EnviroPolitics Blog

With more NJ towns banning plastic grocery bags, will state lawmakers join the parade?

With many New Jersey municipalities already having passed ordinances to reduce the use of plastic bags, straws, and Styrofoam containers, move is on for a statewide policy

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight

New Jersey is inching toward another run at banning single-use plastic bags, and paper bags may get caught up in the prohibition this time around.

The ban is attracting increasing support among residents, businesses and even municipal governments since Gov. Phil Murphy last summer vetoed a bill banning plastic bags while imposing a nickel fee on paper bags. (The governor vetoed it because he said he wanted a stronger version.)

Since then, more than 50 New Jersey municipalities have passed ordinances toreduce the use of plastic bags, straws, balloons, and Styrofoam containers. Other states have followed suit. Maine banned polystyrene containers. New York prohibited single-use plastic bags in March.

Advocates are hoping the spread of locally-adopted bans will pressure New Jersey lawmakers to move forward with legislation (S-2776) that is bogged down in a Senate committee. With a patchwork of different, local bans, even those who oppose such ordinances would rather embrace a uniform statewide policy as the bill does.

Sen. Bob Smith, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and sponsor of the statewide ban, welcomed the action by local governments. “The towns have been the leaders on this,’’ he said. “Their effort has put us in a better position to pass this.’’

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Judge orders Jersey City to pay Kushner firm $96K after city loses records dispute

By Terrence T. McDonald | The Jersey Journal

JERSEY CITY — A Hudson County Superior Court judge last week ordered Jersey City to pay $95,850 to lawyers for Kushner Companies after the developers won a records dispute with the city in December.

The ruling is another setback for the city in its battle with Kushner Companies, the real estate firm run by the family of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The two sides are clashing over the developers’ stalled One Journal Square project, a two-tower plan set for a long-vacant site near the Journal Square PATH station and transit hub.

Judge Francis B. Schultz said in his five-page order that the Kushner firm’s lawyers spent “a great deal of time” preparing for the case. The award represents 192 hours — 140 hours more than the city believed was reasonable — at $500 per hour.

“The court cannot find any item of time that is obviously excessive or unreasonable,” Schultz said in the April 29 order.

The firm and its partner, KABR Group, have a separate action pending in federal court, where they claim the city is blocking One Journal Square because of Fulop’s animus toward Trump, a claim Fulop, a Democrat, has denied. Fulop said last year he will not support a long-term tax abatement for the project, a decision that would deny the developers millions in city subsidies. The city has also said the developers are in breach of their redevelopment agreement with the city because construction on the project has not started yet.

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A man faked his death. His ex-wife faked his funeral. Then their son found him alive.

Editor’s Note: We admit this story is neither environmental nor political, but it’s such a good read we wanted to share it.

By Meagan Flynn inThe Washington Post

The body was found in the bushes along a dirt road in a rural town in Moldova on the morning of Oct. 1, 2011, and within a matter of hours, Irina Vorotinov’s phone was ringing halfway across the world.

From her home in Maple Grove, Minnesota, she shared the dreadful news with her two grown sons: The body belonged to their father, Igor Vorotinov.

The circumstances were strange. The well-dressed dead man didn’t appear to be beaten or shot, at least as far as the one investigating police officer could tell, but his body was already decomposing. Enlisting the help of his son, the police officer promptly brought the body to a state morgue, an old dilapidated building without refrigeration or air conditioning, whose single green door was reachable only by a dirt path. There, the medical examiner determined that the man found in the bushes had died of a heart attack. He was carrying Igor Vorotinov’s passport, among other identifying documents.

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Irina Vorotinov hopped on a plane. She arrived in the village of Cojusna and, accompanied by a U.S. Embassy representative, traveled to the morgue to confirm that the dead man really was Igor Vorotinov, her ex-husband. She told authorities it was, electing to cremate his remains in Ukraine before returning home with the ashes in an urn.

On Nov. 4, 2011, she arranged his funeral at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, attended “widely” by the local Russian community who knew Igor well, according to federal prosecutors.

But before long, Igor’s oldest son, Alkon, was about to discover a $2 million secret.

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Top N.J. powerbroker accuses Murphy of ‘political retribution’ with his probe into corporate tax breaks

George E. Norcross III, whose business interests have come under fire by a task force investigating the state Economic Development Authority. Attorneys for several entities tied to Norcross struck back on Monday. (file photo)

By Matt Arco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com and Ted Sherman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The state’s ongoing probe into the New Jersey Economic Development Authority is a “one-sided investigation” that “smacks of political retribution.”

Attorneys for several entities tied to Camden power broker George E. Norcross III are charging that Gov. Phil Murphy overstepped his legal power when he created a task force to investigate companies that benefitted from the state’s controversial tax incentives.

In a letter Monday to the task force, attorneys representing Connor, Strong & Buckelew; Cooper University Health Care; Parker McCay, and Brown & Connery objected “to the unlawful process you are conducting,” and also said the task force had imposed arbitrary restrictions on their rights to respond to false accusations.

In addition, they asserted that the task force lacked statutory authority over the Economic Development Authority, which they said was not subject to the governor’s oversight powers.

They also demanded an opportunity to submit a public presentation to the task force at its next scheduled hearing. The letter was signed by four of the state’s top criminal defense attorneys on behalf of the companies, which were all associated with Norcross.

