EnviroPolitics Blog

Rutgers launches underwater robot to travel globe

A team from Teledyne Marine testing the Redwing Glider. Redwing may become the first autonomous underwater glider to circumnavigate the globe. Photo by Teledyne Marine — *A team from Teledyne Marine is testing the Redwing Glider. Redwing may become the first autonomous underwater glider to circumnavigate the globe. Photo by Teledyne Marine*

By Barbara Moran, WBUR

An underwater robot launched from Woods Hole on Friday, embarking on a scientific quest to become the first autonomous vehicle to circumnavigate the globe.

If successful, the five-year journey could open new opportunities for long-term ocean research.

Leslie Ann McGee, chief innovation officer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the technology could be most helpful for studying under-sampled areas, such as the Southern Ocean.

“The most exciting for us is to prove that you can send an autonomous vehicle almost anywhere you want under the ocean,” McGee said. “It’s really amazing.”

The torpedo-shaped glider named “Redwing” will measure water depth, temperature, and salinity, and send data back in near-real time. It will also carry a device to detect tagged fish in the open ocean, which could shed light on the migration patterns of marine animals.

The glider has sensors that measure how salty the ocean water is, how warm it is, and how deep it goes. These measurements will help scientists understand how the ocean moves and how it affects the atmosphere.

The information will help scientists predict hurricane intensity, ocean heat waves, and changes in marine life.

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Major Flooding Expected For Much Of The Evening Commute

A slow-moving coastal storm is set to swamp the Northeast corridor during the evening drive, with flooding, powerful winds, and dangerous surf likely along the coast

By Joe Lombardi, Jackson Daily Voice

AccuWeather meteorologists said that prolonged northeast winds and astronomical high tides will fuel widespread coastal flooding and significant beach erosion from North Carolina to New Jersey through Monday night, Oct. 13. High tides are running 1 to 3 feet above historical averages through Monday night, according to AccuWeather.

“The highest tides and worst of the coastal flooding along the Jersey Shore are expected Monday afternoon,” AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva said. “Gusty winds from the northeast can push in tremendous amounts of water into bays and inlets.

“This storm may create some of the highest tides that the Northeast has seen in more than a decade. Some beaches may be completely underwater as this storm passes off the coast. This storm may not have a name, but it is causing some serious problems and disruptions along the coast.”

Rainfall from the Nor’easter will reach 2 to 4 inches from far eastern New Jersey to northern Massachusetts, with local amounts up to 8 inches in spots.

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James Franklin’s $50M buyout turns some heads at Penn State after recent cost-cutting, including several campus closures

One affected by its commonwealth campus closures says the university has misplaced its priorities

By Maddie Aiken, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fired Penn State football coach James Franklin’s nearly $50 million buyout is equivalent to about six years of budget at the university’s New Kensington campus, said English professor Andrea Adolph.

That stings, as Ms. Adolph and many of her branch campus colleagues brace for the upcoming closure of seven commonwealth campuses, including the New Kensington, Fayette, and Shenango locations in Western Pennsylvania, which were announced earlier this year as the university looks for ways to cut costs amid enrollment shifts.

To Ms. Adolph, Sunday’s firing of the football coach — and the hefty pay he is now owed — are evidence that Penn State leaders have misplaced priorities.

“That kind of payout is just ridiculous,” she said. “It’s another wild, ‘let them eat cake’ [m

On Sunday, university leaders fired Mr. Franklin after three consecutive losses, including two to unranked UCLA and Northwestern. During his 12-year tenure in Happy Valley, the coach had an overall record of 104-45, but went 4-21 against teams ranked in the top 10.

Despite being fired, Mr. Franklin is still owed more than $49 million per his contract — the second-biggest buyout in college football history after former Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million buyout, ESPN reports.

The role of college sports as a recruitment tool, revenue generator, and cost center has long been debated in university circles, but the size of the Penn State contract buyout stands out nationally.

And the big buyout is turning some heads in light of the Pennsylvania university’s controversial belt-tightening actions in recent years.

‘It was time’: Penn State players and fans react to James Franklin’s firing (Philadelphia Inquirer)

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Streets Flood As ‘Dangerous’ Nor’easter Arrives In NJ

A State of Emergency blankets the Garden State as a storm churns up the Atlantic coast

By KATHY McCORMACK Associated Press

A nor’easter churned its way up the East Coast on Sunday, washing out roads and prompting air travel delays as heavily populated areas of the Northeast braced for excessive rain, lashing winds, and coastal flooding.

“The greatest effects are going to be the coastal flooding potential, especially for areas from northeastern North Carolina northward to much of the New Jersey coast,” said meteorologist Bob Oravec with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

All of New Jersey has been under a state of emergency since Saturday night. It’s expected to last into Monday, authorizing the state’s emergency services personnel to be activated as necessary. On Long Island, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman declared a state of emergency Sunday because of the chance of high ocean waves may push water into bays and waterways.

