Funding Secured from Illegal Pollution Settlement Will Support 35 Innovative Farming Projects Across 25 Farms
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Amanda Lefton and Attorney General Letitia James today awarded more than $1.34 million in grants to support farmers in Delaware and Sullivan Counties. The Agricultural Environmental Innovation Grant Program is funded by DEC and Attorney General James’ 2023 settlement with FrieslandCampina Ingredients North America, Inc. (Friesland) for repeated violations of state and federal environmental law at its Delhi, Delaware County facility.
Administered by the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC), the grant program will directly reinvest the settlement funds in the Catskills by providing 25 farms with access to innovative agricultural technologies and practices. The projects selected for funding will demonstrate innovations that can increase efficiency and promote sustainability on New York farms, boosting economic, health, and environmental outcomes across the Catskills region.
The remains of the Inca settlement known as T’aqrachullo sit on a windblown mesa in the southern Peruvian Andes, some 300 sheer feet above the Apurímac River—and until recently, the views into the canyon were the most striking thing about the site.
The risk of an explosion or spill has fallen significantly, the authorities said late Tuesday, and all evacuated residents can now go home. Some have begun to ask who should be held accountable.
By Shawn Hubler and Rebecca Fairley Raney, The New York Times
Southern California officials lifted a sweeping evacuation order in Orange County late Tuesday after firefighters announced they had stabilized a damaged chemical tank that had posed a risk of a potentially catastrophic explosion or spill.
Over Memorial Day weekend, fears about a compromised tank at an aerospace facility in Garden Grove, Calif., forced nearly 50,000 residents from their homes and prompted state and federal emergency declarations.
More than 30,000 people were allowed to return on Monday night, after firefighters managed to cool down the tank’s toxic contents. However, the remaining 16,000 or so residents who lived closer to the tank had been told to stay away until firefighters could be sure the chemicals were truly stable. That determination came Tuesday evening.
Residents had to evacuate late last week after firefighters determined that a pressurized container containing a toxic substance had overheated and was poised to burst at GKN Aerospace’s manufacturing plant in Orange County. GKN, which is based in Britain, produces components for military and civilian aircraft.
The crisis, which officials had feared would end either in a toxic blast or a devastating hazardous waste spill, drew worldwide attention.
Emergency responders and scientific experts raced to cool down the bulging tank and safeguard surrounding communities. They doused the tank for days with water sprayed from fire hoses and opened more than half a dozen evacuation sites in a matter of hours on a holiday weekend.
By Monday, firefighters reported that the tank’s temperature had begun to drop and that it was safe for most evacuees to begin returning.
On Tuesday, Greg Barta, an Orange County Fire Authority spokesman, reported that the temperature inside the tank, previously in the triple digits, had dropped to about 92 degrees and was holding steady. As the day progressed, fire officials said, they ceased dousing the tanks.
On Tuesday evening, after a four-hour period during which the tanks remained stable even without the cooling measures, fire officials lifted the evacuation order for all residents, some of whom had been sleeping in cars or tents since Friday. Officials reduced the restricted area to a 300-foot perimeter around the equipment.
Apologizing for interrupting the meeting, Mr. Covey told residents, “I didn’t want to delay your getting home.”
The incident has prompted members of the communities around the plant to demand accountability from GKN and the local authorities.
“The imminent threat has been taken out of the equation, but this raises serious questions about the extent to which the government allowed this facility to expand,” said Carlos Perea, executive director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, one of several local organizations that called for the relocation of GKN Aerospace from Garden Grove, where it has operated for decades.
PSRA requests reclassifications of expanded polystyrene transport packaging and rigid polystyrene packaging, based on a report the group released this week that outlines use cases for those materials collected for recycling.
USPP will “review this new information accordingly,” Crystal Bayliss, interim executive director, told Packaging Dive via email. To date, USPP has not removed any items from the four-year-old list, she added.
PSRA had Resource Recycling Systems conduct the end-markets study with the intent to develop an inventory of U.S.- and Canada-based end markets for many types of polystyrene. The group aims to accelerate recycling for these products and noted that end markets willing to accept the materials are a key part of the equation.
PSRA says the study shows that both EPS transport packaging and rigid polystyrene packaging are “recyclable today, backed by growing infrastructure, expanding end markets, and continued industry investment,” according to a news release. The study results showed that 81 companies with 119 total facilities already handle expanded or extruded polystyrene foam, with 52% of them being manufacturing end markets that use EPS or XPS as a feedstock to make recycled transport packaging or consumer products.
When scientists try to model how hot Earth could get this century, they typically look at a range of possibilities for how much planet-warming pollution humans might pump into the atmosphere. These scenarios get updated every seven years or so.
In the latest update, the researchers abandoned a dire — and often criticized — high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5 that has been prominently cited in thousands of climate studies over the past decade. The authors said the scenario was now “implausible” given recent energy trends.
Last weekend, President Trump weighed in, suggesting that the revision showed that global warming wasn’t a threat and that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”
Tens of thousands are still waiting out the situation in multiple community shelters after four days, but the size of the mandatory evacuation order has been reduced. The risk of an explosion or leak is diminished but still remains. Community volunteers step up with donations of food, water, and toys. Police are patrolling to protect against looting.
