EnviroPolitics Blog

Greene County (NY) solar farm clears big hurdle

Flint Mine Solar slated for 100 megawatts in Coxsackie and Athens

The proposed Flint Mine Solar farm here cleared what is perhaps its last major hurdle Wednesday when the state Public Service Department’s Siting Board lent its approval to the 100 megawatt project.Andrew Aitchison/Corbis via Getty Images

By Rick Karlin, Times Union

COXSACKIE — The proposed Flint Mine Solar farm cleared what is perhaps its last major hurdle Wednesday when the state Public Service Department’s Siting Board lent its approval to the 100-megawatt (MW) project.

Flint Mine had been on track for approval since August 2020 when the Public Service Department found that the plan was “compliant” with guidelines and requirements for such a project. But Wednesday’s decision brought it a step closer to groundbreaking.

“Today’s unanimous approval is a very big step for FMS—after five years of development effort,” Bill Moore, the principal in Hudson Energy Development, which is building the farm. “I think the path forward to a groundbreaking, possibly later this year, is clear.”

Still needed is the specific construction plan and a separate approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That’s because a small part of the project would be in wetlands under federal jurisdiction.

But even opponents said the project appeared poised to move forward.

“I don’t know what we can do at this point,” said Nancy Harm, a member of Saving Greene, a group worried about the size of this, and other projects, including a 50 MW proposal by Hecate Energy.

All in all, Saving Greene notes that seven solar projects have been proposed for the area around Coxsackie and Athens, where part of the Flint Mine will also be located.

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Op-Ed: Why we must say goodbye to fossil fuels now

Investing in green funds is a beginning, but no more than that. Stopping the progress of climate change means breaking ties with all aspects of the fossil-fuel sector — immediately

By TINA WEISHAUS, Co-chair of the DivestNJ Coalition

Recently there has been much excitement about green investments. Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to make New Jersey a leader in offshore wind is probably the most publicized of the state’s green initiatives. The New Jersey State Investment Council, which advises and oversees the New Jersey State Pension Fund, has also started to invest in green funds. These climate-friendly investments are seen as addressing the climate crisis. So, people ask, why are activists still demanding an end to fossil fuels? Aren’t green investments enough? The short answer is “No!”

It cannot be said often enough that burning fossil fuels, which produces heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is the main driver of global warming. There is incontrovertible scientific agreement on this. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (October 2018) called for immediate actions to sharply reduce fossil-fuel use to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And in a report published in May of this year, the International Energy Agency put out an urgent call for a transformational change in our energy system and “a rapid shift away from fossil fuels,” starting immediately.

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The world today is burning up as temperatures reach record highs in the triple digits. The Arctic, which we normally think of as frozen, is warming faster than any other place on the planet. We have already used up more than 1 degree Celsius out of our 1.5 degrees Celsius carbon budget. So we cannot lose focus on the simple truth that the continued burning of fossil fuels is driving these temperature increases. Above 1.5 degrees Celsius we are facing climate tipping points that may be irreversible.

New technologies such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and long-term energy storage are central to replacing existing fossil fuel use. The fact that their development has happened at a much faster rate than predicted gives us great hope for our future. Renewables are now some of the cheapest sources of energy available throughout the world. And we applaud New Jersey’s investments in them and hope to see more.

Green alone is not enough

However, green technologies will not solve the climate crisis alone. Not if we continue to invest in, finance, and ensure fossil-fuel projects. Not if we continue to build new fossil-fuel infrastructure. Not if we continue to subsidize the fossil-fuel industry with billions of tax dollars. Not if we allow the fossil-fuel industry to go under-regulated and allow it to create an additional supply that it will surely want to burn

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New Food Waste Pilot Program Wants to Change How Baltimoreans Think About Composting

Almost a month in, residents are taking advantage of the city’s new food scrap drop-off sites.

By Huanjia Zhang, Baltimore Magazine

Just before 9 a.m. on a midsummer Friday, April Welch sets off from her Remington home, carrying a brown paper bag full of food scraps to the city’s Citizen Drop-Off Center on Sisson Street.

Once she arrives, she spots a large green trash bin behind the gate, opens the lid, and spills a colorful blend of apple cores, mango bits, banana peels, and green leaves into a high pile of organic waste.

“It’s really easy,” says Welch, concluding her second compost delivery. Her first, almost three weeks ago, was just days after Baltimore kicked off its first city-wide food waste pilot drop-off program—which aims to promote a sustainable, zero-waste future by gathering food scraps at five residential collection sites.

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Now, almost a month in, citizens are taking advantage of the project as a convenient (and free) way to compost. It’s a good sign for city officials, who hope that the initiative will change how Baltimoreans think about their food waste overall.

“This is the first time we’ve done something like this on city-owned property,” says Kristyn Oldendorf, who leads the program at the city’s Department of Public Works. “Anything we can do to increase composting and reduce waste is really important.”

According to a recent tally of residential trash conducted by the city, food scraps make up roughly 25 percent of the city’s waste stream. If they’re not composted, most of these scraps are incinerated or go straight to a landfill. “It takes so much to create food,” Oldendorf adds, “Just throwing the material away is not the best use of it.”

The inspiration for the pilot project was sparked by the Baltimore Office of Sustainability’s Food Matters Program, which offers two food scrap drop-off sites at the 32nd Street Farmers Market and the Baltimore Farmers Market and Bazaar under the JFX. After observing auspicious participation at these sites, and obtaining extra funding from Natural Resources Defense Council, the city decided to expand its food waste collection to all five of its citizen drop-off centers. At these locations, which are typically used to collect single-stream recycling and large bulk items, residents can now dispose of food scraps six days a week at varying hours.

