BAN NONG CHAN, Thailand (Reuters) – By this time of year, the Mekong River should have been rising steadily with the monsoon rains, bringing fishermen a bounty of fat fish.
Instead, the river water in Thailand has fallen further than anyone can remember and the only fish are tiny.
Scientists and people living along the river fear the impact of the worst drought in years has been exacerbated by upstream dams raising the prospect of irreversible change on the river that supports one of Southeast Asia’s most important rice-growing regions.
A Chinese promise to release more dam water to ease the crisis has only raised worries over the extent to which the river’s natural cycles – and the communities that have depended on it for generations – have been forever disrupted.
“Now China is completely in control of the water,” said Premrudee Deoruong of Laos Dam Investment Monitor, an environmental group.
“From now on, the concern is that the water will be controlled by the dam builders.”
In the northeastern Thai province of Nakhon Phanom, where the now sluggish river forms the border with Laos, the measured depth of the Mekong fell below 1.5 meters this week. The average depth there for the same time of year is 8 meters.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that about 40 percent of food is never eaten and simply thrown away. That means tons of rotten, spoiled or just plain unwanted victuals must be disposed of. It’s a nationwide problem.
The Environmental Protection Agency recommends a variety of methods, which the agency ranks from most to least preferable, on how to get rid of excess food. For one, businesses could avoid creating excess food in the first place by reducing production.
Beyond that, the EPA suggests sending the food to soup kitchens and food banks, using it as animal feed and then using it as compost for plant soil.
The least-preferable option is sending the waste to incinerators or landfills — considered the dirtiest disposal methods.
Earlier this year, the state Legislature sent to Gov. Phil Murphy what could have been a landmark measure, Senate Bill 1206, aimed at curbing food waste and stimulating a market around greener technology. But an amendment tucked into the bill shortly before it was approved maintains incinerators and landfills as acceptable destinations.
That was never the intention of the legislation. But the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Bob Smith, D-17th District, said he needed to add in those provisions to secure the bill’s passage through the full Assembly and Senate
S1206 would require businesses producing more than 52 tons of food waste a year to separate it from other trash and recycle it.
Institution-level businesses – hospitals, supermarkets, prisons and government facilities – would be affected most. Additionally, starting in 2020 businesses within 25 miles of a “food waste facility” such as those that specialize in anaerobic digestion – which produces methane – or composting, would have to send the food there.
“What this will do is generate the market. This is a chicken and egg situation, where you’ve got to have a market, you’ve got to have the fuel in order to build the digesters,” said Smith, who chairs the Senate Environment Committee. “It’s guaranteeing that they’re going to have a product.”
Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-36th District – who chairs the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, wanted to add in the provision for landfills – he could not be reached for comment on why.
Assemblyman James Kennedy, D-22nd District, added in the provision for incinerators. He contended that the incinerator in his city of Rahway produces a massive chunk of the region’s electricity.
“Forty percent of its waste is actually food waste, and you’re going to take that out, you have to make some sort of balance so you don’t bankrupt a good thing,” Kennedy said.
“The bill is far from perfect,” Smith conceded, but it “moves the ball forward.”
He acknowledged that the exemptions were unpopular — he did not want them, saying to put food in incinerators is “not a great public policy.”
Andrew Maykuth reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer Updated: July 24, 2019- 6:33 PM
MICHAEL BRYANT
The Philadelphia Health Department measured an “elevated” level of deadly hydrogen fluoride gas outside the South Philadelphia refinery during a fiery accident last month, but the reading was dismissed as a “false positive” and no actions were taken to protect residents, according to a Drexel University environmental engineer.
A city inspector, using a handheld monitoring device, measured the elevated gas reading at a location near the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery complex, according to Peter DeCarlo, a Drexel environmental engineering professor, who submitted testimony to a state legislative committee that held a hearing Wednesday on the June 21 refinery explosion.
“The positive measurement should have been cause for proactive measures to protect residents,” DeCarlo said in his written testimony to the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, which conducted the hearing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School.
The incident was cited by several environmental and health advocates on Wednesday who suggested that regulators need to correct weaknesses in air-monitoring and response plans for industrial sites such as PES, which is surrounded by densely populated residential areas. They said the city’s current network of fixed air-monitoring equipment was not well-positioned to detect the impact of the huge smoke cloud that drifted eastward during the refinery fire.
The city’s health department downplayed the incident Wednesday, saying its Air Management Services (AMS) inspectors suspected the gas meter was not properly calibrated, and requested that the refinery and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency double-check the tests.
