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Troubled by climate change, here’s a new reason to hug a tree
Roughly 2.5 million metric tons of the carbon emissions that cause global warming are stored in New Jersey’s forests
Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight
Is New Jersey doing enough to protect its 2 million acres of forests — one of the most effective tools in ridding the atmosphere of the carbon emissions that cause global warming?
That issue is attracting the attention of legislators who are looking at how they can advance climate-change adaption policies in New Jersey, a coastal state particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme storm events.
Across the United States, the nation’s forests account for 15 percent of the carbon emissions that are pulled from the air and stored, according to Jad Daley, president and CEO of American Forests, which works to build resilient forests in rural and urban settings. “The U.S. already is delivering forests as a climate-change solution, and New Jersey is delivering, too,’’ he told legislators last month.
The question is, asked Daley, “how do we keep a good thing going?’’ His message: Retain as much forest as possible and keep what remains as healthy as possible — no small task with climate change increasing the threats to woodlands.
“If we don’t deal with the health stresses caused by climate change and forest loss, we’re going to lose this good thing we have going … ,’’ he said. Not only are forests under increased strain from infestation by insects but also from wildfires, the latter is a concern in the Pinelands where wildfires are part of the natural ecosystem.
Pulling carbon dioxide from the air
In New Jersey, roughly 2.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions are stored in forests, Daley said. That’s in line with what is happening across the nation with trees capturing carbon emissions.
Emissions of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas causing climate change, are taken up by trees, grasses and other plants through photosynthesis and stored in the vegetation and soils.
Surprisingly, the largest portion of carbon sequestration occurs in New Jersey’s urban areas, according to Daley, who grew up in the state.
Why so? Because urban trees reduce the effect of heat islands in densely populated areas, serving as a natural source of energy efficiency by reducing power use in heating and cooling. The U.S. Forest Service estimates urban forests reduce energy use by 7.2 percent, saving consumers roughly $7 billion a year.
“This is a real critical opportunity for New Jersey, in particular,’’ Daley said.
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Emails show confusion, backroom deal-making in Philly public land sale
William Bender reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Philly developer Shawn Bullard purchased vacant public lots in North Philadelphia in 2016. The lots on Cecil B. Moore Avenue were bought at a mysterious discount — triggering a review of the sale by the city’s Inspector General.
Now, hundreds of pages of emails and other records obtained by The Inquirer show city officials scrambling unsuccessfully to determine why the price was lowered. The records shed light on the type of backroom deal-making Mayor Jim Kenney and others have been trying to eliminate when it comes to public land sales.
The emails reveal the influence Council members can exert over such sales. Bullard ultimately got the lots with the help of City Council President Darrell Clarke.
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Proposed NYDEC Regulatory Changes – May 9, 2019
| Proposed 6 NYCRR Part 40 – Commercial Scup The purpose of this rulemaking is to implement the required measures to remain consistent with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries regulations. Comment deadline: July 1, 2019 Additional information about 6 NYCRR Part 40 proposal Proposed Part 208, Landfill Gas Collection and Control Systems for Certain Municipal Solid Waste Landfills Revisions to Part 208 would incorporate the new federal Emission Guideline (EG) for MSW Landfills codified under 40 CFR Part 60, Subpart Cf. Comment deadline: May 29, 2019 Hearings: May 22 and May 24 Additional information about Part 208 proposal Proposed Part 226, Solvent [Metal] Cleaning Processes and Industrial Cleaning Solvents The revision to this rule lowers the volatile organic compound (VOC) content limit of a particular type of cleaning process called ‘cold cleaning’. It also eliminates the distinction that the rule only applies to the cleaning of metal. Comment deadline: May 29, 2019 Hearings: May 22 and May 24 Additional information about Part 226 proposal Proposed Part 205, Architectural and Industrial Maintenance (AIM) Coatings The purpose of this rulemaking is to reduce emissions from AIM coatings by reducing the volatile organic compound (VOC) content limits for some coating categories. Comment deadline: May 20, 2019 Hearings: May 6, May 13, and May 14 Additional information about Part 205 proposal Proposed Part 227-3, Ozone Season Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) Emission Limits for Simple Cycle and Regenerative Combustion Turbines The primary goal of this proposal is to lower allowable NOx emissions from simple cycle and regenerative combustion turbines during the ozone season. Comment deadline: May 20, 2019 Hearings: May 13, and May 14 Additional information about Part 227 proposal The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is providing this summary of recent regulatory activity as a service to the interested public. For a complete listing of all pending regulatory changes, see Proposed, Emergency, and Recently Adopted Eegulations. For a complete listing of all legal notices, please see the Environmental Notice Bulletin. |
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JCPL’s scaled-back program to prevent storm outages wins approval in NJ
JCP&L to embark on two-year improvement of overhead distribution lines, with expanded vegetation management and more smart technology
Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight
Without debate, the state approved yesterday a scaled-back infrastructure improvement program for Jersey Central Power & Light, the second biggest electric utility in New Jersey.
