EnviroPolitics Blog

Pa. lawmakers and judges have reason to feel thankful this year. Their salaries are increasing

Marc Levy reports for the Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania state lawmakers, judges and top executive branch officials will collect another annual salary increase in 2020, with the governor’s salary passing $200,000 and rank-and-file lawmakers’ base salaries passing $90,000.

The salary increases come as lawmakers consider increasing Pennsylvania’s minimum wage for the first time since 2009 and a citizen activist presses Gov. Tom Wolf and lawmakers to increase Pennsylvania’s tax forgiveness threshold for adults for the first time in two decades.

Their salary increase for the year ahead will be 1.9%, a figure tied by state law to the year-over-year change in the consumer price index published by the U.S. Department of Labor for urban consumers in the mid-Atlantic region.

The boost takes effect Dec. 1 for lawmakers and Jan. 1 for judicial and executive branch officials.

The increase is about one-third larger than last year’s increase comes at a time of steady growth in wages for private-sector workers.

Federal data from the three-month period ending in June showed average weekly wages for private-sector workers in Pennsylvania increased 3.8% year-over-year, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. However, hourly wage data shows that wages have grown more slowly for workers at the bottom of the income ladder.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Saylor is highest-paid, pulling down a $4,000 raise to just above $221,000. The rest of the Supreme Court’s seven members will be paid $215,000. Wolf’s salary will rise about $3,800 to almost $201,700, although he donates it to charity. Both are among the nation’s highest.

Most lawmakers, the nation’s third-highest paid, will see increases of $1,725 to about $90,300 in base pay. They also receive per diems, pensions and health benefits.

Lawmakers in leadership posts will top out at $141,000 for House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson. The four caucus floor leaders in the House and Senate will each make almost 130,900 while the four caucus whips and the four Appropriations Committee chairs will receive $121,100.

County court judges will see increases to about $186,700, while judges in larger districts, such as Philadelphia and Allegheny County, will get slightly more.

The salary for Lt. Gov. John Fetterman will surpass $169,400, while the three statewide elected row officers — Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Treasurer Joe Torsella and Auditor General Eugene DePasquale — each will make a little more than $167,800.

The salaries for the heads of Wolf’s 18 cabinet agencies will rise by law, topping out at almost $161,400 for leaders of the largest departments.

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Tech expert explains why he put down his $100 to get in line for Tesla’s Cybertruck

By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor

Elon Musk’s dramatic unveiling of Tesla’s electric pickup, the Cybertruck, has stirred quite a reaction. Apparently there are few who don’t either love or hate it.

Marques Brownlee, who has built an enormous YouTube following since posting his first tech reviews as a teenager, notes what online folks are saying about the stunning-or-hideous-looking vehicle and why he’s come down on the I-need-one side.

Below is Marques’s video. Tell us what you think by clicking on the ‘comment’ link up top under the headling.

I’m in line with Marques’s observations but must confess that, many years ago, I (and about 10 other Americans) was thrilled by the introduction of a Detroit style-breaking auto, shaped like an egg. Help me out here. Who made it and what was it called?

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EPA to study how future combined sewer outflow could affect NY’s Newtown Creek Superfund site

From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

NEW YORK – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing a proposed plan that evaluates impacts of the current and expected future volume of combined sewer overflow (CSO) discharges to the Newtown Creek Superfund Site Study Area in New York City. EPA added Newtown Creek to its Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s highest priority hazardous waste sites in September 2010, and investigations of the entire site are ongoing.

“This proposed plan is an important step forward in advancing the cleanup of the Newtown Creek Superfund Site,” said EPA Regional Administrator Pete Lopez. “In this plan, EPA acknowledges that the work that the City is already obliged to do to improve the water quality of Newtown Creek, including major water infrastructure improvements through compliance with the state-imposed long term CSO control plan, will be consistent with meeting the needs of the Superfund program and help EPA fulfill its mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

The Newtown Creek Superfund Site Study Area is comprised of the waters and sediments of Newtown Creek in Brooklyn and Queens. Outside of the Superfund process, the City of New York is under order by the State of New York to implement a CSO Long-Term Control Plan (LTCP) for Newtown Creek. The LTCP, which was approved by the state in June 2018, includes a number of components to reduce future CSO discharges to the creek, including the construction of a storage tunnel.

The LTCP is ultimately anticipated to reduce the volume of CSO discharges to Newtown Creek by approximately 61%, and to achieve waterbody-specific water quality standards under the Clean Water Act. EPA evaluated the LTCP in the context of the Superfund site to determine if the volume reductions anticipated under the LTCP are sufficient to meet the needs of the future cleanup of the Superfund site. EPA has determined that the water pollution volume controls prescribed by the LTCP that the city and state will implement, in accordance with requirements of the Clean Water Act, are sufficient to meet the needs of an eventual Superfund cleanup for the Study Area of the Newtown Creek Superfund Site. The EPA anticipates requiring monitoring of the four largest CSOs to confirm the assumptions made in this proposed plan.

The EPA is conducting in-depth investigations of the extent of the contamination at the entire Newtown Creek Superfund Site in order to determine how best to clean it up over the long-term. This proposed plan is for one aspect of the site.

The EPA will determine in the future whether additional control actions, either in the creek or at CSO points-of-discharge, are needed to address the cleanup of the full site. These additional control actions could include the placement of sediment traps and/or oil sorbent pads at the end of CSO discharge pipes and in-creek maintenance dredging to address the potential accumulation of contaminated solids near the CSO discharges.