“Both confirmed that there was no HF present in the air,” James Garrow, the health department spokesperson, said in an email. “The AMS inspectors took the improperly calibrated meter out of service.”
At the time of the fire, a shelter-in-place order was put in place for residents near the refinery, but no evacuation ordered.
Citing the short-term rental tax enacted last year, shore homeowners and businesses say they’re bringing in less money at the height of the summer season.
Despite being steps from the shore during the summer season, some shore rentals sit unused and empty. The owners say a tax on short-term rentals that went into effect in 2018 is to blame. The tax adds a nearly 12% surcharge on all short-term rentals lasting less than 90 days and was originally designed to make reservations made through home-sharing platforms like Airbnb and VRBO subject to the same taxes as hotels and motels.
Begging for action, shore rental owners sent a letter this week urging Gov. Phil Murphy to a sign a bipartisan bill to tweak the bill’s language. They’ve railed against the law requesting an exemption, saying it’s drastically hurt their ability to rent and unfairly carved out the tax for real estate brokers. And there’s a trickle-down effect, say business owners. Vacant weekly rentals mean less money spent at local shops.
A giant lime-green storage container parked behind Robbinsville Township’s Senior Center is not what I imagined I’d be looking at when I learned the town had a public garden. But that’s exactly what it is and the magic happening inside the 40-foot-long space might surprise you.
Affectionately called the “leafy green machine” by the staff that runs the garden in a box, it operates on a hydroponics system, which, after stepping inside, made me feel like I was inside a sci-fi movie with its eery lights and machinery.
The storage container-turned-garden, which cost the town $104,000, was first installed in 2017. Its main focus is to provide local residents with fresh vegetables that are able to be grown year-round in nutrient-rich water without the need for dirt or pesticides.
Lettuce being prepared for packaging at Robbinsville’s hydroponic garden.
“This is really a great urban solution to bring localized greens to residents,” said Kyle Clement, the farm’s coordinator. Clement was hired shortly after graduating from Rutgers to oversee the farm’s production.
Despite its tiny size, the storage container allows them to grow the same amount of crops as a 32,000-square-foot plot of land, which amounts to about 500 heads of lettuce harvested a week. The majority of the produce — lettuce and kale, and eventually herbs like basil — is donated to the town’s senior center and the Mercer Street Friends food bank. The rest is sold to residents who sign up through the town’s program and pay $20 for four weeks of veggies.
I got a tour of the space on a recent afternoon. The inside of the container was mostly dark and was almost solely lit by blue and red LED lights. The closest I’ve come to have an experience like this is when I took a darkroom photography workshop in middle school.
The sides of the storage box are lined with rows and rows of white vertical shelves, which is where the heads of lettuce grow.
As Clement walked me through the process of farming, he pulled one of the inward-facing shelves off its stop to reveal the most perfect and symmetrical heads of lettuce that I’ve ever seen.
The reason these veggies look so perfect has to do with their growing process, which goes a little something like this:
Everything is grown from seeds. They first start out in the seed nursery for about three weeks until the lettuce bulb is big enough to fit into the vertical rack. From there, the entire growing process is controlled and monitored by the farm’s computer system.
“The sensors take all of the readings of water, temperature and pH levels, which are sent to the farm computer, and the computer reads it and adjusts the environment as needed,” Clement said.
The vertical growing system requires no soil and uses a drip water method that conserves 90% of the water used. Any water that isn’t absorbed by the vegetables is collected by the box’s irrigation system to be reused.
Instead of sunlight, the LED lights provide the energy the plants need to grow. The red and blue wavelength lights provide optimal light to the leafy vegetables growing in each garden.
Once the vegetables are fully grown, they are harvested by Clement and a team of volunteers each week. The heads of the lettuce are pulled from the vertical stacks and are cleaned on a workbench before being bagged and prepared for customers.
The state agency that oversees development in the Highlands region is seeking a senior counsel. The full-time position pays between $70,000 and $85,000 annually.
According to a job notice posted by the Council, the senior counsel, under the direction of the Chief Counsel, would provide legal support and guidance to Highlands Council legal department and management team.
“The position of Senior Counsel requires an individual who is capable of working independently under the direct supervision of Chief Counsel and possesses a professional disposition that interfaces well with the public, staff, and Council. Senior
“Counsel will also assist Chief Counsel in the formulation, interpretation, and administration of Highlands Council policies and procedures as well as the implementation of the Highlands Act and Regional Master Plan.”
Additional information about the position is available here.
