EnviroPolitics Blog

Up to 100 workers laid off at Pennsylvania steel plant NLMK. Trump’s tariffs blamed

BY MICHAEL ROKNICK Herald Business Editor

FARRELL, Pa. – NLMK Pennsylvania has laid off up to 100 workers on a weekly basis, with an additional 35 salaried positions permanently eliminated, which a top company official blames on tariffs enacted last year by President Donald J. Trump.

“On any given week we have anywhere between 80 to 100 production people on layoff,’’ said Bob Miller, NLMK Pennsylvania’s president. “The number depends on our production orders. And unfortunately, our volume is down right now.’’

Further, Miller said the company had to slash 35 salaried posts, including 17 jobs that had been open but will now go unfilled.

“I told people this is what would happen if the tariffs remained,’’ Miller said.

On March 8, 2018, President Donald Trump put a 25 percent tariff on steel imports from a number of countries, including Russia. NLMK Pennsylvania is owned by Novolipetsk Steel, abbreviated as NLMK. The parent company is one of Russia’s leading steelmakers.

Under its business model, the Farrell plant has relied on its parent company for most of its material. The steel arrives at the Farrell steel plant as slabs, which are rolled into coils that are sold to manufacturers for a variety of items such as cars and appliances.

Miller has said there aren’t enough slabs produced in the U.S., so the company is forced to pay the tariffs and also buy from foreign markets — including Canada, Mexico and Brazil — not affected by the tariffs.

But even those alternatives might not provide safe harbor for NLMK. Trump announced Monday on Twitter that he planned to restore tariffs on steel manufactured in Brazil and Argentina. The president said those nations have allowed their currency to decrease in value.

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In April, the U.S. Department of Commerce rejected almost all of NLMK’s requests for exemptions from the federal government’s tariffs. At the time, Miller said the company had paid $160 million in tariffs. He didn’t immediately have the latest total on Monday.

NLMK employs 600 people at the Farrell steel plant and another 150 workers at its Sharon Coating operation.

Representatives of United Steelworkers Local 1016-03 in Farrell didn’t immediately return a phone call Monday. The USW represents 430 production and maintenance workers at the Farrell plant.

Farrell city Manager Michael Ceci said Monday the city hasn’t seen any immediate financial repercussions yet.

The city collects a 1 percent non-resident tax from NLMK workers who don’t live in Farrell. That percentage is down from 1.8 percent the city collected when it was under the state’s Act 47 distressed community status, said Ceci.

“By reducing it to 1 percent it allowed us to exit from Act 47 in February,’’ he said. “We no longer have that safety net.’’

He said it was worrisome that NLMK was laying off employees.

“Even one person who has been laid off is detrimental not just to us but the entire area.’’

Miller was more blunt.

“This is very frustrating,’’ he said. “The government is really hurting the little guy.’’

There is little the company can do to change the situation, Miller said.

“We’ve adjusted our business and we’ll keep fighting for what is right,’’ he said.

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Enviro bills set for votes in NJ Legislature December 5 and 9 Revised to correct date

By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor
The New Jersey Senate and Assembly are in the home stretch of their two-year session which will end in early January. Below is a listing of environmental bills scheduled for action in two Senate committees on Thursday and next Monday. The most anticipated of them is the plastic bag ban bill, S2776.

Thursday, December 5, 2019
Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, 11:30 am 1st Floor, Committee Room 4, Annex.

S2776 Smith (D17); Greenstein (D14) +2 Prohibits carryout bags made of plastic film, polystyrene foam food-service products, and single‑use plastic straws; assesses fee on paper carryout bags.

S3457 Sweeney (D3); Andrzejczak (D1) Appropriates $450,000 for Hooked on Fishing‑Not on Drugs Program.

S3870 Sarlo (D36) Authorizes alternative procedure for sale of municipal sewerage systems to public utilities.

S3965 Ruiz (D29); Cryan (D20) +2 Requires DEP, DOH, DCA, owners or operators of public water systems, and owners or operators of certain buildings to take certain actions to prevent and control cases of Legionnaires’ disease.

————————————————————-

Monday, December 9, 2019
Senate Environment and Energy Committee, 10 a.m.
1st Floor, Committee Room 6, Annex.

S2495 Smith (D17); Greenstein (D14) Authorizes NJ Infrastructure Bank to issue up to $20 million in bonds to finance cost‑effective energy efficiency improvements in State, local, and school district buildings.

S4162 Smith (D17) Establishes New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers University, appropriates $2 million.

SR151 Weinberg (D37) Urges Governor to impose a moratorium on fossil fuel projects.

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Enviro bills set for votes in NJ Legislature December 5 and 9 **Revised to correct date** Read More »

Live in Philadelphia? Start composting!

