New York closes 427 shellfishing acres; Reopens 31 Acres

Long Island oysters

From the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation

In response to the annual review of multiple data sources, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) today announced new regulations that will close approximately 427 acres across several shellfishing areas in Nassau and Suffolk counties. The affected areas in six Long Island towns are now closed during part or all of the year. Areas being closed, or those having seasonally closed periods extended, were found to have elevated levels of fecal coliform bacteria that do not meet New York State’s bacteriological standards for certified (open) shellfish harvesting areas. DEC acted to close the areas to protect the health of shellfish consumers.

Areas affected by new or extended closures are:

  • 105 acres in Long Island Sound (towns of Brookhaven and Riverhead) will be closed year-round;
  • 132 acres in West Harbor, Fishers Island (town of Southold), will have the existing seasonal closure extended by 14 days;
  • One acre in Gardiners Bay (town of Southold) will be closed seasonally from May 1 through October 31;
  • 23 acres in Great Peconic Bay (town of Southold) will be closed year-round;
  • 80 acres in Lake Montauk (town of East Hampton) will have the existing seasonal closure extended by 60 days;
  • Eight acres in Moriches Bay (town of Southampton), closed seasonally, from May 1 through October 31;
  • Two acres in Greenport Harbor, Shelter Island Sound North (town of Southold), will be closed year-round;
  • 21 acres in Little Northwest Creek, Sag Harbor, (town of East Hampton) will be closed year-round;
  • 10 acres in Shinnecock Bay (town of Southampton) will be closed year-round; and
  • 257 acres in Smithtown Bay (towns of Smithtown and Huntington) will be closed year-round.

In addition, DEC has made the determination to reopen approximately 31 acres in three embayments in Suffolk County. The affected areas, in two towns, will be reopened to shellfishing during all or part of the year or have existing seasonal openings extended by several weeks. The areas being reopened, or having seasonally open periods extended, were found to meet the stringent standards for certified areas. DEC has reopened these areas to provide additional shellfishing opportunities for commercial and recreational harvesters. Nearly one million acres of certified harvest areas around Long Island are available for taking shellfish (clams, oysters, mussels, and scallops) for human consumption.

Areas affected by the new openings are:

  • Seven previously closed acres in Bellport Bay (town of Brookhaven) will be opened year-round;
  • 24 acres in Pirates Cove, Fishers Island (town of Southold), will be seasonally open from October 1 through April 30, annually; and
  • Five acres in Mill Creek, a tributary of Shelter Island Sound North (town of Southold), will have its seasonally open period extended by 45 days.

Additional technical amendments to DEC regulations include clarifying and updating landmarks and other boundaries for delineating shellfish closure lines. DEC continues to monitor water quality throughout New York’s marine district as part of its participation in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program. DEC will make changes to the certification of shellfish lands as water quality conditions warrant.

In addition, DEC is mailing a Notice to Shellfish Harvesters to individuals that hold a 2019 shellfish diggers permit and reside in the towns in which the affected areas are located. These notices provide information about the changes and maps showing new closure lines. Detailed descriptions of the new landmarks and boundaries for the newly closed and reopened areas, including the new dates of the seasonal closures, are available from DEC by calling 631-444-0492.

The regulations adopting the changes announced today were effective immediately on July 12, and are expected to be published in the July 31, 2019, edition of the New York State Register. 

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Opinion: Burning food waste in N.J. still stinks, even when it’s given another name

While the trash incineration industry is seizing this moment to try and sell municipalities their rebranded forms of yesterday’s technologies, there is an opportunity to embrace a better approach, Mandy Gunasekara says.

While the trash incineration industry is seizing this moment to try and sell municipalities their rebranded forms of yesterday’s technologies, there is an opportunity to embrace a better approach, Mandy Gunasekara says.

By Mandy Gunasekara, Star-Ledger guest columnist

The New Jersey legislature recently passed a food-waste recycling bill designed to better align the state’s waste-management processes with today’s understandings and societal expectations.

Legislators no doubt had the best of intentions while crafting this bill – which is on its way to the governor for signature into law – but it has a glaring loophole that stands to undermine its entire purpose. A last-minute amendment added trash incinerators to the list of approved recycling facilities. If burning New Jersey’s food waste strikes you as a major step backward in local waste management and counter to the basic meaning of recycling, then you are on the right track.

Reading through the text of the amendment it would be hard to find this provision given incinerators are rarely mentioned by their old, honest name, but instead have a new, more enlightened one – “resource recovery facilities.” While effective PR campaigns and lobbying efforts have changed the look and feel of these trash burning facilities on paper, little has changed in terms of the technology.

false
Throwing food away — or just burning it — counts as recycling in bill awaiting Murphy’s approval

A last-minute change to a bill originally meant to expand composting in the Garden State could instead send food waste to landfills and incinerators.

Some facilities have added heat capturing capabilities in an effort to produce energy. The PR brigade refers to these as “waste-to-energy,” which sounds great, but this has proved both inefficient and extremely costly in practice. It actually costs $8.33 per megawatt-hour to make energy out of waste incineration. For comparison, pulverized coal only costs $4.25 per megawatt-hour; nuclear energy costs $2.04.

From an environmental perspective, burning trash is equally problematic. Air pollutants are an inevitable biproduct of the process, but there is a more recent concern that incinerators are also releasing Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances more commonly referred to as PFAS. These chemicals have been the subject of growing public concern, which prompted EPA to issue an action plan to address it. In the meantime, trash incinerators do not have the same level of pollution control capabilities for PFAS as they do other air pollutants.

