PADEP public meeting tonight in Bucks County, Pa. on controversial liquid- waste-incineration plant, Elcon

Elcon chemical waste treatment plant in Falls Township – Graphic rendering



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By Frank Brill
EnviroPolitics Editor

 The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will host a public meeting tonight regarding Elcon Recycling Services, LLC’s (Elcon) proposed plans to construct and operate a hazardous waste treatment and storage facility to treat and store liquid waste at the Keystone Industrial Port Complex in Falls Township, Bucks County.

 The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Sheraton Bucks County Hotel, 400 Oxford Valley Road, Langhorne, PA 19047 

 Here’s how the DEP describes the meeting
The public meeting will be held to answer questions from the public regarding the permit applications for the project. Representatives from DEP’s Waste Management, Air Quality, and Clean Water programs will be on hand to discuss permit applications currently under review. 


 To date, Elcon has applied to DEP for a Solid Waste Management Permit for a Commercial Hazardous Waste Treatment and Storage Facility, an Air Quality Plan Approval, and a General Stormwater Discharge Permit. 

Solid Waste Management Permit Application: Elcon submitted a solid waste management permit application for a commercial hazardous waste treatment facility to DEP. After a series of administrative completeness reviews, DEP found the application to be administratively complete and commenced a 10-month technical review in July 2018. 

Air Quality Plan Approval Application: Elcon applied for an Air Quality Plan Approval as a minor facility on October 16, 2018. The application has been deemed administratively complete and is currently under technical review. The review ensures that the facility will meet all applicable rules and regulations, as well as meeting the best available technology, for any air pollution sources and any associated air pollution control equipment.

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 NPDES General Permit Application: Elcon applied for a General Stormwater Discharge permit on October 16, 2018. The administratively complete application is currently under technical review. NPDES (National Pollutants Discharge Elimination System) permits and best management practices are used to control stormwater runoff and pollution prevention. This permit would be limited to stormwater discharges only.

 More information on the project can be found by visiting www.dep.pa.gov/elcon

A number of local citizen and environmental groups oppose the plan, including United Against Elcon and the Clean Air Council.

If the hotel parking is gone when you arrive, you’ll find ample parking in the shopping center lot across the street (Oxford Valley Road) in Langhorne Plaza which is southeast of the hotel and adjacent to Chick Fil A.

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NYC to capture, recycle aluminum coffee pods from waste

Matthew Flamm reports for Crain’s New York Business

New Yorkers who like making coffee from convenient—if environmentally dubious—single-serving capsules will soon be able to do so with a clearer conscience.
The Swiss coffee giant Nespresso is committing $1.2 million to help Sims Municipal Recycling process the company’s coffee pods, which are made from aluminum. That means city residents will soon be able to put aluminum coffee pods into their metal-glass-plastic recycling bin for collection by the Department of Sanitation.
Currently, that is not possible because the aluminum cannot be separated from the organic material in the used pods.
Sims, which works with the Department of Sanitation to handle most of the city’s residential recycling, will add another “eddy current” separating system to the one it has in Jersey City. The materials will be shredded either at the Jersey City facility or at Sims’ larger materials recovery center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. 
The eddy current creates a magnetic field that helps sort non-ferrous metals—i.e., those without iron content, such as aluminum, copper and brass—from other recycled material. In the case of the pods, the machinery will separate the aluminum from the coffee grounds and will allow Sims to process a variety of other products where non-ferrous metal must be separated from non-metallic parts, such as aluminum pots and pans with plastic handles.
“It allows us to capture more materials and convert them into higher-value non-ferrous products,” said Tom Outerbridge, general manager of Sims Municipal Recycling. “We will also use this same equipment to process the additional oddball non-ferrous products we get.”
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BPU to energy suppliers: Your passthroughs aren’t kosher

Tens of millions of dollars on the line as third-party suppliers dispute Board of Public Utilities’ order not to increase fixed rate during the term of contracts

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

Solar panels

Credit: James Moran/Flickr
In a dispute arising out of the state’s new clean-energy law, independent energy suppliers have been ordered to stop passing on higher costs to customers as a result of expanded requirements to supply solar energy.
The New Jersey Board of Utilities ordered so-called third-party suppliers to halt the practice and to refund customers, a step that could run into tens of millions of dollars, according to representatives of the Retail Energy Supply Association, which is contesting the order.
The issue involves only customers who have switched from their incumbent electric utility to third-party suppliers with fixed-price contracts. The board’s staff warned increasing the fixed rate during the term of a contract is prohibited by energy competition rules adopted by the agency.
But the suppliers counter that the new energy law includes a provision recognizing the added solar purchase requirements reflect a change in law, allowing price increases to pass on the obligations to existing customer contracts.
“The conclusion that suppliers must ‘cease and desist’ from passing through increased charges due to the CEA (Clean Energy Law) appears to be based on the flawed reasoning that comments from the board staff override a statute that was subsequently enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the state of New Jersey and signed into law by the Governor on May 23, 2018,’’ according to a brief filed by the suppliers’ association.

A question of fairness

The price increases across all the energy suppliers could amount to as much as $70 million or more, according to Robert Gibbs, director of corporate and regulatory affairs for Direct Energy, one of the largest retail energy suppliers in the state. “It wouldn’t be fair for us to eat those costs,’’ he said.
The BPU declined to comment on the matter since it is pending before the agency and will be dealt with at an upcoming agenda meeting, according to Peter Peretzman, a spokesman for the board.
In its letter in late January ordering suppliers to stop passing on the costs, however, it acknowledged the likelihood that the energy companies would like to pass on costs to customers to recoup those costs.
“However, for many customers, this would defeat the purpose of a fixed price contract,’’ the board contended. “Customers who choose fixed price contracts do so in order to avoid price risk.’’