Philadelphians dump 400,000 tons of food and yard scraps into the landfill every year. A city community composting pilot is working to put that waste to good use.

Katherine Rapin reports for The Philadelphia Citizen

On a recent Saturday at the Carousel House community garden in Fairmount Park, a huddle assembled around a massive plywood box full of food scraps. “If it’s bigger than my hand—like five inches—chop it,” says the enthusiastic composting instructor, holding up her gloved hand. “And put big signs up so people don’t leave stuff outside the bin.” The sea of colorful knit hats nodded.

These folks represent 11 community gardens, urban farms, and schools across the city; they are the pioneers of Philadelphia’s pilot Community Composting Network who will help their neighborhoods turn organic waste into nutrient-rich plant food.

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Funded by grants from Comcast and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the program is headed up by the city’s Office of Sustainability and Department of Parks and Recreation. They provide the 12x4x4-foot, three-compartment compost bin, training and ongoing support for each site as it gets set up.

The idea is this: neighbors bring their food and yard scraps to a nearby site and share the responsibility of turning the piles and maintaining the bin. The resulting fertilizer is available to all participants for use in garden beds, window boxes, potted plants at home, or even trees lining streets nearby.

The city’s review committee last week announced the pilot sites from 22 applications submitted over the summer. These first composters, like Greensgrow Farm, Brewerytown Garden, and Urban Tree Connection, have well-established neighborhood networks.

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Live in Philadelphia? Start composting! Read More »

Bankrupt Philly refinery seeks millions more for executive bonuses ahead of a potential sale

Bankrupt Philly refinery seeks millions more for executive bonuses ahead of potential sale — **MATT ROURKE / AP**

Andrew Maykuth reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer
November 25, 2019

Bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions is seeking a new round of bonuses that would pay seven top executives millions of dollars, depending upon the success of a plan to reorganize or sell the company.

The refinery, in a filing Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, wants to create a bonus pool for the seven key employees whose payouts would be based upon how much the refinery fetches from a sale and in insurance proceeds. The bonus pool would range from $2.5 million to as much as $20 million if the refinery generates $1 billion in net proceeds from a sale and insurance policies.

What could increase the risks posed by NJ Superfund sites? Climate change

Many NJ cleanup locations are seen as vulnerable to fires, floods, storm surge, and sea-level rise

Crown Vantage Landfill Superfund site in Alexandria Township

Jon Hurdle reports for NJ Spotlight

The congressional watchdog agency named 141 New Jersey sites in a national survey of more than 1,500 that have been or are still subject to environmental cleanup, and said that many of the Garden State locations could be damaged by floods or fires that are caused by climate change.

The survey included the Kin-Buc Landfill in Edison Township, Middlesex County which lost its state permits as a municipal and industrial waste facility in the 1970s after being found to have leaked PCBs into a nearby creek and discharged millions of gallons of oil and other wastes.

Fires, hurricanes, floods

Now, the Kin-Buc site is seen to have a high potential for wildfires, vulnerability to hurricanes at even their lowest intensity, the highest exposure to floods and the potential to be inundated by only one foot of sea-level rise, far less than is forecast for the Jersey Shore by the end of the century.

Likewise, the Federal Creosote site next to the Raritan River in Manville, Somerset County, was deemed by the GAO to be susceptible to wildfires and once-in-a-century flooding. The conclusion comes after some 20 years of environmental remediation that removed thousands of tons of contaminated soil and capped areas found to contain carcinogenic material left by wood treatment that took place there for about 45 years until the mid-1950s.

And the Crown Vantage Landfill beside the Delaware River in Alexandria Township, Hunterdon County was deemed by the GAO to be vulnerable to a once-in-a-century flood almost 30 years after New Jersey environmental officials began investigating its discharges of contaminants from a nearby paper mill. The site is now fenced off and monitored to make sure it is not disturbed, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Nationally, some 60% of Superfund sites are vulnerable to climate change, the agency said, basing its conclusions on climate and other data from four federal agencies. It said the sites “are located in areas that may be impacted by selected climate-change effects.”

NJ at higher risk

New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel said the report is of particular concern in New Jersey because of its unusual vulnerability to the effects of climate change, including sea-level rise.

“When these sites flood, they will wash all kinds of toxic chemicals into streams, rivers and even homes,” he said.

Where contaminated material has been capped rather than removed, flooding will cause the caps to fail, allowing the contaminants to enter groundwater, Tittel said.

The GAO analyzed Superfund sites on the National Priority List. (New Jersey has the highest number of any state, according to EPA data.) About 90% of the so-called NPL sites are not federal, which means they are typically owned by private businesses or municipal or state governments. Cleanups at those sites, however, are conducted or overseen by the EPA.

