EnviroPolitics Blog

Falls supervisors shoot down Elcon hazardous wastewater plant to the delight of a 500-plus audience

Editor’s Note: Opposition to Elcon’s proposed hazardous wastewater treatment plant in Lower Bucks County has grown over the four years that the company has been trying to win permit approvals from the state and local governing bodies. It culminated in a public meeting Tuesday night at Pennsbury High School where parking places and seats in the school auditorium filled up early. Before the meeting opened, the fire marshall declared that the room was over capacity and ordered the doors closed. Some in a small group that didn’t make it ‘face-timed’ with friends inside. Philly.com’s Katie Park has the story.

by Katie Park, Updated: April 30, 2019- 10:34 PM

Falls Township votes down contentious wastewater processing project — **TOM GRALISH / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER**

The Falls Township Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to bar a hazardous wastewater processing facility from being built in the town, for now capping a saga that has drawn thousands of residents from their homes in protest over the last five years.

Hundreds of attendees at Pennsbury High School-West’s Keller Hall rose to their feet cheering when officials delivered the land-use decision against Elcon Recycling Services after a tense, three-hour meeting that brought together a dozen township officials, lawyers for Elcon, and residents concerned about pollution the plant would bring.

Elcon, based in Israel, had overestimated how much it would financially contribute to the town and made several basic errors, such as not listing the Falls Township Fire Company as one of its main emergency contacts, said Robert Harvie, chairman of the supervisors.

“It’s been a lot of work. It was a lot of concerned people,” he said. “It’s a project that didn’t fit in our subdivision. You’re taking a square peg and putting it in a round hole.”

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New Jersey American Water Named Recipient of CIANJ’s 2019 Environmental Leadership Awards

(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr 30, 2019–New Jersey American Water was recently named a 2019 recipient of the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey’s (CIANJ) inaugural Environmental Leadership Awards. These awards recognize the efforts and greater impact of companies/businesses around the state who actively work to support and protect the environment.

New Jersey American Water was one of more than 150 consultants, attorneys, engineers, licensed site remediation professionals, companies and others who work in the environmental sector to be named to the inaugural class of Environmental Leadership Award recipients. Award winners were chosen from nominations submitted to the magazine by CIANJ members and those in the business community at large. Honorees were recognized for their leadership in such areas as recycling, pollution prevention, green building design, environmental conservation, energy conservation, community impact, manufacturing innovation and brownfield redevelopment.

“We are honored to be named a recipient of CIANJ’s Inaugural Environmental Leadership Awards,” said Cheryl Norton, president of New Jersey American Water and senior vice president of American Water’s eastern division. “Our more than 800 skilled professionals work tirelessly to serve the 2.7 million people who depend on us every day, and to do so in an environmentally sustainable and responsible manner. We recognize all of our fellow award recipients, and sincerely thank CIANJ and COMMERCE Magazine for this distinction.”

Each of this year’s Environmental Leadership Award recipients were recognized at a special breakfast reception, jointly hosted by CIANJ and COMMERCE Magazine, on Friday, April 26. CIANJ President Anthony Russo said the event was held to showcase the extraordinary environmental work done throughout New Jersey.

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Canada bans deep-sea mining, oil and gas drilling in marine protected

The decision, which also prevents waste dumping and bottom trawling, helps inch Canada closer to its international commitment to protect 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020

James Wilt reports for The Narwhal – Apr 26, 2019 6 min read

After two years of advocacy and 70,000 letters sent, conservation organizations across Canada are celebrating the federal government’s decision to prohibit all oil and gas activities in marine protected areas.

“The public played a really big role in this change,” said Stephanie Hewson, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, in an interview with The Narwhal.

Marine protected areas — known as MPAs — are effectively national parks of the oceans, establishing strict guidelines about what kind of activities can occur in the ecologically sensitive regions. In 2010, Canada signed onto the Aichi Convention to protect biodiversity and the world’s ecosystems, committing to protect 10 per cent of coastal and marine areasby 2020.

