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Still prime gorgeous season here in Philadelphia
(photo via @ehammthebomb)
New York City Council passes paper bag fee — again — following a statewide plastic ban
Cole Rosengren reports for WasteDive
The New York City Council recently voted 38-9 to approve a bill (Intro 1527) that will establish a five-cent “paper carryout bag reduction fee” to accompany the upcoming statewide plastic bag ban.
Following guidelines set forth in the state legislation, the city will receive two cents from every fee “for the purpose of purchasing and distributing reusable bags, with priority given to low- and fixed-income communities.” Customers using various income assistance programs will be exempt from the fee entirely.
The bill was quickly introduced, passed out of committee and brought for a full vote in response to the new state policy passed earlier this month. The paper bag fee, like the statewide plastic bag ban, will take effect in March 2020.
The backers of this particular bill have been pushing for a city bag policy since at least 2013 and appeared to have succeeded in 2016 when the measure passed in one of the council’s tightest votes of the session. Yet a chain reaction of preemption by the state legislature and delayed promises for action from the governor paused any local movement on the policy until this spring. FY20 budget legislation established a statewide ban on plastic bags and offered local governments the option to go further (within certain parameters) and establish their own policies on paper bags.
That fresh opening, along with a shift in council membership and politics since 2016, led to the swift passage of a paper bag fee for the second time. Mayor Bill de Blasio has expressed support for the concept and is expected to sign the bill soon.
Tying plastic bag bans with a fee on alternatives is seen as critical to ensuring that stores and customers don’t just switch to other options — which generally require more resources to produce — with a similar rate of consumption. California, the only other state with an official plastic bag ban, has a 10-cent fee on alternative bags. A bill was recently introduced in San Francisco to raise that city’s fee to 25 cents and set tighter standards on bag exemptions and material composition.
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Trump Considering Waiving Jones Act Mandate for Natural Gas, Sources Say
Jennifer A Dlouhy, Jenny Leonard, and Jennifer Jacobs reporting for Bloomberg
President Donald Trump is seriously considering waiving the requirement that only U.S.-flagged vessels can move natural gas from American ports to Puerto Rico or the Northeast, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
The issue was debated during an Oval Office meeting on Monday, following requests from Puerto Rico and pressure from oil industry leaders to ease the nearly 100-year-old Jones Act requirements, according to three people. Although top administration officials are divided on the issue, Trump is now leaning in favor of some kind of waiver, said two of the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.
The move — which would be fought by U.S shipbuilding interests and their allies on Capitol Hill — has been promoted as essential to lower the cost of energy in Puerto Rico and ease the flow of American natural gas to the U.S. Northeast, where there aren’t enough pipelines to deliver the product from Pennsylvania.
But even inside the Trump administration, there are fierce defenders of the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring that vessels moving cargo between two U.S. ports be U.S.-built, -owned and -crewed. The law was originally designed to protect the domestic shipping industry and the country’s maritime might, and supporters argue that it’s just as essential today to ensure ships are made in the U.S. Any move to weaken or waive the requirements threatens the U.S. shipbuilding industry and the jobs tied to it, they argue.
Navarro, Chao
That divide was apparent during Monday’s White House meeting, where Jones Act supporters included Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, pushed for waiving the Jones Act, three of the people said.
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Even as the White House weighs waivers, a handful of Trump administration officials have pushed to expand the Jones Act’s reach, two of the people said. They are aiming to effectively revive a Customs and Border Protection bid to revoke rulings allowing foreign vessels to transport some equipment to offshore oil rigs. The agency withdrew the formal proposal in 2017, after the oil industry warned it could cripple production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump faces increasing pressure to relax the shipping requirements. Puerto Rico is seeking a 10-year waiver to allow liquefied natural gas to be delivered to the island on foreign-flagged vessels.
And energy industry leaders have pressed for changes to facilitate natural gas and petroleum product shipments between U.S. states. Among them: billionaire oil man Harold Hamm, the chairman of Continental Resources Inc. and a former Trump energy adviser. In January, Hamm complained at a Houston energy conference that the U.S. has been forced to buy LNG from Russia because there are no Jones Act-compliant tankers to transport liquefied natural gas.
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Challenge: How to get to where the fish are biting along Atlantic City jetties
Michelle Brunetti reports for the Atlantic City Press
ATLANTIC CITY — Fish love to hang out by rock jetties.
So that’s where fishermen love to hang out — ‘rock hopping’ and casting their lines from the top of the huge boulders.
But the jetties can be difficult to get to from the new Boardwalk in the Absecon Inlet, constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and owned by the city.
Some require climbing over railings and walking down a thin wooden board onto the rocks 10 feet below, all while carrying fishing gear.
“There’s no kind of way I’d go down there,” said 1st Ward Councilman Aaron “Sporty” Randolph at a news conference Monday across from the Flagship Resort on Maine Avenue.
The event was held by U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-2, with representatives of state and federal agencies and city officials.
Van Drew said he is forming a committee that will begin meeting soon to discuss options available for solving the problem, both to tackle the technical challenges and the funding challenges.