The Board of Public Utilities backed a settlement its staff and the Division of Rate Counsel reached with the utility, allowing it to invest $97 million over the next two years to address long-standing problems with tree damage causing widespread outages in its franchise territory.
The company originally had proposed a four-year, $387-million investment program last July, geared to curbing the number and duration of power outages its customers experience, a recurring sore point with regulators.
In recent years, spurred by extreme storm events like hurricanes Irene and Sandy, the BPU has pressured the state’s utilities to step up investment in projects that improve resiliency and reduce power outages which in the past have stretched for weeks for some customers.
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The two-year program includes more than 1,400 projects to enhance the reliability and resiliency of overhead distribution lines, replacing equipment with new smart-technology devices and expanding vegetation management to deal with tree-related outages.
JCP&L predicts that once the projects are complete, its customers will experience fewer sustained outages under normal conditions and a reduction in outage duration. The program could boost the average customer bill by about 50 cents a month, according to the utility.
The approval comes at a time when numerous utilities are seeking to boost rates for customers — either through programs to modernize the grid and to comply with new clean-energy mandates under a new law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy a year ago.
Last month, the BPU also approved a controversial $300-million a year subsidy to keep three nuclear power plants operated by PSEG Power open. The subsidy will increase residential customer bills by at least $31 per year, depending upon the utility they are served by.
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Enviros fault Army Corps plan to protect NJ’s back bays from rising seas
Groups say nature-based measures should be a bigger part of massive plan to protect communities
Jon Hurdle reports for NJ Spotlight
Environmental groups faulted some of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ latest ideas for defending New Jersey’s back bays from the devastation of sea-level rise and the bigger storms that are expected to come with climate change.
In March, the Corps proposed measures including sea walls and storm-surge barriers, as well as nature-based programs like building up coastal marshes, as ways of keeping ocean waters out of vulnerable back-bay communities.
The handily titled New Jersey Back Bays Coastal Storm Risk Management Feasibility Study Interim Report invited but did not publish reactions from stakeholders including municipalities, other government agencies, and environmental groups. New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection is cooperating in the project and sharing the cost with the Corps.
The comments, obtained from some of the groups individually, welcomed the investigation into ways of protecting the back bays from rising waters but said the plan missed the mark in some important respects.
Crucial role of coastal marshes
The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey, for example, said the proposals did not give enough weight to nature-based measures — called ‘NNBF’ — such as coastal marshes and living shorelines that play a crucial role in absorbing storm surge.
“We were disappointed that NNBF has not been fully integrated into the flood-risk management alternatives,” the conservancy wrote. “We strongly urge the USACE to more comprehensively utilize NNBF as a flood-risk management strategy along the NJ coastline.”
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It offered its own research into which coastal habitats are already helping to mitigate sea-level rise; said it was ready to identify which salt marshes in Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties would benefit from an increase in sediment, and proposed to share its ideas on building different kinds of living shorelines to defend different parts of the Jersey Shore.
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Credit: USACE Click to expand/close
Flood barriers like sea walls “may provide a false sense of security” because they encourage new development and increasing population in low-lying areas, and may distract from the need to encourage people to move away from flood-prone areas, the conservancy said.
While some man-made infrastructure will likely be needed to protect the back bays, features like storm-surge barriers could hurt natural resources, and that isn’t fully recognized by the corps’ report, said Patty Doerr, director of the Conservancy’s coastal and marine program in New Jersey.
She said conservancy scientists have found that salt marshes, for example, play an important role in protecting the coast from storms, including Superstorm Sandy in 2012 when coastal marshes reduced property damage by $450 million, according to a study by the Conservancy and others.
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