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Ruined crops, salty soil: How rising seas are poisoning coastal North Carolina’s farmland


East Carolina University graduate students Trevor Burns, left, and Tyler Palochak check groundwater monitoring equipment on a farm near Engelhard, N.C., in January. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)
By Sarah Kaplan

MIDDLETOWN, N.C. — The salty patches were small, at first — scattered spots where soybeans wouldn’t grow, where grass withered and died, exposing expanses of bare, brown earth.
But lately those barren patches have grown. On dry days, the salt precipitates out of the mud and the crystals make the soil sparkle in the sunlight. And on a damp and chilly afternoon in January, the salt makes Dawson Pugh furrow his brow in dismay.
“It’s been getting worse,” the farmer tells East Carolina University hydrologist Alex Manda, who drove out to this corner of coastal North Carolina with a group of graduate students to figure out what’s poisoning Pugh’s land — and whether anything can be done to stop it.

Of climate change’s many plagues — drought, insects, fires, floods — saltwater intrusion in particular sounds almost like a biblical curse. Rising seas, sinking earth and extreme weather are conspiring to cause salt from the ocean to contaminate aquifers and turn formerly fertile fields barren. A 2016 study in the journal Science predicted that 9 percent of the U.S. coastline is vulnerable to saltwater intrusion — a percentage likely to grow as the world continues to warm. Scientists are just beginning to assess the potential effect on agriculture, Manda said, and it’s not yet clear how much can be mitigated.
“We spend a lot of time and money to try to prevent salt,” Pugh says. “I worry what the future is. If it keeps getting worse, will it be worth farming?”
If farmers in coastal areas have any hope of protecting their land — and their livelihoods — the first step is to disentangle the complex web of causes that can send ocean water seeping into the ground beneath their feet.

East Carolina University graduate students use a probe to check the chemistry of water in a ditch on the farm. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

Alex Manda, a hydrologist at East Carolina University, sets up a weather station as part of the effort to determine what’s happening to coastal farmland. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

Sensors lay on the ground beside a nest of scientific wells as Manda’s graduate students from East Carolina University study the groundwater. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

With that goal in mind, Pugh, Manda and Andrea Gibbs, the local agriculture agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension, convened at the edge of Pugh’s saltiest field on a recent blustery afternoon.
Pugh, 41, has spent his adult life growing soybeans, corn and cotton in North Carolina’s “blacklands,” where the dark and fertile soil is a legacy of nutrient-rich swamps that were drained to make the region arable. His father farmed here in Hyde County before him, and his grandfather before that. Pugh felt he was prepared for the challenges he would face with the brackish Pamlico Sound within spitting distance and just the thin sandy barrier of the Outer Banks between his farmland and the open ocean.

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Number of electric car charging outlets will double this year in N.J. thanks to one car maker’s trickery

By Chris Sheldon | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The number of electric car charging outlets in New Jersey is set to double as hundreds will be added by the state this year using money paid by Volkswagen to settle allegations that it used trickery to skirt emissions tests.
The DEP will use $3.2 million to award grants for 827 charging outlets at 533 charging stations under Its Pay$ to Plug In electric vehicle charging grant program, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced Thursday.
The state currently has 786 charging outlets at 322 public locations.
Fifty five municipalities and counties, public parking lots and garages, apartment and condominium complexes, car-share services, hotels, private companies and nonprofit organizations will be receiving the charging stations, the DEP said.
They will also be installed at several NJ Transit train stations and at rest stops along the Atlantic City Expressway.
A full list of places where they will installed can be seen here.
The funding for the charging stations comes from the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust, which is the result of federal actions against the automaker for installing “defeat” devices that allowed vehicles it manufactured to emit pollutants without being detected by emissions-testing programs across the country, the DEP said.
New Jersey is receiving $72.2 million in settlement funds and Gov. Phil Murphy has committed to using $10.8 million of that total for electric-vehicle charging stations, officials said.
Another $8 million will be used buy eight new electric transit buses that will be operated by Camden.
“We are pleased that this funding will help us pilot an electric bus program here in New Jersey to study in real-world scenarios the benefits and challenges of utilizing this alternate energy source,” NJ TRANSIT Executive Director Kevin Corbett said in a release. “Part of the NJ TRANSIT goal of providing world-class transportation services is to do so through the lens of environmental responsibility. By investigating the possibilities of alternate energy sources, we can advance our commitment to sustaining clean air throughout the state.”
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Bills on Deck for next NJ Senate Enviro Committee Meeting


The Senate Environment and Energy Committee will meet on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at 10:00 AM in Committee Room 6, 1st Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ.

The following bills will be considered:

S1614 (Kean / Andrzejczak) – Increases amount annually credited to Shore Protection Fund to $50 million.

S1742 (Greenstein) – Requires water purveyors to conduct, and report to DEP, water loss audits.

S1768 (Greenstein / Diegnan) – Requires DOT to prioritize green stormwater infrastructure in design, construction, reconstruction, and repair of public highways.

S1774 (Greenstein) – Specifies minimum 20-year planning duration for NJ Statewide Water Supply Plan and adds new requirements for the plan.

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S3000 (Bateman) – Establishes “Jersey Native Plants Program.”

S3146 (Singleton / Addiego) – Establishes owning or possessing animal fighting or dog fighting paraphernalia as crime of third degree; establishes civil animal cruelty penalties therefor.

S3457 (Sweeney) – Appropriates $450,000 for Hooked on Fishing-Not on Drugs Program.

S3470 (Smith) – Authorizes sale and conveyance of certain State-owned real property in Stafford Township, Ocean County to US Fish and Wildlife Service.

SR85 (Van Drew / Greenstein) – Supports designation of Atlantic City as international center on global warming and climate change.

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