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Plastic Recycling Plant Could Send ‘Forever Chemicals’ Into the Susquehanna River

A man walks along the Susquehanna River near the proposed Encina plastics recycling plant looking for a fishing spot in the summer of 2022. Credit: James Bruggers

By James Bruggers, Inside Climate News

Warnings that a large-scale plastics recycling plant planned along a floodplain in Central Pennsylvania could flush toxic PFAS into the Susquehanna River, a major source of drinking water for millions, are stirring a budding opposition movement.

The Houston-based startup company Encina, which proposes to build the $1.1 billion advanced recycling plant in Northumberland County, says it will not produce any of the synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in its manufacturing process. The industry uses the term “advanced’’ to include recycling processes that convert plastic waste into chemical ingredients for new plastic products or fuel.

But Graham F. Peaslee, a professor of physics at Notre Dame University who researches PFAS and plastic, said that PFAS would “absolutely” be a “serious issue” for a recycling operation that washes vast quantities of post-consumer plastic and discharges the wastewater into a river, as Encina plans to do. Some of that plastic waste would likely be coated in PFAS, he said, and some of them would escape from the plastic during the washing stage and get into the river.

The result could be trouble for drinking water systems downstream from the proposed Encina plant, said Peaslee, a co-author of a recent study that detected PFAS in an entire class of commonly used plastic containers. “I suspect somewhere downstream, some utility will find that water is not a great source of drinking water,” he said.

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First-ever hybrid ferry planned for New York Harbor

By the Brooklyn Eagle Staff

The city government and the Trust for Governors Island released plans on Wednesday to create the first-ever hybrid vessel in the ferry fleet.

According to the mayor’s office, it will be launched next summer, traveling between Governors Island and Manhattan through the New York Harbor.

The new ferry will be equipped with a hybrid propulsion system that will reduce air pollution by allowing it to toggle between zero-emission battery-only power and battery-assisted hybrid with diesel backup.

The battery-assist mode will allow the new ferry to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 600 tons annually. Future plans for rapid vessel charging installation will enable the ferry to operate with zero-emission battery-only propulsion, at which point emissions will drop to nearly zero.

After criticism from the public and city officials last summer, ferry usage in Brooklyn is remaining steady. The city’s restoration of the stop at India Street in Greenpoint last November – and the new hybrid Governors Island Ferry – shows the high potential of ferry transit in waterfront neighborhoods.

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Warehouse developer moves quickly to avoid a ban

By EVAN JONES, The Morning Call

Jaindl applied to build the warehouses the day before a Lehigh Valley township passed a ban on such projects.

Truck access to a proposed 450,000-square-foot warehouse in Lower Nazareth Township in the Lehigh Valley has drawn concern from a few members of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission’s Comprehensive Planning Committee.

The warehouse, which is being developed by Jaindl Farms, is located at 523 Nazareth Pike, just north of the intersection of Routes 191 and 946. The LVPC’s study of the project found that it would generate 500 passenger vehicles and 270 truck trips per day. The stretch of Route 191 already averages about 10,000 vehicles per day, according to PennDOT.

A second warehouse — measuring 72,850 square feet — has also been proposed by Jaindl at 4215 Lonat Drive, across the street from the first.

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Buried under 12 feet of snow, Northern Californians hope their blizzard will alleviate the state’s drought

Monster snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has shut down national parks and buried neighborhoods.

By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post

SODA SPRINGS, Calif. — To keep out the snow, most of the windows of Andrew Schwartz’s cabin are boarded up with plywood, creating a gloom so persistent that he keeps his house plant alive with a grow light and consumes daily vitamin D from a pillbox in his desk.

Snow falls in such abundance around Schwartz’s home — which doubles as the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory — that prior residents of his research station have been known to ski directly into a third-story window. The drifts bury cars, warp walls and pile up in monstrous mushroom caps on his roof, before sliding off with startling violence.