The pilot program will run about three to four months, Oldendorf says. And depending on people’s participation, the city will then decide whether to keep the program for the long run, or even expand.

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NJDEP urged to set tough limit on likely carcinogen in drinking water

Science advisers say utilities should curb 1,4-dioxane to protect public health

BY JON HURDLE, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, NJ SPOTLIGHT

A science panel Thursday urged the Department of Environmental Protection to set one the nation’s strictest standards for a likely carcinogenic chemical in drinking water, in New Jersey’s latest initiative to protect public health from water-borne contaminants.

The Drinking Water Quality Institute, a group of scientists and water company executives that advises the DEP, unanimously recommended that the level of 1,4-dioxane, a synthetic chemical used in products including adhesives, resins, and waxes, should be regulated to a level of no more than 0.33 parts per billion in drinking water.

The so-called maximum contaminant limit was recommended by the panel in draft form last year, and is now formally forwarded to the DEP which will decide whether to propose it in a new rule. If the limit is adopted, it would require water companies to ensure that the chemical doesn’t exceed that level in public water systems.

The chemical caused tumors in multiple organs of rats, mice, and guinea pigs during laboratory testing, the water panel said in explaining the reasons for its recommendation. It’s one of a class of “emerging contaminants” which are found in pharmaceuticals, personal care or household cleaning products, lawn care, farm agricultural products, and many other applications, and may not be regulated by state or federal governments.

Animal studies have found that exposure to the chemical causes an increased risk of tumors of the liver, gall bladder, and nasal cavity, and short-term exposure could result in nausea, headaches, drowsiness, and irritation of the ears, nose and throat, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Scientists say water is main source of exposure

The EPA says the chemical is “likely to be carcinogenic to humans” via all routes of exposure, including drinking water, which scientists say is the main source of exposure.

Late in 2018, the DEP set a standard for 1,4-dioxane in groundwater in New Jersey, joining 17 other states that have drinking water or groundwater guidelines.

New Jersey has a higher rate of contamination from 1,4-dioxane than the nation, EPA data shows. Tests in 2013-15 found the chemical in 17% of New Jersey’s public water systems at levels that exceeded the recommended health limit, almost three times the national rate of 6.6%

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Dixie Fire rips through Northern California town, leveling businesses

By The Associated Press

GREENVILLE, Calif. (AP) — California’s largest wildfire has leveled much of the downtown and some surrounding homes in a small Northern California mountain community.

The Dixie Fire tore through Greenville on Wednesday evening, destroying businesses and homes as the sky was cast in an orange glow. A photographer on assignment for The Associated Press described seeing a gas station, hotel and bar burned to the ground.

“If you are still in the Greenville area, you are in imminent danger and you MUST leave now!!” the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook earlier Wednesday.

Related news coverage:
‘We did everything we could’ (The Guardian)
‘We lost Greenville’ (CNN News)

The sheriff’s department and Cal Fire did not immediately respond to messages.

The 3-week-old fire has grown to over 428 square miles (1,108 square kilometers) across Plumas and Butte counties.

Firefighters had been trying to protect the town of 800 about 280 miles (450 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco by clearing debris from roads and marking hazards.

Pandora Valle, a spokesperson with the U.S. Forest Service, earlier told The San Francisco Chronicle that “firefighters are fighting for the town of Greenville,” but could not provide further details about the damage.

The destruction came amid a red flag warning issued by forecasters warning of hot, bone-dry conditions with winds up to 40 mph (64 kph). That could drive flames through timber, brush, and grass, especially along the northern and northeastern sides of the vast Dixie Fire.

“I think we definitely have a few hard days ahead of us,” said Shannon Prather with the U.S. Forest Service.

Firefighters were able to save homes and hold large stretches of the blaze. But flames jumped perimeter lines in a few spots Tuesday, prompting additional evacuation orders for about 15,000 people east of Lake Almanor, fire officials said.

Heat from the flames created a pyrocumulus cloud, a massive column of smoke that rose 30,000 feet (10,000 yards) in the air, said Mike Wink, a state fire operations section chief.

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Pennsylvania wants to be a carbon capture hub. Federal help might be the ticket to ride

By Ad Crable, Bay Journal

Pennsylvania is ideally suited to help the nation fight global warming by becoming a leader in the effort to capture and store emissions of carbon dioxide, state officials say.

Their quest has just received a jolt of legitimacy from President Joe Biden’s massive climate plan, which calls on a greater national effort to capture, store and re-use carbon dioxide.

Consol Energy’s Pennsylvania Mining Complex, the largest underground coal-mining operation in the U.S., could be the site of a 300-megawatt power plant that would capture and bury carbon dioxide. (Consol Energy)

In the battle to slow global warming, carbon dioxide is the chief target. Studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show that CO2 accounts for the vast majority of heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by the U.S. from 1990–2019. Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have risen approximately 47% since 1750, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

Strategies for capturing carbon from fossil fuel power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere, have long lingered on the sidelines. But the concept has remained a source of hope for an increasingly marginalized coal industry struggling to sustain production.

To make the mass collection of CO2 economically feasible, the U.S. would need to develop a vast network of pipelines to transport the gas, mainly in liquid form. It would also need industrial hubs where CO2 could be stored underground or diverted to other uses.

Pennsylvania wants to be one of those hubs. Advocates say the state is well-positioned for carbon storage, touting its deep-underground, porous rock reservoirs as places to safely store large amounts of carbon. Those reservoirs are 2 or more miles underground in the state’s western and northern reaches.

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