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.
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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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.
The PES executives were already paid $4.59 million in retention bonuses after a catastrophic June 21 fire that led to the plant’s closure and bankruptcy filing, which resulted in all but 175 of the refinery’s 1,100 employees losing their jobs. The company’s chief restructuring officer told the court that it is “essential” to create a new bonus plan tied to the greatest recovery of money for the refinery’s creditors.
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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
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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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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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Seastreak Wall Street docked at the East 34th Street Ferry Landing
NEW YORK (November 27, 2019) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $1,832,567 Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) grant to the Connecticut Maritime Foundation, Inc. to curb harmful pollution from ferries in the greater New York and New Jersey area.
“Upgrading older marine engines will improve air quality and reduce harmful air pollutants for ferry commuters and port communities in New York and northern New Jersey,” said EPA Regional Administrator Pete Lopez.
“EPA’s DERA funding to public and private entities allows it to strengthen partnerships and invest in innovative technologies that will benefit both the environment and the economy.”
EPA’s funding to the Connecticut Maritime Foundation will replace six marine diesel engines on a SeaStreak passenger ferry that operates in the waterways between New Jersey and New York City metropolitan area. The ferry, which has a capacity to carry 505 passengers, currently operates approximately 4,500 hours per year and transports an estimated 50,000 – 100,000 passengers annually between Highlands, NJ and Manhattan. Replacement of the vessel engines is expected to be completed by the end of June 2021.
The replacement of existing marine diesel engines with new, cleaner engines will reduce emissions of diesel particulate matter and other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide, providing important public health and air quality benefits.
Exposure to diesel exhaust can lead to serious health conditions, like asthma and respiratory illnesses and can worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly. EPA’s Diesel Emission Quantifier estimates the health benefit of this project as avoiding approximately $21.2 million in annual health care-related costs attributable to diesel emissions.
In FY 2019, EPA awarded over $89 million in DERA funding for state, national, and tribal grants to reduce emissions from a variety of diesel emission sources, including school buses, trucks, locomotive, marine engines, and other nonroad equipment.
CONCORD — A judge has temporarily stopped the state from implementing new regulations on groundwater contamination.
In his ruling, Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Richard B. McNamara wrote that it was likely that the Department of Environmental Services had not conducted an “adequate cost-benefit analysis” when the department decided to regulate chemicals known as PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS and PFNA.
The state’s earlier guideline of 70 parts per trillion standard for perfluorooctanoic acid was reduced to 12 ppt. A level of 38 ppt had been proposed.
On Sept. 30, Plymouth Village Water and Sewer District, Resource Management Inc., Charles G. Hansen and 3M sued the Department of Environmental Services to block the new regulations, which had been scheduled to take effect that day.
The strict standards made New Hampshire the first state to require routine testing and treatment for the four chemicals in water systems, landfills and wastewater plants.
The plaintiffs argued that the department did not allow enough notice for public input on the standards, and that they constituted an unfunded mandate.
McNamara wrote that the state law prohibiting unfunded mandates likely does not apply to any of the plaintiffs, and that the department provided years of notice that it intended to make rules around PFOS and the other chemicals.
But, McNamara wrote, the Department of Environmental Services likely had not performed a cost-benefit analysis as a 2018 state law required of all new regulations.
The department’s cost-benefit analysis seemed scanty to the plaintiffs, especially when compared with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for preparing cost-benefit analyses.
The higher standards the department wanted to implement would result in much higher costs, the plaintiffs said, between 27 and 35 times higher than the lower standards the department first suggested in January.
DES did not cite any scientific research to justify the higher standards, McNamara wrote.
McNamara ruled Tuesday to stop the new regulations from being enacted until the department performs a more robust cost-benefit analysis. The order is to take effect on Dec. 31.