Read the full story


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Petition opposes 200-acre sports complex along Lake Prospertown in the NJ Pinelands

Prospertown Lake in Jackson Township, New Jersey.

By Shore News Network

JACKSON-The proposed 200-acre sports complex that once boasted a new stadium for Governor Phil Murphy’s Sky Blue FC Women’s soccer team has residents of Jackson Township upset over the mass clearing of land along protected waterways along the banks of Prospertown Lake.

Marc Covitz, a nearby resident of Millstone is leading the charge and has collected over 6,000 names on a petition to stop the project before it starts.

“Trophy Park is a massive sports complex planned to be built on 200 acres of Great Adventure/Six Flags property in the Pinelands forest of Jackson Township on the southern shore of Prospertown Lake, and would extend west to Hawkin Road,” Covitz said. “The plans call for clear-cutting thousands of trees in order to construct a 6,000 seat soccer stadium, two 98-room hotels, a dormitory and temporary housing for 2,000 players per week, 23 full-size athletic fields, a 400,000 sq ft indoor sports facility, an 800-seat dining hall and on-site restaurants and concessions.”

Apparently, Governor Murphy agreed and he pulled his women’s soccer club from the project, but state officials and authorities are still giving the project their full support.

“We believe the development will pose detrimental effects to the quality of life for residents in the surrounding towns due to extreme traffic congestion and gridlock and will cause severe effects to Prospertown Lake, the Pinelands and the numerous threatened and endangered species that inhabit the forest,” Covitz added.

Read the full story

Related News:
Gov’s soccer team drops Pinelands stadium plans after Sierra Club sounds alarm. Developer Alan Nau presses on

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In Mass., offshore wind farm dealt setbacks by local, US regulators

Artist rendering of Vinyard Wind’s offshore wind energy project

By the Associated Press in the New Haven Register

EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) — The company hoping to build a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts appealed to the state Friday after the project hit snags with local and federal regulators.

The Edgartown Conservation Commission on Martha’s Vineyard voted this week to deny Vineyard Wind’s application to lay transmission cables that would pass about a mile east of Edgartown.

Separately, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has delayed issuing a final environmental impact statement that would help clear the way for construction of the 84-turbine, 800-megawatt wind farm.

The project is key to a 2016 state law aimed at boosting supplies of renewable energy.

Read the full story

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EPA to allow the use of pesticide considered ‘very highly toxic’ to bees

The agency says sulfoxaflor poses less risk than alternatives and is a critical tool for farmers.

Toni Burnham, president of DC Beekeepers Alliance, checks on the health of a honey bee colony where D.C. Water keeps four beehives on the rooftop of one of its buildings in 2017. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Brady Dennis reports for the Washington Post – July 12

The Environmental Protection Agency approved broad new applications Friday for a controversial insecticide, despite objections from environmental groups and beekeepers who say it is among the compounds responsible for eviscerating the nation’s bee populations.

Alexandra Dunn, head of the EPA office that oversees pesticides, said the agency was “thrilled” to be able to approve new uses and lift past restrictions on sulfoxaflor, which she called a “highly effective” tool for growers around the country — but which the agency itself considers “very highly toxic” to bees. The decision will allow the chemical to be applied to a wide array of crops, including citrus and corn, soybeans and strawberries, pineapples and pumpkins.

“EPA is providing long-term certainty for U.S. growers to use an important tool to protect crops and avoid potentially significant economic losses while maintaining strong protection for pollinators,” Dunn said.

The agency’s critics, some of whom successfully sued the EPA in federal court during the Obama administration to restrict the use of the pesticide, were anything but thrilled with Friday’s announcement.

“At a time when honeybees and other pollinators are dying in greater numbers than ever before, EPA’s decision to remove restrictions on yet another bee-killing pesticide is nothing short of reckless,” Greg Loarie, an attorney for the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, said in an email.

The news comes during a time that commercial honeybee colonies have been declining at a startling rate. The annual loss rate for honeybees during the year ending in April rose to 40.7 percent, up slightly over the annual average of 38.7 percent, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit group associated with the University of Maryland.

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Alaska chokes on wildfires as heat dries out Arctic

BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS JUL 11, 2019

Alaska Army National Guard helicopter crews fought a wildfire on July 4, 2019. Credit: Spc. Michael Risinger/U.S. Army National Guard
Alaska Army National Guard helicopter crews fought a wildfire on July 4, 2019. This state is suffering through heat waves that have melted sea ice weeks early and dried vegetation, fueling one of Alaska’s biggest fire years on record to this date.

Under the choking black smoke from the bog and forest fires in Siberia and Alaska, it can feel like the Earth itself is burning. The normally moist, black organic peat soil and lush forests have been drying, and when they catch fire, they burn relentlessly.

Global warming has been thawing tundra and drying vast stretches of the far-northern boreal forests, and it also has spurred more thunderstorms with lightning, which triggered many of the fires burning in Alaska this year, said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with the International Arctic Research Center who closely tracks Alaskan and Arctic extreme weather.

So far this year, wildfires have scorched more than 1.2 million acres in Alaska, making it one of the state’s three biggest fire years on record to this date, with high fire danger expected to persist in the weeks ahead.

Several studies, as well as ongoing satellite monitoring, show that fires are spreading farther north into the Arctic, burning more intensely and starting earlier in the year, in line with what climate models have long suggested would happen as sea ice dwindles and ocean and air temperatures rise.

“When it comes to the Arctic heat waves, the wildfires, am I surprised? No — this was long predicted. Am I worried? Yes,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.

Read the full story

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