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The new rules will apply to all marine protected areas in Canada, including marine conservation and marine national wildlife areas, but the greatest effect will be felt in Marine Protected Areas managed under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans — most especially in the Laurentian Channel.

Proposed regulations published in June 2017 for the Laurentian Channel MPA — located between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland — allowed for extensive oil and gas exploration and production.

An access to information request filed by The Narwhal revealed that a close relationshipbetween the oil industry and federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans may have contributed to that proposal.

But on Tuesday, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Jonathan Wilkinson announced that four industrial activities — oil and gas, mining, waste dumping and bottom trawling — would be banned in all new marine protected areas, starting with the Laurentian Channel.

This fulfilled recommendations made by a national advisory panel that filed its final reportin September 2018.

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Murphy signs 9 bills to alleviate NJ foreclosure crisis

Daniel J. Munoz reports for NJBIZ

Gov. Phil Murphy signed a package of bills he and proponents said would alleviate the effects of foreclosures on homeowners facing the potentially daunting legal proceedings, and help the economic revitalization of towns with high foreclosure rates, or “blight.”

However, the governor held off on signing two additional foreclosure bills, saying the measures were being “worked through.”

One bill that Murphy did not sign was Assembly Bill 5000, which would have required the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs to create an online and publicly accessible database, and accompanying map of foreclosed properties across the state.

“We made a decision that the nine that were ready to go on the runway, we didn’t want to let any more time pass, so we’re signing these nine today,” Murphy told reporters following the bill-signing ceremony Monday afternoon in Atlantic City.

Proponents of the measures signed Monday said the package will help reverse the trend of the exasperated foreclosure rate which came at the heels of the financial crisis and ensuing housing market crash a decade ago.

“Ten years after the housing crash decimated the dreams of thousands of families, and even as we keep working to restore our economy to pre-Recession levels of growth and incomes, New Jersey still bears a steady burden that is on the legacies of the Great Recession: our foreclosure crisis,” Murphy said.

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D.C. Is First to Plan to Remove, Retrofit Flood-Prone Buildings

By Christopher Flavelle for Reuters
April 29, 2019, 11:01 AM EDT

City sets goal for 2050 as threat from climate change worsens
Challenges include new housing, addressing federal buildings

Internal Revenue Service headquarters building in Washington, D.C. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Washington is announcing a goal of retrofitting or removing all of its flood-prone buildings by 2050, the first major U.S. city to set such a policy.

The proposal is part of a broader plan to protect Washington, which is home to 700,000 people and the headquarters of most federal agencies, from climate change and other threats. That plan, called “Resilient DC” and released Monday, sets a range of goals for coping with increasingly severe floods and heat waves, the major climate stresses projected for the city, which sits at the junction of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.

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U.S. still processing Atlantic seismic permits despite drilling plan delay

Valerie Volcovici, Nichola Groom report for Reuters

The U.S. Interior Department is still processing permit applications for companies to conduct seismic testing in the Atlantic – a precursor to drilling – despite shelving its plan to vastly expand offshore drilling, a spokeswoman said on Monday.

Atlantic coastal state lawmakers, businesses and conservation groups are adamant that Interior should not allow seismic testing – a process that often uses powerful air guns to map resources below the ocean floor – arguing the surveys hurt marine life, such as the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Newly confirmed Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said last week the agency’s five-year plan for oil and gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) would be sidelined indefinitely after a March court ruling blocked drilling in the Arctic and part of the Atlantic Ocean.

But Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is responsible for managing energy development on the OCS, continues to review the applications of a half-dozen seismic testing companies awaiting permits to test for oil and gas drilling potential on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

“BOEM is continuing to process the permit applications for conducting seismic surveys in the Atlantic, consistent with applicable law,” BOEM spokeswoman Tracey Moriarty said in an emailed statement on Monday.

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