaminated soils to construction projects
A4382/SS2815 Authorizes participation in a nationwide, used-paint, take-back program that will shift the cost of paint recycling from county budgets to a national program underwritten by paint manufacturers.
Yesterday we reported on environment bills scheduled for action in the NJ Assembly. Below is a combination of bills appearing on upcoming committee agendas and board lists in both the NJ Assembly and Senate. Again, we caution that bill additions and deletion are subject to frequent change during the sometimes tumultuous lame-duck session.
A1212 AcaSa (2R) McKeon (D27); Gusciora (D15) Clarifies intent of P.L.2007, c.340 regarding NJ’s required participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 11:00a Caucus; 1:00p Voting Session. 12/16/2019—Senate, 11:00a Party Conferences; 12:00p Party Caucus; 1:00p Voting Session.
A4267 Aca (1R) McKeon (D27); Space (R24); Wirths (R24) Concerns regulation of solid waste, hazardous waste, and soil and fill recycling industries. 12/12/2019—Assembly Appropriations Committee, 11:00a, 4th Floor, Committee Room 11, Annex. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session.
A4382 Aca (1R) Pinkin (D18); Lopez (D19); Kennedy (D22) Requires paint producers to implement or participate in a paint industry-sponsored stewardship program. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session.
A5518 Aca (1R) Benson (D14); Karabinchak (D18); Pinkin (D18) +1 Establishes “Alternative Fuel Vehicle Transportation Financing Commission” to examine the manner in which alternative fuel vehicles may be taxed to contribute to cost of maintaining the State transportation system. 12/12/2019—Assembly Appropriations Committee, 11:00a, 4th Floor, Committee Room 11, Annex. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00 pm Voting Session
A5854 Aca (1R) Pintor Marin (D29); Speight (D29); Schaer (D36) +5 Allows municipalities to adopt ordinances to enter properties to perform lead service line replacements. 12/12/2019—Assembly Appropriations Committee, 11:00a, 4th Floor, Committee Room 11, Annex. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session
A5971 Mukherji (D33); Pintor Marin (D29); Spearman (D5) +21 Authorizes NJ Infrastructure Bank to expend additional sums to make loans for environmental infrastructure projects for FY2020. 12/12/2019—Assembly Appropriations Committee, 11:00a, 4th Floor, Committee Room 11, Annex. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session.
A6014 Aca (1R) Vainieri Huttle (D37); Pinkin (D18) Establishes NJ Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers University, appropriates up to $500,000. 12/12/2019—Assembly Appropriations Committee, 11:00a, 4th Floor, Committee Room 11, Annex. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session.
S611 ScsSa (SCS/1R) Sweeney (D3); Smith (D17); Bateman (R16); Greenstein (D14) Clarifies intent of P.L.2007, c.340 regarding NJ’s required participation in Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. 12/16/2019—Senate, 1:00p Voting Session.
S874 Sweeney (D3); Smith (D17) +3 Requires State’s full participation in Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. 12/16/2019—Senate, 11:00p Voting Session.
S1683 ScaSaAca (3R) Smith (D17); Greenstein (D14) +2 Concerns regulation of solid waste, hazardous waste, and soil and fill recycling industries. 12/12/2019—Assembly Appropriations Committee, 1:00a, 4th Floor, Committee Room 11, Annex. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session.
S3215 Sca (1R) Greenstein (D14); Singleton (D7) +1 Requires State to use a 20‐year time horizon and most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report when calculating global warming potential to measure global warming impact of greenhouse gases. 12/16/2019—Assembly, 1:00p Voting Session.
S3457 Sweeney (D3); Andrzejczak (D1) +5 Appropriates $450,000 for Hooked on Fishing‐Not on Drugs Program. 12/16/2019—Senate, 1:00 p Voting Session.
S3985 Smith (D17) Expands the definition of “qualified offshore wind project” to include “open access offshore wind transmission facility.” 12/16/2019—Senate, 11:00a 1:00p Voting Session.
S4162 Sca (1R) Smith (D17) Establishes NJ Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers University, appropriates up to $500,000. 12/16/2019—Senate, 1:00p Voting Session.
SCR180 Sca (1R) Sacco (D32); Stack (D33) +2 Urges NJ Sports and Exposition Authority and DEP to take immediate action to close and cap Keegan Landfill. 12/16/2019—Senate, 100p Voting Session.
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NORMAN, Okla.— A judge Monday found Johnson & Johnson responsible for fueling Oklahoma’s opioid crisis, ordering the health care company to pay $572 million to remedy the devastation wrought by the epidemic on the state and its residents.
Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman’s landmark decision is the first to hold a drugmaker culpable for the fallout of years of liberal opioid dispensing that began in the late 199os, sparking a nationwide epidemic of overdose deaths and addiction. More than 400,000 people have died of overdoses from painkillers, heroin and illegal fentanyl since 1999.
“The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma and must be abated immediately,” Balkman said, reading part of his decision aloud from the bench Monday afternoon.
“As a matter of law, I find that defendants’ actions caused harm, and those harms are the kinds recognized by [state law] because those actions annoyed, injured or endangered the comfort, repose, health or safety of Oklahomans,” he wrote in the decision.
With more than 40 states lined up to pursue similar claims against the pharmaceutical industry, the ruling in the first state case to go to trial could influence both side’s strategies in the months and years to come. Plaintiffs’ attorneys around the country cheered the decision, saying they hoped it would serve as a bellwether for an enormous federal lawsuit brought by nearly 2,000 cities, counties, Native American tribes and others, which is scheduled to begin in October.
Johnson & Johnson, which has denied any wrongdoing, said it would appeal the decision. “Janssen did not cause the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and neither the facts nor the law support this outcome,” said Michael Ullmann, general counsel for Johnson & Johnson.
Ullmann said the ruling disregards the drugmaker’s compliance with federal and state laws, “the unique role its medicines play in the lives of the people who need them,” and the fact its drugs accounted for less than 1 percent of total opioid prescriptions in Oklahoma as well as the United States.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter (R) brought suit in 2017 against New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson and two other major drug companies, accusing them of creating “a public nuisance” by showering the state with opioids, while downplaying the drugs’ addictive potential and persuading physicians to use them even for minor aches and pains. Before the late 1990s, physicians reserved the powerful drugs primarily for cancer and post-surgical pain and end-of-life care.
More than 6,000 Oklahomans have died of painkiller overdoses since 2000, the state charged in court papers, as the number of opioid prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies reached 479 every hour in 2017.
Johnson & Johnson’s products — two prescription opioid pills and a fentanyl skin patch sold by its subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals — were a small part of the painkillers consumed in Oklahoma. But Hunter painted the company as a “kingpin” of the drug trade because two other companies it owned grew, processed and supplied 60 percent of the ingredients in painkillers sold by most drug companies.
“At the root of this crisis was Johnson & Johnson, a company that literally created the poppy that became the source of the opioid crisis,” the state charged.
The state also said that Johnson & Johnson took an active part in the pharmaceutical industry’s effort to change doctors’ reluctance to prescribe opioids by mounting an aggressive misinformation campaign that targeted the least knowledgeable physicians.
The company’s “marketing scheme was driven by a desire to make billions for their pain franchise,” Hunter wrote. “To do this, they developed and carried out a plan to directly influence and convince doctors to prescribe more and more opioids, despite the fact that defendants knew increasing the supply of opioids would lead to abuse, addiction, misuse, death and crime.”
That left corporate giant Johnson & Johnson, which chose to fight the accusations in what became a seven-week trial before Balkman. There was no jury.
The core of Johnson & Johnson’s defense was that it could not be held liable for supplying legal products and ingredients, which were highly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and state authorities themselves.
At trial, company lawyers sought to rebut accusations of a misinformation campaign by attributing them to third parties and contending sales calls to doctors did not lead to overprescribing, or the drug crisis.
“At the heart of the state’s case is the premise that stray promotional statements by Janssen over the course of two decades somehow caused Oklahoma’s opioid abuse crisis,” their lawyers wrote, referring to the subsidiary that supplied the opioids. “Never once, however, did the state identify a single Oklahoma doctor who was misled by a single statement Janssen made,” they said in documents filed at the conclusion of the trial.
As for its two subsidiaries that grew, refined and supplied the ingredients that went into painkillers, Johnson & Johnson lawyers said that Noramco and Tasmanian Alkaloids engaged in legal commerce under the watchful eye of the DEA and in compliance with the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Legally, the trial centered on the state’s novel, perhaps unprecedented, attempt to claim the drug company created a public nuisance in the state of Oklahoma. Historically, that law has been used against loud neighbors, brothels and polluters who used their properties in ways that harmed others. The remedy has been to force them to stop.
But in this case, Oklahoma, citing the law, said the drug company’s conduct did “annoy, injure and endanger the comfort, repose, health and safety of others,” as well as “render Oklahomans insecure in life and in the use of property.”
