YONG KIM / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERA City of Philadelphia Sanitation worker tosses trash into a trash truck along the 1700 block of Diamond Street near the Temple University campus on Monday, August 3, 2020.
By Laura McCrystal, Philadelphia Inquirer
Amid widespread delays in trash and recycling pickup last month, Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration announced that Philadelphia would hire 120 temporary workers within four weeks to assist existing crews.
But four weeks later, just 45 temporary sanitation employees are on the street helping collect trash and recycling. And it could take at least another month to reach the goal of hiring between 120 and 150 workers, the Streets Department said this week.
“If our current trend rate remains constant, it will take at least another four weeks to get to a sufficient number of hires,” said Streets Department spokesperson Crystal Jacobs.
The city has faced challenges at every step of the hiring process. Issues include finding workers from the city’s existing list of laborer civil service candidates who are interested in taking the job, getting them to show up for and pass medical assessments, and then keeping them at work once they begin.
That slower-than-expected pace of hiring could lead to ongoing delays in trash and recycling collection as the city continues to deal with high rates of absence among full-time sanitation workers and high volumes of trash as residents stay home due to the coronavirus pandemic. This week, city officials said both trash and recycling pickups were one to two days behind schedule.
“I don’t know why it’s taking them so long,” said Councilmember Mark Squilla. “This is urgent. I would think that they should be able to get the 120 temps.”
Janet Borrelli, a part-time clerical technician at the Lehigh County Voter Registration Office in the Lehigh County Government Center, gets absentee ballots ready to be mailed out. (MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO)
The 2020 general election is just weeks away (Tuesday, Nov. 3). Politics aside, this presidential election will be unlike any other in living memory as millions of Pennsylvanians are expected to cast their ballot without stepping into a polling place. But between changes to state law, federal lawsuits over the process and the logistical challenges of voting in a pandemic, countless voters are uncertain about many of the specifics.
That’s why the Morning Call is creating a new series tackling questions Pennsylvania voters may encounter between now and Election Day. If you have questions about the elections process, send them to tshortell@mcall.com or call 610-820-6168.
How do I vote with a mail-in ballot?
With the coronavirus still posing a threat to public safety, many voters are hesitant to go to the polls this November. But months before the virus emerged, the state passed sweeping election changes that gave more Pennsylvanians an alternative. Previously, Pennsylvanians were allowed to mail an absentee ballot if travel or poor health prevented them from reaching the polls. Now, voters can opt to mail in their ballot without having to provide a recognized excuse.
For now, voters have until Oct. 27 to request a mail-in ballot for the general election. Legislators have introduced bills that could set an earlier deadline, but these have not passed into law, and Gov. Tom Wolf has vowed to veto such legislation if it’s passed.
Whatever the deadline is, voters who want a mail-in ballot are encouraged to request theirs early. The United States Postal Service told the state it is experiencing delays in its service.
People who wait to file their request or send in their completed ballots could miss critical deadlines.
How do I get my mail-in ballot?
Registered voters have a few ways to request a mail-in ballot.
Applicants can provide their email address if they want to receive an email confirming when their request has been processed. They will receive their ballot in the mail.
You can acquire a physical application form and turn it in to your county election office
There are a few ways to acquire a paper application.
Applicants can go to votespa.com, download the mail-in ballot application and print it.
Applicants can visit their county’s election office and request the mail-in ballot application form.
Applicants can request the form by contacting the Department of State by emailing ra-voterreg@pa.gov or by calling 1-877-VOTESPA.
Once they have the form, applicants will need to fill it out and turn it in to their local election office, either in person or by mail.
You can receive an “on demand” mail-in ballot from your county election office
Once counties print their mail-in ballots, voters can go to their local election office and get their mail-in ballot in person. The voter requesting the ballot must be present — they cannot send someone to receive it on their behalf. Lehigh and Northampton counties expect to have their mail-in ballots on hand by late September or early October. Voters could cast their vote and turn it in during the same visit.
How do I turn in my completed ballot?
Once voters have their mail-in ballot, they’ll need to complete it and turn it in to their county election office. Under current law, the ballots must be at the county election office by 8 p.m. Election Day to be counted. Ballots need to be placed inside two envelopes — an outer, mailing envelope and an inner envelope designed to protect the secrecy of the ballot.
Voters have several options on turning in their ballot
Mail them to the county election office
Election officials are warning voters not to wait to mail their completed ballots. Delays with the post office could prevent ballots from arriving in time to be counted. For the primary, voters were advised to mail their ballots by the Friday before the election. With the delays, voters will want to mail their ballots at least 10 days before the election.
Turn them in at a ballot drop box
Voters nervous about the post office’s reliability can turn in their ballots at designated drop boxes. Lehigh and Northampton counties each have a drop box in the lobby of their main government buildings.
Lehigh County: 17 S. 7th St, Allentown
Northampton County: 669 Washington St., Easton
The Trump administration has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the use of these boxes, and Republican legislators have proposed bills that would eliminate them. As of now, however, they’re still legal. County officials plan to put them out in late September or early October.
Present them to the county election office
The ballots can also be turned in to the county election office. The person who completed the ballot must be the one to present the ballot.
Voters cannot drop off their mail-in ballots at their polling place
Voters who cannot get their mail-in ballot to the county election office in time may request a provisional ballot at their polling place. This ballot will be counted once election officials confirm they did not receive that voter’s mail-in ballot.
Tom Shortell covers transportation and county government in the Lehigh Valley for The Morning Call. He’s previously covered the Slate Belt, Northampton County Court, Jersey City, NJ and the Jersey Shore. A graduate of St. Bonaventure University, Shortell will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
Hurricane Laura is rapidly strengthening and is poised to strike the upper Texas coast and western Louisiana with a ferocity that has not been seen in this region in more than a decade.
