EnviroPolitics Blog

New Jersey extends enhanced water-quality protection to 600 miles of rivers and streams

By designating them as Category One, agency safeguards waterways of exceptional ecological importance

The Harold N. Peek Preserve on the Maurice River: The freshwater tidal river in Cumberland County is one of those that will receive increased protections.

TOM JOHNSON reports for NJ Spotlight APRIL 8, 2020

New Jersey has designated 600 miles of rivers and streams for higher protection to keep their water quality from degrading, an action taken to safeguard these waterways from pollutants, sewage and harmful bacteria.

The rule adopted Monday by the state Department of Environmental Protection is not as expansive as the agency’s original proposal more than a year ago, which sought to designate 749 miles of waterways as Category One (C1) streams.

Even so, environmental groups applauded the step, saying it marks the first time in more than a decade the state has reclassified streams and rivers for higher level of protection, a designation earned for waterways of exceptional ecological importance, whose loss could mean threats to certain endangered species.

Only 5% of New Jersey’s streams meet federal clean-water standards for fishing and swimming. The vast majority of waterways, more than 22,000 streams and rivers, are designated as not meeting federal water-quality standards.

Safeguarding ecologically sensitive waterways

The new classifications afford increased protections for some of the most ecologically sensitive waterways — from the Maurice River in Cumberland County to a stretch of the south branch of the Raritan River in the Highlands to segments of the Ramapo River in north Jersey. The upgrades also include a two-mile stretch of the Cooper River in Camden County, the first urban waterway to be protected.

“The C1 designation puts in place protections from direct and indirect pollution,’’ said Michael Pisauro, policy director of the Watershed Institute. “It is vital that we continue to upgrade waterways before pollution and development degrade them.’’

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Indeed, of the approximately 150 miles of streams that were eliminated from consideration for the C1 designation in the proposed draft, 34 miles were removed because of deteriorating water quality, according to the DEP. The rest of the streams were delisted because they failed to meet other criteria necessary for C1 designation.

“We need to protect more waterways with recreational value, drinking water and Highlands waters,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “Protecting waterways before they become polluted is more cost-effective.’’

Opposing cleaner water

While comments on the proposal were overwhelmingly supportive, there was opposition from local communities who argued the new designations would hinder development and from operators of sewage treatment plants who said the new surface-water quality standards could force expensive upgrades of their facilities.

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Former NFL player who became a neurosurgeon is now serving on the COVID-19 front lines

Annie Reneau reports for Upworthy

Few people are ever able to realistically ask themselves, “Should I become a professional football player or a brain surgeon?” much less actually succeed at doing both. But that’s exactly what Myron Rolle managed to do.

The native Texan, whose parents immigrated here from the Bahamas, completed his Bachelor’s degree at Florida State in less than three years. After college, he spent a year studying at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, then returned to play as a defensive back in the NFL for the Tennessee Titans for three years. After announcing that he was leaving football in 2013, he entered medical school. He is now in his third year of residency as a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

So, you know, a pretty average life.

Now, Rolle has found himself on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the neurosurgery floor of his hospital has been transformed into a COVID-19-only unit. Though he’s still performing emergency brain surgeries, all elective procedures have been postponed. With his schedule freed up, Rolle has volunteered to work in the surge clinic that triages new patients who come in with COVID-19 symptoms.

And interestingly enough, when talking about how he’s making the transition from neurosurgery to treating a respiratory disease, it’s his football experience—not medical training—that he refers back to.

“Obviously, neurosurgery is not directly connected to this upper respiratory illness,” Rolle told The Tennessean. “But just like in football, if you’re called to do something different that you weren’t expecting, you adjust. You adapt. They’re showing us a new formation that we didn’t see on tape? You’ve got to hunker down and get the job done. In my opinion, this novel disease is something like that. A formation, a personnel package that we haven’t seen before. We have to meet the challenge, and I’m happy to be able to join the fight.”

Well done, Dr. Rolle. You are a true inspiration and role model for us all.

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Coronavirus is devastating the news industry. Many newspapers won’t survive.

At a time when readers and viewers crave reliable information, the economic crash is decimating the advertising base that kept local news outlets alive. (iStock)

By Paul Farhi, Sarah Ellison and Elahe Izadi, Washington Post
April 8, 2020 at 10:10 a.m. EDT

Two months ago, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Brie Zeltner became consumed by one topic: the coronavirus crisis that would soon sweep into her state.

The veteran health-care journalist chronicled the early reports of illness in nearby states, and then the first cases transmitted within Ohio. She interviewed a local woman who had tested positive; explored the impact of the virus on maternal health; and questioned the state’s shortage of coronavirus tests and the reasons local health departments were pursuing such different strategies to thwart the disease.

Last week, the encroaching crisis took a hit on Zeltner’s own workplace — a financial one. Suffering a dramatic dip in advertising revenue amid the sudden economic downturn, the long-struggling newspaper cut 22 journalists from its payroll. Among them, Zeltner.

“It’s very difficult to watch what is going on in the world right now and be a health reporter,” she said, “and not be able to be out and about covering it.”

A tsunami of layoffs, cutbacks, furloughs and closures has washed over newsrooms across the United States over the past month — a time, ironically, when readership and viewership is surging with consumers in search of reliable information about the virus.

The Tampa Bay Times laid off 11 journalists and stopped five days of its print edition. Seattle’s Pulitzer-winning weekly the Stranger laid off 18 staffers and stopped printing altogether. There have been layoffs at the Denver Post and Boston Herald and salary cuts at the Dallas Morning News. Some smaller papers are folding altogether.

Small businesses of all kinds are hurting everywhere, of course; and this month’s cuts follow more than a decade of shrinkage for the media industry. As readers started to gravitate to online sources, news sites have struggled to claim a piece of a national Web advertising market increasingly dominated by bigger players.

