Duke Farms is piloting an internship program in 2021 for students, new or emerging professionals interested in pursuing careers in conservation, natural resources, parks management, environmental education, historic site management, and trades. Internships are open to adults over 18 years of age, including recent graduates, experienced individuals, and those looking to obtain new skills.
Internship positions are full-time from June 1 to September 1 with paid compensation of $15 per hour. Housing may be offered on a case-by-case basis. Credit coordination with college/university is available where applicable.
Internships with Duke Farms provide education, training, and practical work experience to prepare interns for a career in their respective fields, while also gaining valuable skills such as communication, working with a team or cohort, problem-solving, and experience working in a nonprofit setting. Additionally, Duke Farms will provide several professional development opportunities where interns will be able to choose options that best fit their needs such as resume and cover letter building, public speaking, professional and personal branding, an overview on nonprofits, and networking opportunities in their related fields.
As part of the first-year cohort, interns will collaborate on team-building exercises and projects through the duration of their internship.
NEW YORK (April 9, 2021) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will host an online discussion on April 23, with nonprofits and community foundations across the country to learn about nonprofit leadership in brownfields assessment, cleanup, and redevelopment projects.
“Nonprofit organizations are often embedded within local communities, working tirelessly to improve quality of life for nearby residents. Many nonprofits serve low-income and disadvantaged communities experiencing current and historical environmental injustices, including the public health and economic problems caused by brownfields and contaminated properties,” said Carlton Waterhouse, EPA Deputy Administrator for the Office of Land and Emergency Management. “The goal of this discussion is to provide EPA with a better understanding of how to support nonprofit efforts to assess, cleanup and redevelop brownfields sites in the communities they serve.”
The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to advancing economic opportunities and addressing environmental justice issues in underserved communities. During this discussion, EPA wants to hear and learn from representatives from various types of nonprofits who encounter – or could encounter – brownfields within their communities, especially those nonprofits who work to address the disproportionate health, environmental, economic, and climate impacts on disadvantaged communities.
EPA will be using the following questions to guide the discussion:
How does your nonprofit organization view its role in brownfields cleanup and redevelopment?
What benefits and barriers exist to nonprofits leading brownfield cleanup and redevelopment projects?
How often does your nonprofit organization find itself leading brownfields cleanup and redevelopment activities?
Registration Information
This virtual event will be held on Friday, April 23, 2021 from 1-3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Registration is required; information is available at http://www.epa.gov/brownfields (direct link to registration is here). Due to the limit of 250 participants, attendance will be on a first-come, first served basis.
After registering, confirmed participants will receive an email from Eventbrite with a link to join the event. Alternatively, stakeholders may share relevant comments via email to BUILDAct@epa.gov through April 23.
As California works on a new net metering policy, other states are grappling with similar issues.
Contractors move a SunRun Inc. solar panel up a ladder to the roof of a new home at the Westline Homes Willowood Cottages community in Sacramento, California, on Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesRelated
A debate over how best to compensate rooftop solar owners is taking place across the country.
In California, the country’s leading solar market, regulators are working on changes to rooftop solar rules, while utilities and solar advocates are trying to position themselves to shape the process to their liking.
Many of the other policy fights are happening in places where rooftop solar is at the margins, and utilities would like to keep it there.
I reached out to some of the groups that follow solar policy most closely to get an idea of which states I should be watching, from the obvious—California—to some others that might get overlooked.
Many of the debates are about “net metering,” which refers to the way that rooftop solar owners can send excess electricity to the grid and get paid for it by utilities, an important variable for determining whether it makes financial sense for someone to install rooftop solar.
In many places, utilities pay the full retail price for excess electricity from rooftop solar. But as rooftop solar gets more popular, utilities have pushed to reduce the price and charge additional fees. Solar advocates say utilities are trying to slow the growth of a competing source of electricity, while utilities say solar owners are not paying a big enough share of the costs of maintaining the grid.
The result, following years of debate and lobbying, is that some states are moving away from net metering at the full retail price, and trying to figure out what will become the new standard. Utilities and the solar industry are arguing over the design of those rules, with some on both sides saying they would like to end the cycle of constant policy fights and figure out a long-term solution.
California is playing an outsize role because its rooftop solar market is larger and more complex than that of other states, and its policies could be trendsetting.
“What happens in California now may be replicated in other places a few years down the road,” said Ben Delman, communications director for Solar United Neighbors, a nonprofit that works with consumers in a dozen states to set up bulk buying of rooftop solar systems. “Other places are looking to (California) as sort of a way to see almost into the future in their own markets.”
The California Public Utilities Commission is working on an update of net metering, and plans to issue new rules later this year, the first major rewrite since 2016. The commission published some guiding principles for the process, including that the new policy should “ensure equity among customers,” which is a sign that the utilities may have a receptive audience for their argument that the current policy leads to a shift of some costs to non-solar customers.
The state’s major utilities issued a joint proposal last month that would increase fees and decrease compensation for electricity sent back to the grid, which the companies said was a matter of fairness, to prevent overcharging customers who don’t have solar.
Solar advocates had their own proposals and disputed the utilities’ arguments about fairness.
“California cannot achieve its ambitious clean energy goals if policymakers suddenly and dramatically lower bill savings for those who choose to go solar, as the utilities will continue to demand,” said Susannah Churchill of Vote Solar in a statement.