But even Schwartz, who has chased hailstorms in Australia and tornadoes in Oklahoma, faced weather this week unlike any he has known. The blizzard that blanketed California’s inland mountains hit Schwartz’s cabin with 70-mile-per-hour winds and blinding snow that covered up his snowshoe tracks minutes after he made them. On Tuesday afternoon, as he went to check his instruments, he slipped and plunged into a drift up to his neck.

More wintry weather looms as Californians struggle to dig out

The amount of snow that has fallen on California is rivaling some of the most bountiful years on record. Just in the past two weeks, more than a dozen feet of snow fell in this area, pushing the snowpack in the Central and Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains to roughly twice the amount of a normal year. The whiteout shut down national parks and interstates, buried neighborhoods, collapsed roofs, stranded motorists, trapped residents and knocked out power to thousands in mountain communities throughout the state.

*UPS driver Juan Hernandez delivers a package to a snow-covered home in Truckee, Calif. (Josh Edelson/For The Washington Post)*

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After Hurricanes Ian and Nicole hit Central Florida with devastating floods, some residents wonder if it’s time to move

A man tows a canoe through a flooded street of his neighborhood as a truck passes in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, on Sept. 30, 2022, after Hurricane Ian slammed the area. Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

By Amy Green, WMFE, Inside Climate News

ORLANDO, Fla.—Like many homes in central Florida, Janét Buford-Johnson’s is situated on a pond that in better times would be considered picturesque. During Hurricane Ian in September the pond swelled into a horrific torrent, nearly swallowing her and her daughter alive.

Suddenly and violently in the night, powered by Ian’s unrelenting rains, the water rose inside Buford-Johnson’s tidy sand- and cream-colored home to at least three feet deep. As the water rushed in she and her 15-year-old daughter were rescued before dawn by boat.

“It’s traumatizing,” she said. “The water was high enough where, if I fell and I hit my head, I would not be alive and nor would my daughter.”

Related:
Expedition Retraces a Legendary Explorer’s Travels Through the Once-Pristine Everglades
Florida Commits $1 Billion to Climate Resilience. But After Hurricane Ian, Some Question the State’s Development Practices
New Florida Legislation Will Help the State Brace for Rising Sea Levels but Doesn’t Address Its Underlying Cause

Janet Buford-Johnson in her flood-damaged home in Orlando’s Orlo Vista neighborhood. Credit: Amy Green.

For Buford-Johnson and other residents of Orlo Vista, a diverse low-income neighborhood west of downtown Orlando, it was the latest flood. The neighborhood also was inundated during Hurricane Irma in 2017, although less severely. Now as residents face the difficult dilemma of what to do about their dilapidated houses, county commissioners have agreed to a $23.6 million project to deepen the pond and two others and also install a new pump station.

The commissioners say when the work is finished in February 2024 the ponds will be able to hold another 90 million gallons of water, providing more flood control for Orlo Vista while also protecting neighborhoods downstream along Shingle Creek, where all the water here ultimately flows on its way south to the Everglades and out to sea. But Buford-Johnson is unconvinced. She especially worries that the work will not be done in time for the next hurricane season.

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Authorities examine ‘unusual mortality events’ as ninth dead whale washes up in New Jersey

By Gloria Oladipo, The Guardian Feb 15 2023 12.18 EST

A ninth dead whale has washed up on the New Jersey coastline, as conservationists and local authorities investigate the causes of an unusual number of such deaths along the US east coast.

The humpback was found in Manasquan, New Jersey, on Monday.

The whale was removed from the beach on Tuesday and taken to the county landfill for a necropsy and to collect tissue samples, a spokesperson for Noaa Fisheries, part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, told Gothamist.

The whale is one of many recently found dead off New York and New Jersey. At least 10 humpback whales have died in east coast waters in 2023, six near New York and New Jersey, CBS reported.

Noaa Fisheries is investigating the cause of such “unusual mortality events”, data for which has been collected since 2016.

Conservatives and some conservationist activists attribute the rise in deaths to increasing offshore wind projects, calling on federal authorities to do more to protect the coastline.