Parts of the state are forecast to experience moderate to major coastal flooding, inland flash flooding, winds up to 60 mph, up to 5 inches of rain and high surf, potentially causing beach erosion. Some volunteers were putting sandbags at beaches.

Atlantic County officials said a coastal flood warning would remain in effect through 8 p.m. Monday.

Motorists traveling in and out of Atlantic City were told not to use the expressway, especially near high tide. The Black Horse Pike (Route 40) and White Horse Pike (Route 30) were closed in both directions leading into Atlantic City due to flooding early Sunday afternoon.

“Confidence remains high for significant impacts from major coastal flooding & substantial beach erosion with the coastal storm today through Monday,” according to a statement from the National Weather Service in Mount Holly. “Widespread roadway flooding, substantial beach erosion, dune breaching & significant damage to structures along the coast during high tide.”

Motorists are reminded not to drive through flood waters. Water can be deeper than realized and leave motorists stranded and their vehicles damaged.

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West Coast’s two monster faults could trigger back-to-back quakes

Damage to Interstate 880 in Oakland after it collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times

New research suggests the San Andreas fault and the Cascadia subduction zone could produce devastating back-to-back earthquake disasters.
Scientists found evidence that major Cascadia quakes were followed by large San Andreas earthquakes in 1700 and throughout the last 2,500 years.

They are two of the West Coast’s most destructive generators of huge earthquakes: the San Andreas fault in California and the Cascadia subduction zone offshore of California’s North Coast, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

The public has often thought of these danger zones as separate entities.

But what if they were capable of back-to-back disasters?

That’s the unsettling possibility described in a groundbreaking new study published recently in the journal Geosphere.

The authors suggest that, for thousands of years, large earthquakes on the Cascadia subduction zone were quickly followed by large earthquakes on the northern San Andreas fault.

A map of the Cascadia subduction zone — The Cascadia subduction zone, capable of producing a magnitude 9 earthquake, is offshore of California’s North Coast, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
(John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis / USGS)

In 1700, a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake is believed to have measured around a magnitude 9. Based on archaeological evidence, villages sank and had to be abandoned, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That earthquake was so powerful, entire sections of the Pacific coastline dropped by as much as 5 feet. In the Pacific Northwest, Native American stories told of “how the prairie became ocean” and canoes were flung into trees.

The study suggests the Cascadia earthquake was followed by a northern San Andreas fault earthquake from Cape Mendocino toward San Francisco, with a magnitude of around 7.9.

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EPA Proposes Modifications to its Chemical Risk Evaluation Process

By Maureen O’Dea Brill, Peter N. Coneski, K&L Gates

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a new rule to revise how it evaluates the risks of chemicals currently in use under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). This initiative follows a review prompted by Executive Order 14219 and aims to streamline evaluations while aligning with the current administration’s interpretation of TSCA. In response to concerns from the chemical industry and other stakeholders about the burden and complexity of the current risk evaluation process, the proposed modifications aim to streamline evaluations, increase transparency, and ensure a more predictable regulatory process for manufacturers (including importers) of chemical substances.

TSCA requires the EPA to prioritize and evaluate high-priority substances from the TSCA inventory. Risk evaluations under TSCA are primarily initiated by the EPA, either through its prioritization process or in response to manufacturer requests.¹These evaluations are triggered by statutory requirements, emerging scientific evidence, or industry interest in clearing regulatory uncertainty around specific chemicals.²

The EPA uses risk evaluations to determine whether an existing chemical poses an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment—based solely on scientific risk, not costs or other non-risk factors. These evaluations include unreasonable risks to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation identified as relevant to the risk evaluation under the specified conditions of use (COUs). COUS are the circumstances under which a chemical is intended, known, or reasonably foreseen to be manufactured, processed, distributed, used, or disposed of.

The EPA initially issued its procedural framework rule in 2017 and then revised it in 2024 under the Biden administration to require a single, comprehensive risk determination for each chemical across all COUs. EPA wants to return to evaluating each COU separately, reversing the 2024 rule and returning to the approach established during the first Trump administration.³The EPA is seeking public comment on whether the procedural framework rule should include regulatory text specifying that the EPA has discretion to exclude COUs, exposure pathways, and routes and to coordinate actions with other EPA-administered laws to ensure that chemical risks “could be eliminated or reduced to a sufficient extent” by other EPA actions, as permitted under TSCA section 9(b). Notably, if the proposed rule is finalized and subsequently challenged, as anticipated, the courts will not defer to either of the EPA’s interpretations. Instead, they will focus on determining the best interpretation of the statute consistent with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).

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