“We reserve all rights to seek full remedies to the extent any of these false and defamatory accusations were directed at our clients,” their letter said.

In a statement, Ronald Chen, chairman of the task force, responded, “The governor has full constitutional and statutory authority to investigate any entity within the executive branch, including the EDA, either by himself or through a delegate. If anyone wishes to challenge that authority, they should bring an appropriate action in court and we are ready to defend it vigorously.”

The letter marked the latest salvo in a growing political battle between Murphy and those allied with Norcross over the EDA, since the governor created a task force to investigate the besieged agency.

The task force was formed by Murphy earlier this year came after a highly critical audit by the state comptroller in January, which criticized the EDA’s management of a program that has given out tax credit incentivesworth $11 billion since its inception.

The comptroller concluded that the state agency, which is responsible for spearheading New Jersey’s economic development efforts, may have “improperly awarded, miscalculated, overstate and overpaid” tax credits to a number of companies that it could not verify had created the jobs that were promised. It also said the EDA could not evaluate whether its inventive programs generated any economic benefits to the state, and had certified projects and released tax credits even when projects did not meet the requirements, in violation of the law.

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PFAS chemicals have contaminated 17 sites in Pennsylvania, data shows

Mapping of public data shows PFAS-contaminated sites exist across the country

Jon Hurdle reports for StateImpact

Seventeen sites in Pennsylvania have been contaminated by PFAS chemicals in recent years, and are still likely to contain at least some of the toxic material even if water supplies there have been treated by local authorities, according to data released by a national advocacy group on Monday.

Environmental Working Group compiled PFAS reports from local utilities, the Department of Defense, and researchers at Northeastern University, and presented the information in a national map showing public water systems, military bases, civilian airports, industrial plants and dumps where contamination has been found at various times since 2013.

The utilities include one in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Horsham where five PFAS chemicals, including PFOA and PFOS, were detected at more than 44 million parts per trillion (ppt) in 2014, thousands of times higher than a level recommended — but not required — by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as being protective of human health.

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Horsham officials say they have since cut PFAS levels to below the recommended health limit by installing carbon filters. Public and private water wells in the Horsham area have been contaminated with high PFAS levels because the chemicals were a component of firefighting foam used by the military on two nearby bases.

Aqua, an investor-owned utility that also serves Horsham Township, said on May 3 that the combined PFOA/PFOS level there was 10.8 ppt, well within the EPA limit of 70 ppt for those two chemicals. Aqua spokeswoman Donna Alston said all the company’s water systems in Bucks, Montgomery and Chester counties showed PFAS levels below the EPA’s threshold in the latest tests in March.

Although many utilities use the EPA’s PFOA and PFOS level as a benchmark, advocates say it’s too high to protect public health. For that reason, state scientists in New Jersey have recommended – and environmental officials are in the process of adopting – levels that are some five times lower than the federal standard.

In the EWG data, one of the bases, the former Willow Grove Naval Air Station at Horsham, had combined PFOA and PFAS contamination as high as 86,000 ppt, affecting 108 out of 161 wells on-base in testing during 2017, DoD data show. Public wells near the base had contamination of up to 1,000 ppt.

Other utility data show contamination well above the EPA’s health limit at Warminster and Warrington, two communities that have also been affected by PFAS chemicals from the military bases.

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It’s my party, and I’ll fight climate change if I want to

Nathanael Johnson reports for Grist – May 1, 2019

In deep red Idaho, out of sight of the national news media and out of reach of the Twitterati, a real-live Republican member of Congress acknowledged the existence of climate change and even proposed taking action.

“Climate change is a reality,” said Mike Simpson, a Republican Congressman from Idaho, at a conference in Boise last week. “It’s not hard to figure out. Go look at your thermometer.”

Simpson knew he might hear a record scratch when he broke out of the well-worn Republican grooves. After stepping to the lectern, he joked that anyone carrying matches or lighters should pass them to the authorities as a security measure to prevent heads from bursting into flames.

Simpson was there to say he wanted to see Idaho’s mountain lakes full of salmon again, even if it meant tearing down the dams that the state’s politicians have defended for decades. Dams, climate change, and predators all threaten the fish, and Simpson said he was ready to consider all options. It was clear to anyone watching his speech he feels a spiritual obligation to save salmon.

Recounting a trip to a spawning creek in the Sawtooth Mountains in central Idaho, Simpson paused to swallow hard a couple of times. Only one salmon made it to those shallows, he said, to “create its bed, lay its eggs and die. It was the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. These are the most,” he paused for a deep breath, “most incredible creatures I think that God’s created. It’s a cycle God has created. We shouldn’t mess with it.”

This break with standard Republican talking points has people asking if he had “gone over to the dark side,” Simpson said. “I’ve had people say to my chief of staff, we don’t even like someone of Simpson’s seniority asking these questions.” And in the run up to this speech, he said his office was fielding calls from nervous people asking, “What’s Simpson going to say at this?”

Of course, Simpson isn’t the first Republican advocating for action on climate change, but most of those politicians differ from Simpson in one important way: They come from swing districts. In fact, the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the House of Representatives (Simpson isn’t a member) has a hard time keeping Republicans because voters keep kicking them out in favor of Democrats. Former representatives Carlos Curbelo, Mia Love, and Peter Roskam are exhibits A, B, and C.

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