But federal officials have pushed back against claims that wind turbines are to blame, saying evidence does not support the contention wind energy projects cause whale fatalities.

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More paid, wind-energy research fellowships for students at several New Jersey colleges

The fellowships run between 25 and 40 weeks through the fall, spring, and summer semesters with juniors and seniors eligible for $15,000 undergraduate awards and graduate and doctoral students eligible for $30,000 awards. Fellows will also receive $1,000 for related expenses.

By Matthew Fazelpoor, NJBIZ

During its Feb. 9 meeting, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) approved the expansion of its Wind Institute Fellowship Program, which offers students at select Garden State universities paid research fellowships to prepare them for careers in the burgeoning offshore wind industry.

The program began in October by supporting 26 student researchers from Montclair State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Rowan University, and Rutgers University.

The NJEDA says the expansion will enable students who attend those schools, along with Stockton University and selected private, research universities in the state, to apply to their home institution for the fellowship.

Tim Sullivan, NJEDA CEO, said in a statement that as this sector builds momentum here in the Garden State, it is essential to foster the growth of a talent pipeline.

The fellowships run between 25 and 40 weeks through the fall, spring, and summer semesters with juniors and seniors eligible for $15,000 undergraduate awards and graduate and doctoral students eligible for $30,000 awards. Fellows will also receive $1,000 for related expenses.

Each school can receive up to four fellowships, while Rutgers can earn 12.

The NJEDA will also provide participating schools with funding for any administrative or related expenses and will host a series of meetings during the academic year for fellows to learn more about the offshore wind industry.

Jen Becker, NJEDA vice president of offshore wind, said that the state’s renowned higher education institutions are ideal for cultivating a workforce to support this rapidly advancing sector.

“This fellowship program will create opportunities for students while helping us develop a robust, diverse, and local workforce for the offshore wind industry,” said Becker.

The application process will kick off in the spring.

If you liked this post, you’ll love our daily EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.

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Can local news startups overcome the evils of corporate chain ownership?

At a time of intense polarization at the national level, local news can be a way to bring us together

Staff members of The New Bedford Light, from left, Ken Hartnett, Jack Spillane, Peter Andrews, Will Sennott, Barbara Roessner, Stephen Taylor, Andy Tomolonis, and Toni Delgado-Green in their newsroom, which was under construction, in 2021.TONY LUONG/NYT

By Dan Kennedy, Boston Globe

By now it is widely understood that local news is in crisis. The United States has lost a fourth of its newspapers since 2005, and the loss has led to such ills as lower voter turnout in local elections, more political corruption, and the rise of ideologically driven “pink slime” websites that are designed to look like legitimate sources of community journalism.

Even in the face of this decline, though, hundreds of local news projects have been launched in recent years, from Denver, where The Colorado Sun was launched by 10 journalists who’d left The Denver Post in the face of devastating cuts, to MLK50, which focuses on social justice issues in Memphis. Some are nonprofit; some are for-profit. Most are new digital outlets; some are legacy newspapers. All of them are independent alternatives to the corporate chains that are stripping newsrooms and bleeding revenues in order to enrich their owners and pay down debt.

This trend is happening in the Boston suburbs, too, as Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, has closed many of its weekly newspapers and shifted most of those that remain from local to regional news. Affluent communities such as Marblehead, Concord, Bedford, and Lexington are all home to startups, with more scheduled to come online this year. So, too, is New Bedford, a gritty, working-class city where the nonprofit The New Bedford Light is filling much of the gap created by the shrinkage of Gannett’s daily The Standard-Times. (I’m also hoping to help facilitate a news startup in the community where I live.)

But these projects all must deal with the headwinds of chain owners. Gannett, a publicly traded company that controls about 200 daily papers, and the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, with about 100, have a stranglehold on readership and advertising in many communities, even where they offer little in the way of news and information.

Which raises a question: What if corporate chain ownership could somehow be made to disappear? As it happens, there are several Massachusetts examples that offer lessons for what happens when the slash-and-burn out-of-town owner sells to local interests.