One of the core issues in California is that rooftop solar has gotten so popular that it is affecting the fundamentals of demand for centralized power plants and is putting pressure on utilities’ finances. Regulators face the difficult task of trying to encourage the continued expansion of rooftop solar while also listening to utilities’ concerns.
In other states, the fight is more about whether rooftop solar is a good enough deal for customers to get a foothold in the market.
Here are some of the places where debates are going on:
PALMETTO, Fla. — The Piney Point phosphate plant opened near the shores of Tampa Bay in 1966 and only a year later was caught dumping pollution that tainted some of the bay’s most popular fishing grounds.
The facility has been plagued ever since by repeated violations and problems. The most recent came over the weekend, when local officials evacuated more than 300 homes and blocked a major highway because of fears that a reservoir holding millions of gallons of industrial wastewater could fail. Such a breach, officials warned, would send a 20-foot wall of water slamming into the community near where the reservoir was leaking.
Over the years, state and local governments have been reluctant to take the steps that would resolve the trouble with Piney Point. But this latest near-calamity may finally push them to act. Even as they continue pumping wastewater from the reservoir to relieve the pressure on its weakened walls, officials are reviving a controversial cleanup proposal and suggesting an of-the-moment way to pay for it.
The plan: to treat the plant’s polluted water and inject it 3,500 feet below ground and into a salty part of the Floridan Aquifer. The $200 million to do this would come from President Biden’s covid-recovery package.
Critics say that local leaders’ solution, which was first considered in 2013 and then rejected, might make things far worse. If tried here, they worry, it might also be attempted elsewhere in Central Florida at the two dozen similar facilities where radioactive-phosphate processing waste is stored in mountainous stacks topped with vast ponds of acidic liquid.
Local farmers are particularly concerned about the impact that deep-well injection would have on the aquifer. Yet some are so weary of the repeated crises at Piney Point that they’re ready to give the plan a try.
“It’s not something we’re happy about, because our irrigation wells are in close proximity to Piney Point,” said Alan Jones, who grows potatoes. “But considering the latest brush with catastrophe, maybe this is the best-case scenario so we can put this thing to rest for all time.”
In Washington, the wastewater leak has prompted calls for Biden to include more money in his infrastructure plan for repairing aging dams and reservoirs. His proposal sets aside $50 billion to improve infrastructure resilience, only a portion of which would go to dam safety.
The Piney Point plant, originally built by Borden Chemical, once turned mined phosphate rock into fertilizer to be shipped around the nation. It sits just south of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, an area that’s a mix of small farms, industrial sites and mobile home parks flying both Canadian and American flags, and across U.S. Route 41 from Port Manatee. The current owner, HRK Holdings, which has been in and out of bankruptcy, has used the site recently to dispose of material dredged from ship berths.
The highway was reopened Tuesday and the evacuation order lifted. Late in the afternoon, the Manatee County Commission voted unanimously to pursue the deep-injection plan.
“This allows us to dictate the quality of the water before it goes into the wells,” Chairwoman Vanessa Baugh announced at a news conference.
Florida Environmental Protection Secretary Noah Valenstein signaled the state’s agreement, saying that interim measures would be implemented as construction of the injection wells is planned. The permitting process could take two years or longer, he noted.
The plant has passed through a number of owners ill-equipped to deal with its waste. As early as 1970, local newspapers reported massive toxic algae blooms in nearby Bishop Harbor — a state aquatic preserve — caused by pollution from the plant flowing into a creek that runs to the bay.
“Fish Paradise Polluted Anew,” a Tampa Tribune headline declared.
Scientists fear a similar result from this latest round of dumping, because the wastewater being sent into Tampa Bay contains high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, elements of nutrient pollution.
Local communities have spent billions of dollars since 1991 to clean up the nutrients contaminating the bay — at 400 square miles, the state’s largest estuary — and to encourage the regrowth of sea grass. Much of the bay is now as clean as it was in the 1950s, but this concentrated slug of Piney Point pollution is likely to rewrite the story.
“It’s frustrating, for sure,” said Ed Sherwood, executive director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. “This is going to turn back the clock.”
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The Highlands Council is currently soliciting services from qualified firms of certified public accountants (“Firm”) with expertise in government agency auditing, to conduct a financial audit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, and with the option of conducting such audits for each of the four subsequent fiscal years.
The deadline for submitting a Notice of Intent to Respond to this RFP is Friday, April 30, 2021. The deadline for proposals is Friday, June 4, 2021.
From the New York Department of Environmental Conservation
As you plan your spring and summer outings, turn to DECinfo Locator for the recreation information you need. DECinfo Locator features more than 65 interactive data layers to help you discover all the recreation possibilities in the places you are most interested in visiting.
DECinfo Locator’s outdoor activity data lets hikers, campers, hunters, and other adventurers plan forays into New York’s natural wonders, whether that be locating a fire tower and planning a route, setting up a weekend of fishing, or just browsing the activities allowed on nearby state lands. Find trails, primitive campsites and lean-tos, DEC campgrounds, picnic areas, scenic vistas, hunting lands, boat launches and much more. Multiple information layers can be activated at the same time, putting all the information you need to effectively plan a trip in one place.
DECinfo Locator also lets users see and download permits, former industrial site cleanup plans, water quality reports, and more based on where they live, work, or play, allowing users to see the many ways DEC is working to protect and enhance the state’s environment and recreational opportunities. Start exploring the interactive DECinfo Locator map today.