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“We are at the point where we’ve spoken with the Army Corps … the DEP (state Department of Environmental Protection) and we know this is a doable process, and something we can accomplish,” Van Drew said.
It’s happening in the wake of the state legislature passing a bill that codifies the “public-trust doctrine,” which states that everyone has a right to enjoy tidal waters and shorelines.
Sport fisherman Dan Ponzio, of Arthur W. Ponzio & Associates engineering firm in the resort, said he has seen welded heavy aluminum stairways work well under similar conditions in south Florida.
“They are all open, there is no kick plate, so the water goes right through — there is no water resistance,” Ponzio said.
The city owns the Boardwalk, but the design of it and the sea wall are controlled by the funders — the Army Corps and the DEP. So all three need to work together to find a solution.
“This is something Las Vegas doesn’t have … something most other gaming venues don’t have,” said Van Drew, gesturing towards the ocean and inlet.
“But we need to have proper, safe, attractive access in order to accomplish the goals that we want,” including diverse offerings for tourists and better quality of life for residents, he said.
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In Cambodia, giant turtles come back from the brink
Once believed to be extinct in Cambodia, Cantor’s giant soft-shell turtle is finally recovering.
STEFAN LOVGREN writes for National Geographic
PUBLISHED APRIL 23, 2019
KAOH TRONG, CAMBODIA It was late last year when the owner of a popular restaurant in Kratie, a town in northern Cambodia, got a visit from local fishermen who had caught a live turtle in the Mekong River and were hoping to make a sale. The owner sometimes bought turtles, serving them to customers by special request. But the turtle the fishermen had brought this time was different. For starters, it was huge, weighing 37 pounds. Its broad head and eyes close to the tip of the snout resembled that of a frog. The owner, suspecting it was one of the endangered species he’d been told about, thought for a moment, then agreed to buy the turtle, for $75—not to cook it, but to save its life.
A Cambodian community is attempting to save the endangered Cantor’s soft-shell turtle. Watch as they release one that was originally destined for dinner plates.
And so it was that the giant turtle ended up at the Mekong Turtle Conservation Center in Sambor, about 20 miles north. When the restaurant owner’s son delivered it, Bran Sinal, who manages the center, immediately recognized it as a Cantor’s giant soft-shell turtle, an extremely rare species in Cambodia that can grow to the size of a small sofa and live for more than a century. Sinal could also tell that the turtle was a female of breeding age. To lose it would have been a tragedy.
For the next three months, Sinal cared for the turtle at the center. Then, on a recent Friday morning, he and a large group of people, including local officials, villagers, and students, gathered on a pristine beach on the island of Kaoh Trong, in the middle of the Mekong, near where the turtle had been captured, to return it to the river. After two Buddhist monks recited a prayer, the turtle was placed on the ground. It instinctively began digging into the sand to hide. Leaving it there wouldn’t have been a good idea, so the turtle was again picked up and this time released into the water. As it swam away, the students applauded.
“This is a special occasion,” said Sinai afterwards. “It is the first time we have released a broodstock [of this species] back into the wild, so it’s a very good sign.”
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New York City will push skyscrapers to slash emissions
CAMILA DOMONOSKE reports for National Public Radio
April 23, 20197:23 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition
On the steps of New York City’s City Hall last week, about 100 people gathered to enthusiastically chant their support for a landmark climate bill.
It didn’t target cars or coal, but another major emitter — in fact, the source of nearly 70% of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a sector that dominates New York’s skyline, but has largely managed to dodge the spotlight when it comes to climate change.
“Dirty buildings,” they shouted, “have got to go!”
The City Council passed a measure Thursday to require owners of large buildings to invest in retrofitting and improving their structures to slash their contribution to climate change.
Cities around the world have been calling for greater efficiency from new construction, and a number of cities have pledged to make all buildings carbon-neutral by 2050.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio says New York’s new measure, which he will sign into law soon, is the first in the world to actually mandate changes from existing buildings.
Under the law, which its supporters hope will serve as a model for other cities around the world, owners will need to improve insulation, lighting, heating and cooling systems, among other changes, to reduce the amount of energy their buildings use.
The goal is ambitious: The city’s largest buildings will have to cut their emissions by 40% by 2030, and by 80% by 2050. The cost of the necessary changes is estimated at some $4 billion, although some of those costs will be recouped by building owners through energy savings and the added value of an energy-efficient building.
“These are very intense goals, but reachable goals,” de Blasio told NPR in an interview. “These buildings are the single biggest piece of the [climate change] problem that hasn’t been addressed, and we had the tools to do it right now.”
If building owners do not comply with the measure, they will face substantial fines — $1 million or more per year for the largest buildings.
The Empire State Building, shown here in 2010, looks the same as ever. But the landmark is now packed with energy-efficiency retrofits, invisible to tourists and even tenants.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
“Silver buckshot”
So what does it actually take to make an old skyscraper energy-efficient?
A city icon — the 102-story Empire State Building — provides a glimpse.
Actually, there’s not much glimpsing involved. For the past 10 years, the landmark has gone through an ambitious energy-efficiency overhaul, but the vast majority of the changes are invisible.
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