The agency was asked by Congress to look at whether the contaminated sites could be exposed to flooding, sea-level rise, wildfires and storm surge, and whether the EPA, which oversees the sites’ cleanup, has been doing enough to plan for climate-related effects in those locations.

Noting that the NPL program has recorded more than 500 contaminants including arsenic and lead, the GAO cited the Fourth National Climate Assessment of 2018 in predicting that climate change could make natural disasters more frequent or intense and increase the risk of damage to the sites.

The GAO recommended that the EPA do more to integrate climate change into its assessment and risk-response of Superfund sites and clarify how its actions at the sites help to meet its goals of protecting human health and the environment.

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What could increase the risks posed by NJ Superfund sites? Climate change Read More »

William D. Ruckelshaus, who refused to join in Nixon’s ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ dies at 87

William Ruckelshaus, shown in 1973, resigned as deputy attorney general when asked to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. (Charles Gorry/AP)

By Timothy R. Smith for the Washington Post
November 27, 2019, at 2:08 p.m. EST

William D. Ruckelshaus, a pragmatic and resolute government official who shaped the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s as its first administrator and returned to the agency a decade later to restore its shattered morale after its watchdog powers had been muzzled, died Nov. 27 at his home in Medina, Wash. He was 87.

The death was confirmed by a daughter, Mary Ruckelshaus. She did not cite a specific cause.

In a long career in government and private industry, Mr. Ruckelshaus was widely promoted as “Mr. Clean” as much for his uprightness as for his role with the EPA. He cemented his reputation for unshakable integrity when, in 1973, as President Richard Nixon’s deputy attorney general, he defied a presidential order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in.AD

Decades later, as chief executive of Houston-based Browning-Ferris Industries, the second-largest trash-disposal company in the country, he expanded the company’s presence into New York and worked with law enforcement agencies to help break mob control of the city’s trash removal business.

President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mr. Ruckelshaus in 2015. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Mr. Ruckelshaus, the scion of a prominent Indianapolis legal family, was a moderate Republican educated at Princeton and Harvard who rose in the Nixon-era Justice Department before guiding the EPA at its birth in 1970.

Hulking, rawboned and bespectacled, Mr. Ruckelshaus shepherded several federal environmental entities into a robust regulatory agency and did as much as anyone to mold the EPA’s mission.AD

During his three-year tenure, he created policies that forced cities to adopt anti-pollution laws, held automakers to strict emissions standards and banned the harmful pesticide DDT.

J. Patrick Dobel, a University of Washington public affairs professor who has written about Mr. Ruckelshaus’s leadership abilities, said he focused the agency’s mission and drew early media attention to the EPA.

“He got the EPA a lot of public support and built up visibility,” Dobel said.

Around the time Mr. Ruckelshaus stepped down from the EPA in April 1973, the Nixon administration was foundering amid accusations that it had obstructed justice by covering up its involvement in the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington.AD

Mr. Ruckelshaus, who had no connection to the scandal, was made acting FBI director and then deputy attorney general in an effort by the Nixon administration to rebuild public confidence.

In 1973, Archibald Cox, a Harvard law professor appointed by Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to investigate the break-in, had requested complete access to Oval Office tape recordings of the time immediately after the break-in. Nixon rebuffed the request and ordered Richardson to fire Cox on Oct. 20, 1973. Richardson refused and resigned.

Shortly afterward, Gen. Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief of staff, phoned Mr. Ruckelshaus and instructed him to fire Cox.AD

“Your commander in chief has given you an order,” Haig said.

Mr. Ruckelshaus, who had promised the Senate during confirmation hearings that he would protect Cox, refused to carry out Nixon’s order and then resigned. The duties of the attorney general were transferred to Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, who agreed to fire Cox.

The event became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” and precipitated the downfall of the Nixon presidency in August 1974.

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William D. Ruckelshaus, who refused to join in Nixon’s ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ dies at 87 Read More »

Up to 100 workers laid off at Pennsylvania steel plant NLMK. Trump’s tariffs blamed

Enviro bills set for votes in NJ Legislature December 5 and 9 **Revised to correct date**

Live in Philadelphia? Start composting!

LISTEN To this story in CitizenCast

Bankrupt Philly refinery seeks millions more for executive bonuses ahead of a potential sale

What could increase the risks posed by NJ Superfund sites? Climate change

Fires, hurricanes, floods

NJ at higher risk

William D. Ruckelshaus, who refused to join in Nixon’s ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ dies at 87

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Enviro bills set for votes in NJ Legislature December 5 and 9 Revised to correct date