From the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Are you looking for an outdoor volunteer opportunity? The Hudson River Eel Project is seeking community members to help study eels in streams of the Hudson River estuary. The American eel (Anguilla rostrata), a migratory fish, is hatched in the Atlantic Ocean and enters North American estuaries, including the Hudson River, as tiny, see-through “glass eels” each spring.
As a volunteer, you will work in a team with scientists to collect these eels from specialized nets, count the fish one-by-one, weigh them in groups, and release them to habitat upstream. You will also help collect and record water temperature and water-quality data.
Eels are counted in 15 streams from Staten Island to Troy. The fieldwork takes place from March through May, and schedules are flexible. Training and all gear are provided.
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The Trump administration’s proposed budget would add new grant programs, but significantly shrink sustainable materials management funding.
Cole Rosengren reports for WasteDive
The U.S. EPA’s recently proposed FY21 budget calls for a nearly 53% reduction in funding dedicated to the agency’s waste minimization and recycling work, despite ongoing public promises to help address national recycling challenges.
As outlined, the annual budget for this area under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) would decline by nearly $9 million and be offset by $4.25 million in new initiatives. Staffing levels would shrink from 43.4 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff to 5 FTE. The EPA says its proposal “refocuses the Program from efforts in Sustainable Materials Management to the priority areas of recycling and food waste and loss.”
The Trump administration has sought to drastically reduce the EPA’s budget before, but is annually rebuffed by Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already indicated the administration’s new broader budget proposal will face a similar reaction this year.
The FY21 proposal also includes a large reduction to related RCRA waste management work, but the requested recycling cuts are in some ways more notable when it comes to agency messaging. For the past three budget years (FY18, FY19 and FY20), the EPA has proposed a complete elimination of the RCRA waste minimization and recycling program.
Traditionally, EPA has justified the cuts by arguing state and local governments could continue similar work, even though many other environmental agencies face their own funding constraints. This year the agency altered that approach, indicating EPA wants to more generally shift resources away from sustainable materials management (SMM) projects.
SMM, a lifecycle thinking concept elevated within the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) during the Obama administration, is often raised by both appointees and career staff as a foundational element of their work. SMM was most recently cited as a priority to Waste Dive last fall by EPA officials and mentioned by OLEM Assistant Administrator Peter Wright in a House subcommittee hearing just last week.
Asked to explain this implied policy shift, an EPA spokesperson told Waste Dive the agency’s position has not changed. They pointed to upcoming events around SMM and ongoing planning for 2020 America Recycles Week activities. “The Administration’s 2021 budget request marks a significant commitment to this priority area by requesting more funding than last year’s request,” the spokesperson said via email.
While the agency’s $4.25 million request for new initiatives is notable – especially when compared to last year’s request for fully eliminating the program with no offset funding – it is still a significant reduction when balanced out by the nearly $9 million in proposed cuts.
The New Jersey Assembly’s Agriculture Committee will meet tomorrow, February 13, at 10 a.m. on the 4th Floor of the State House Annex, in Committee Room 15.
Allows certain preserved farms to hold 14 special occasion events per year; imposes further event restrictions on residentially-exposed preserved farms.
Determines that the State Agriculture Development Committee’s rule to implement a pilot program allowing certain wineries to hold special events is inconsistent with legislative intent.
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is looking for individuals with relevant expertise to fill several non-reserved positions on its newly-formed Advisory Committee on Climate Change (ACCC).
The nine non-reserved members will represent the following stakeholder categories:
Academic or Research Institutions
Watershed or Environmental Organizations
Business or Industry
Water or Wastewater Utilities
The members will be appointed by the DRBC’s Executive Director; preference shall be given to individuals actively working on climate change impacts, preferably in the Delaware River Basin.
If Interested in a Non-Reserved Member Position on the ACCC:
Please submit your resume and a letter of interest by Friday, February 28, 2020.
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LONDON (Reuters) – Global carbon dioxide emissions from power production flattened last year to 33 gigatonnes after two years of increase, even though the world economy expanded, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.
The growth of renewable energy and fuel switching from coal to natural gas led to lower emissions from advanced economies. Milder weather in several countries and slower economic growth in some emerging markets also contributed, the agency said.
Late last year, international climate experts warned that global temperatures could rise sharply this century with “wide-ranging and destructive” consequences after greenhouse gas emissions hit record levels in 2018.
Governments face a deadline this year to set more ambitious emissions cut targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement, a global climate pact aimed at limiting global warming this century.
“We now need to work hard to make sure that 2019 is remembered as a definitive peak in global emissions, not just another pause in growth,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director.
“We have the energy technologies to do this, and we have to make use of them all,” he said.
The fall in CO2 emissions in advanced economies offset growth elsewhere.
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