But this frailty had seemed almost manageable — until recent weeks when the coronavirus turned it into an urgent existential threat, striking at local businesses that had been the last pillar of support for many news organizations.

The upshot is a void: stories that aren’t being covered and news that isn’t reaching readers and viewers because there’s no one to report them.

“There’s a huge appetite for what we do right now,” says Paul Tash, chairman and chief executive of the Tampa Bay paper, which until last week had never missed a print edition for almost 96 years. “On the other hand, the advertisers that subsidize our business are under enormous strain. . . . For many, many of our local businesses, [the lockdown] is a terrible reversal.”

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Burglars thought cops would be too busy with virus

Joseph Porter and Rebecca Wood are walked out of the 4th precinct today in Smithtown, NY. — Joseph Porter and Rebecca Wood are walked out of the 4th precinct in Smithtown, NY. Dennis A. Clark

By Anabel Sosa, New York Post
April 8, 2020 | 1:37pm | Updated

A pair of serial burglars who thought they could commit break-ins with impunity because cops are busy handling the coronavirus crisis were busted Tuesday, according to officials.

Joseph Porter, 31, and Rebecca Wood, 23, were both arrested around 11:20 a.m in Bay Shore for multiple burglaries throughout Suffolk County, police said.

Cops put the pieces together after realizing the duo’s Hyundai Santa Fe fit the same description of a vehicle used in previously reported burglaries.

Porter admitted to investigators that he believed he would get away scot-free because law enforcement was preoccupied with COVID-19 challenges, police said.

The pair were both slapped with several burglary and attempted burglary charges in connection to a string of 11 incidents that began on March 9.

Former New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky dies of suspected coronavirus

The burglaries took place at a variety of garages, repair shops, and gas stations, police said.

Porter was charged separately with one additional burglary at a car wash on Sunrise Highway Mar. 29.

“Suffolk County Police officers have increased patrols to focus on businesses that could be targeted by criminals during this pandemic,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said in a statement.

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Bernie Sanders Leaves 2020 Democratic Race for President

Mr. Sanders, making his second run for the White House, withdrew after a series of losses to Joseph R. Biden Jr., who emerges as the presumptive Democratic party nominee for the general election.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was instrumental in moving the Democratic Party to the left. — Photo Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Sydney Ember of the New York Times
April 8, 2020 Updated 12:28 p.m. ET

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont dropped out of the Democratic presidential race on Wednesday, concluding a quest for the White House that began five years ago in relative obscurity but ultimately elevated him as a champion of the working class, a standard-bearer of American liberalism and the leader of a self-styled political revolution.

Mr. Sanders’s exit from the race establishes former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the presumptive nominee to challenge President Trump, and leaves the progressive movement without a prominent voice in the 2020 race.

“I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour,” Mr. Sanders said over a live stream Wednesday morning.

He said that he would remain on the ballot in states that still have primaries scheduled and would continue to gather delegates, as a way of carrying his message forward and influencing the Democratic platform.

“While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not,” he said.

In a race reshaped, and eclipsed, by the escalating coronavirus crisis, Mr. Sanders faced no realistic path to the nomination after a series of lopsided losses to Mr. Biden, beginning in South Carolina in late February and culminating with a string of losses last month in crucial states like Michigan and Florida.

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With the public health emergency preventing both candidates from holding in-person campaign events, Mr. Sanders spent the last several weeks on the sidelines, delivering addresses via live stream and making occasional television appearances, while facing calls from fellow Democrats to exit the race and help unify the party behind Mr. Biden. Though Mr. Biden had been careful not to pressure Mr. Sanders, he had begun to move ahead as if the race were over, taking steps, for example, to begin his search for a running mate.

As Mr. Sanders pursued the White House for a second time, he promised that he could transform the electorate, bringing new voters under the Democratic tent, but that goal eluded him. Even Mr. Sanders has lamented that he was unable to produce a surge in young voters.

In early primaries this year, he also failed to show that he had remedied a crucial weakness from his 2016 run: a lack of support from black voters, a vital base of the Democratic Party. In state after state across the South — Alabama, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Virginia — he was unable to chip away at Mr. Biden’s strong support among African-Americans.

In many ways, Mr. Sanders never overcame the widely held view among Democrats that he was a political outlier, a self-described democratic socialist who proudly proclaimed himself to be an independent senator from Vermont rather than a member of the party establishment.

Mr. Sanders championed and popularized liberal policies like “Medicare for all” and free four-year public colleges aimed at lifting up America’s working class, but he faced opposition from many party leaders, elected officials and major donors, as well as large numbers of moderate voters who saw him as too far left.

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New York extending rulemaking hearings to due COVID-19

New York State on PAUSE, Updated Public & Stakeholder Participation Information

Governor Cuomo has issued a PAUSE Order directing non-essential meetings/gatherings to be suspended or canceled.

As a result, at this time DEC is canceling the public hearings previously scheduled for the following proposed rulemakings and extending the comment periods for these rulemakings for 30 days.

Proposed Subpart 225-1, Fuel Composition and Use – Sulfur Limitations – Comment period will be extended to 5/15/2020.

Proposed Part 248, Use of Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel Fuel and Best Available Retrofit Technology for Heavy Duty Vehicles – Comment period will be extended to 5/15/2020.

Proposed Part 230, Gasoline Dispensing Sites and Transport Vehicles – Comment period will be extended to 5/21/2020.

Proposed Part 231, New Source Review for New and Modified Facilities – Comment period will be extended to 5/21/2020.

Proposed Part 235, Consumer Products – Comment period will be extended to 5/21/2020.

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