The storm, which has leaped from a Category 1 to a Category 4 since Tuesday, is forecast to make landfall at this “catastrophic” intensity between Houston and Lake Charles, La., on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Hurricane and storm surge warnings cover much of this zone.
Beaumont and Port Arthur, Tex., which were severely damaged during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, may be near the point of landfall, where officials have ordered evacuations.
Depending on the timing of the storm, Laura may strike near high tide, inundating coastal areas of western Louisiana to the Texas border under between 15 to 20 feet of water. The Hurricane Center warned of an “unsurvivable” surge with “large and destructive waves” and that areas up to 30 miles inland could be inundated.
Laura is also likely to unleash a narrow swath of destructive winds of more than 120 mph near where it makes landfall, and hurricane-force winds could charge well inland Thursday morning.
Heavy rain is predicted to be widespread across the west-central Gulf Coast with five to 10 inches falling over a broad area, and locally up to 15 inches, leading to areas of flash flooding.
Large enough to feed utility companies, these solar farms could revert to agriculture
Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:
New Jersey farmland could be opened up to huge utility-scale solar projects, a reversal of long-standing policy to preserve open spaces, under a bill that cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday.
The legislation (S-2605) won approval from the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, as proponents argued the state never would achieve the Murphy administration’s goal to transition to a clean-energy economy without a robust solar energy program. And perhaps more importantly, they said, a green economy that promotes building larger solar fields that supply power to the grid.
If existing farmland is going to be converted to warehouses or to building McMansions, proponents suggested, why not allow the property to be used as solar farms, a proposition that would allow current agricultural land to return to its original use decades later.
Grid-scale projects — ones that produce at least 10 megawatts of electricity — are viewed as “absolutely essential’’ to reach the goal of having New Jersey residents get 34% of their power from solar by mid-century, according to Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the chairman of the committee and primary bill sponsor.
“The bill, right now, is not a perfect bill,’’ said Smith, noting it has a long road before it wins final legislative approval. Indeed, the legislation couldn’t get approved by his committee only a week ago when other members of the panel questioned whether it had the support of the Murphy administration.
Pinelands, Highlands excluded
That issue was quashed Monday when a representative from the state Board of Public Utilities, the agency overseeing implementation of clean-energy policies, endorsed the bill. “We don’t have any time to waste,’’ said Chanced Lykins, director of governmental affairs for the BPU. “No doubt we’ve got a lot of work to get to 34 percent.’’
New Jersey currently obtains about 5% of its electricity from solar panels, but at a cost that has been widely criticized as too expensive. So much so, a law was enacted two years ago ordering the BPU to scrap the current ratepayer-subsidized system of financing new projects. Many view utility-scale projects as a more cost-effective way to achieve the state’s renewable energy goals.
In releasing the bill, the committee amended it in numerous ways, perhaps most importantly excluding areas in the Pinelands, the New Jersey Highlands, preserved farmland, and freshwater wetlands.
Tom Gilbert of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation told the committee those exclusions do not go far enough, asking for more agricultural land to be excluded from development, as well as more protections for forests. Forests sequester and store about 8% of New Jersey’s greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
But Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, disagreed.
“The most important piece is we are expanding the pie. That’s critical because we need to be building a lot more than 200 megawatts a year,’’ Tittel said. “We are not getting there without farmland.’’
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Meanwhile, the state’s rate of transmission dropped for the fifth straight day and remained below the critical benchmark of 1, which shows the outbreak is declining.
The Garden State has now reported 15,914 total deaths related to COVID-19 — 14,134 confirmed and 1,780 considered probable — in the nearly six months since the state’s first case was reported March 4.
That’s the second most coronavirus deaths in the U.S. Nearly half of those — at least 7,069 — have been of residents and staff members at nursing homes.
The state has reported 190,306 total positive tests in that time — the eighth most in the nation — out of more than 2.72 million total administered tests. More than 33,600 residents have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Of the newly reported deaths announced Wednesday, seven occurred in the last five days, Murphy said during his latest coronavirus briefing in Trenton. The other four happened earlier and were just recently confirmed.
“Even though the numbers of lives lost continues to decline, we are still losing lives to this virus,” Murphy said. “We cannot give up until that number hits zero — and even then, we have to make sure it stays there.”
New Jersey’s latest transmission is now 0.80, officials said. That’s down from 0.83 on Tuesday.
The rate had pushed past 1 last week, prompting concerns. Any number above 1 means each newly infected person, on average, is spreading the virus to at least one other person.
PHILADELPHIA (Aug. 26, 2020) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today it has awarded $38.4 million to Maryland for water quality improvement projects to address wastewater treatment and stormwater runoff.
This grant, along with $7.7 million in state matching funds, further capitalizes on Maryland’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) Program that provides low interest loans for the construction of wastewater treatment facilities, non-point source and estuary projects, and other water quality management activities.
“The state revolving fund program is essential to providing all Americans the clean and safe water they deserve,” said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Cosmo Servidio. “EPA is proud to support projects that will improve wastewater treatment and stormwater runoff throughout the state to help protect Maryland’s water resources and improve public health.”
The grant money will be combined with repayments from prior loans and interest earnings to provide direct funding to communities.
Projects supported by the CWSRF this year include sewer system and interceptor rehabilitation, elimination of combine sewer overflows, treatment plant upgrades, a bio-energy project, urban stormwater repairs, stream bank restoration and septic tank elimination.