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New Jersey looking to go big on offshore wind

Anmar Frangoul reports for CNBC

KEY POINTS

New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, signed the executive order on Tuesday.
The offshore wind energy market in the U.S. is still relatively nascent, although a number of major projects are now in the pipeline.

GP: Block Island Wind Farm — The Block Island Wind Farm, located off the coast of Block Island, RI, is pictured on Jun. 13, 2017.David L. Ryan | Boston Globe | Getty Images

The Governor of New Jersey has signed an executive order to increase the state’s target for “offshore wind-generated electricity.”

The order, which was signed by Phil Murphy Tuesday, ups the target from 3,500 megawatts (MW) by 2030 to 7,500 MW by the year 2035.

“There is no other renewable energy resource that provides us with either the electric-generation or economic-growth potential of offshore wind,” Governor Murphy said in a statement.

“When we reach our goal of 7,500 megawatts, New Jersey’s offshore wind infrastructure will generate electricity to power more than 3.2 million homes and meet fifty percent of our state’s electric power need,” he added.

In a statement issued Thursday, the American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) Laura Smith Morton described the announcement from New Jersey as “a significant commitment to offshore wind-generated electricity and clean energy.“

Smith Morton, who is the AWEA’s senior director, policy and regulatory affairs, went on to state that the East Coast was “leading the U.S. in establishing offshore wind as the next major American energy source.”

According to the International Energy Agency’s Offshore Wind Outlook 2019, global investment in the offshore wind sector in 2018 was roughly $20 billion, compared to under $8 billion in 2010.

In the U.S., however, the offshore wind market is still relatively nascent. The country’s first offshore wind farm, the five turbine, 30 MW Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island, only commenced commercial operations in late 2016.

Major projects are in the pipeline, however. Danish firm Orsted, for instance, is developing the 120 MW Skipjack facility off the Maryland coast and the 1,100 MW Ocean Wind project off the coast of New Jersey. It’s expected that the facilities will be commissioned in 2022 and 2024 respectively.

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Tonawanda Coke soil sampling finished but public health questions remain

The former Tonawanda Coke in the Town of Tonawanda. (John Hickey/News file photo)

Stephen T. Watson reports for the Buffalo News
Published November 21, 2019

The arsenic, mercury and other toxins found in the ground on most properties surrounding the former Tonawanda Coke plant generally are at safe levels, according to the scientist leading a court-ordered soil study.

But two rounds of collecting and testing soil samples in sections of the Town of Tonawanda, City of Tonawanda and Grand Island have identified areas of elevated contamination that may need to be cleaned up, though they don’t present an immediate danger to the public.

Researchers from the University at Buffalo and SUNY Fredonia planned to present these findings Thursday evening at a community forum, where they were scheduled to update residents on the progress of the 3-year-old soil study.

Scientists and volunteers have finished collecting samples from hundreds of locations in the three communities. Researchers, working with a private testing lab, for the most part have identified the toxic chemicals and their concentration levels.

Two key questions remain: Which properties are so contaminated that they require cleaning up, and which contaminants can definitively be traced to Tonawanda Coke?

“I feel that people should understand that this is not a clear statement of contamination that is immediately dangerous but worthy of further consideration by residents and community leaders,” said Joseph Gardella Jr., the UB chemistry professor leading the soil study.

Tonawanda Supervisor Joseph Emminger said the study results show residents don’t need to worry about contamination that may have come from the Tonawanda Coke plant and that no cleanup is required.

Emminger and Jackie James-Creedon, a founder of the nonprofit Citizen Science Community Resources, continue to object to how UB conducted the study and to call on the university to provide access to the underlying data. However, whatever their concerns, they say the bigger victory was the plant’s closure in October 2018.

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More federal oil and gas leases suspended by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Could the number grow?

Fossil Fuel leases totaling hundreds of thousands of acres have been suspended as courts rule against the BLM for ignoring climate impact.

Nicholas Kusnetz for Inside Climate News

Pump-jacks on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Credit: BLM — Nearly a quarter of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions come from fossil fuels developed on federal lands, according to a government report. Credit: Bureau of Land Management

The Trump administration’s relentless push to expand fossil fuel production on federal lands is hitting a new snag: its own refusal to consider the climate impacts of development.

The federal Bureau of Land Management’s Utah office in September voluntarily suspended 130 oil and gas leases after advocacy groups sued, arguing that BLM hadn’t adequately assessed the greenhouse gas emissions associated with drilling and extraction on those leases as required by law.

The move was unusual because BLM suspended the leases on its own, without waiting for a court to rule.

Some environmental advocates say it could indicate a larger problem for the bureau.

“It is potentially a BLM-wide issue,” said Jayni Hein, natural resources director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, which has been involved in similar litigation in other states. “It could have the effect of suspending even more leases across the West, and not just for oil and gas, for coal as well.”

Officials in Utah had already pulled back several other lease sales earlier this year. In effect, BLM appears to be trying to get ahead of potential court rulings, advocates say.

A series of court rulings have established that BLM must conduct a thorough analysis of the climate impacts of drilling before it allows development in order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

In the latest ruling, a federal district court in Washington, D.C., in March ordered the bureau to redo its environmental analysis for a slate of leases in Wyoming to better assess climate impacts. In response, BLM suspended the Wyoming leases, as well as leases in Utah and Colorado that were included in the lawsuit but not directly addressed by the ruling.

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