Take Nantucket. Marianne Stanton, editor and publisher of The Inquirer and Mirror, purchased the weekly from Gannett in 2020 with the help of David Worth, a local businessman. Since then, she said in an interview, she’s expanded the editorial staff from four to seven full-time positions, upgraded the computer system, and boosted marketing and circulation efforts.

“We are doing this off of the revenues we earn,” she said, adding that Gannett had been planning to cut the budget and replace much of the local coverage with regional news even though “we were profitable, we were doing well.”

In Pittsfield, the story is similar. In 2016, a group of four local business leaders bought from Alden three small papers in southern Vermont as well as The Berkshire Eagle, once one of the most respected small dailies in the country, which had to slash much of its coverage following repeated budget cuts by Alden. They added staff, increased the size and improved the quality of the newsprint, and expanded coverage in areas such as investigative reporting and culture.

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Staten Island residents force developers to cancel plans for lithium-ion battery storage

Community asks: Are lithium-ion battery storage facilities safe?

New Leaf Energy has withdrawn plans for a lithium-ion battery storage facility that was slated to be built in the parking lot of Our Lady of Pity R.C. Church in Bulls Head. (Staten Island Advance/Jan Somma-Hammel)

By Jessica Jones-Gorman , Staten Island Advance|

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – After community members and local leaders voiced concerns about the location of a proposed lithium-ion battery storage facility, condemning its purported placement in close proximity to a church and six local schools, developers have announced their intention to officially withdraw project plans.

“A rep from New Leaf Energy called my office this morning and told me the company will be rescinding their application,” said Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo, (R-Mid-Island/North Shore) who represents the 63rd district and has been vocal about community opposition to the project.

“Although these facilities are beneficial to our distribution grid, due to the risk of fire and exposure to toxic chemicals, this has no place in school or residential zones. This project lacked concern for public safety and common sense, and my office will always stand up to protect their children and neighborhoods. I will move forward with introducing legislation at the state level to prevent these situations from occurring in sensitive zones in the future,” he added.

According to information provided by New Leaf, the battery energy storage system (BESS) was intended to include six large-scale rechargeable lithium-ion battery systems manufactured by Tesla, each one capable of storing up to 20 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity. Con Edison would store energy produced during periods of low demand there, and then draw power from the facility during peak hours.

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Can you believe it? George Santos is a Congressman

The GOP strategy of acclimatizing us to scandal is still working.

By Tom Nichols, The Atlantic

Remember Herschel Walker, the Georgia football star who was a shoo-in for a Senate seat—until the press discovered the children he didn’t acknowledge and the abortions he’d allegedly paid for? The Republican Party decided to tough it out with Walker, but the humiliation was too much for voters in a state that sent Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, and Walker narrowly lost.

Narrowly. It is amazing to realize that Walker lost by only a few points, when not so long ago, a candidate with his baggage (and inability to speak in coherent sentences) would have simply dropped out of the race. Surely, we’d reached the bottom of what even the most jaded voters would tolerate.

Or so I thought until I started following the improbable tale of George Santos—so far, that does seem to be his name—the weird fabulist who has been elected to the Congress of the United States of America. Almost everything about the life story Santos has told is a lie; likewise, he has not, so far, been able to adequately explain where he got all the money that he poured into his campaign.

As you might expect, this has caused fury in his district, powered a recall movement, and led the national Republicans to act on principle and refuse to seat him in Congress.

I am, of course, kidding. Nothing in that last sentence happened. If George Santos can make stuff up, so can I, but The Atlantic requires that I tell you when I’m joking.

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Search Results for: EV

Jaindl applied to build the warehouses the day before a Lehigh Valley township passed a ban on such projects.

Monster snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has shut down national parks and buried neighborhoods.

The fellowships run between 25 and 40 weeks through the fall, spring, and summer semesters with juniors and seniors eligible for $15,000 undergraduate awards and graduate and doctoral students eligible for $30,000 awards. Fellows will also receive $1,000 for related expenses.

The GOP strategy of acclimatizing us to scandal is still working.

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