Newark’s water breaches levels for dangerous chemicals


Michael Warren and Karen Yi report for NJ.com:

First, it was lead. Now it’s a likely carcinogenic chemical.
Newark has again violated a federal standard, allowing a potentially cancer-causing contaminant to flow through the drinking water — and the water it sells to nearby towns, according to state test records.
The state records show Newark’s water contains high levels of haloacetic acids, a group of five possibly carcinogenic chemicals that are byproducts of the water disinfection process. People exposed to elevated levels of haloacetic acids for years are at an increased risk of getting cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 
The test results deal yet another blow to public trust in Newark’s water system.
The city is already under pressure to address elevated levels of lead in its drinking water and recently acknowledged it wasn’t properly treating the water for corrosive properties at one of its plants.
The elevated levels of haloacetic acids are not considered an acute public health emergency by state and federal authorities, according to Kareem Adeem, the city’s deputy director of water and sewer utilities.

He said Newark is aware of the high levels of haloacetic acids and is working to solve the problem. Specifically, Adeem said the city is making changes to its disinfection process and instituting a flushing program to remove old water from the system more quickly. and Karen Yi report for NJ.com  


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What’s the cost of replacing 300 miles of urban pipelines?

Elizabethtown Gas proposes a big overhaul of its distribution system, parts of which are more than a century old

pseg workers gas mains

Credit: PSE&G
Tom Johnson reports
for NJ Spotlight:

Elizabethtown Gas yesterday filed a proposal to spend $518 million over the next five years to replace more than 309 miles of gas mains and to make other investments in its system
The filing with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is the latest by utilities in the state, which have ramped up capital spending to modernize an aging gas distribution system at a time when gas prices have dropped considerably in the past decade, cushioning the impact of those expenditures on customers.
The proposed program includes replacing vintage cast-iron and bare steel mains and services as well as iron, copper and dated plastic mains, some of which are more than 100 years old, according to the utility.
“We are committed to providing our 292,000 customers with safe, reliable affordable natural gas service, and the modernization of our infrastructure reinforces that commitment,’’ said Brian MacLean, president of Elizabethtown, which was acquired by South Jersey Industries in a deal completed this past July.

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How tariffs are hurting NJ cranberries and microbrews

Tariffs on aluminum are making cans harder to come by and more expensive
for Chris Walsh, owner of River Horse Brewing Co. – ()






Gabrielle Saulsbery reports for NJBIZ:

When looking at the Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on U.S. trading partners, the focus instantly turns to the manufacturing sectors. But in New Jersey, the effects are being felt in the food and beverage industry as well.
For example, the cranberry harvest in New Jersey makes up only about 5 percent to 8 percent of the world’s production, yet its stability is intrinsically tied to the success of the industry as a whole.
That’s because most international business done by local producers goes through the farmer-owned Ocean Spray Cooperative that accounts for more than half of the world’s cranberry business.
And brewers in the state’s fast-growing craft beverage industry are waiting longer for aluminum cans they’ve already paid more for since the tariffs were announced, which for some is nullifying tax breaks they received last winter.

Canned heat

After countless trips to and from Washington, D.C., to lobby for a lower federal excise tax, local brewers such as Ryan Krill and Gene Muller got what they were fighting for in December. The tax was cut in half, saving each tens of thousands of dollars.
Each projected the extra cash in their businesses, planning for growth and in some cases making real investments, like the nearly $400,000 canning machine Muller purchased from China in January for his Flying Fish Brewing Co. in Somerdale.
“[The tax cut saved us] about $75,000, and that’s what gave us the confidence to invest in that canning line,” Muller said. “We knew in a few years that would help us pay it off. But now, half of that money is going to tariffs.”
According to Jim McGreevy, president and CEO of the Beer Institute, which represents about 5,000 of the more than 6,000 breweries in the country, the recently imposed aluminum tariffs and additional retaliatory tariffs thereafter have had a direct and immediate effect on the cost of business across the industry.
The tariffs are an additional $347 million cost to brewers across the nation per year, manifested in unusually inflated aluminum costs at a time when canning is increasingly becoming more popular.
The two primary price determinants for the aluminum market are the London Metal Exchange, which is set daily on the open market, and the Midwest Premium, a fee meant to cover a producer’s shipping and handling that is set in private by energy information provider S&P Global Platts, aluminum producers and investors.
“The base price of aluminum we have seen rise about 14 percent since the tariffs have gone into effect, while the Midwest Premium prices have gone up 135 percent since they were announced in January,” McGreevy said.
Of the $347 million hit to the industry estimated by the Beer Institute, Krill, the president of Cape May Brewing Co., and Muller, owner of Flying Fish, each said the cost to them was about $35,000.
“Sixty percent of the beer manufactured in the U.S. comes in aluminum cans and bottles,” said McGreevy. “For the 123 brewers in New Jersey, although you’ve got some brewpubs that don’t distribute, you’ve got [Anheuser Busch] in Newark and some bigger regional craft brewers in the state that distribute. There’s a lot of aluminum cans and bottles coming out of New Jersey with beer in them.”
The additional cost is leaving brewers with few palatable options. Either up your price, something that some brewers like Krill say is not an option given the competitive nature of the business, or cut man-hours.
And while Muller, Krill and River Horse Brewing Co. Owner and General Manager Chris Walsh all said they didn’t plan on cutting jobs, McGreevy estimated the tariffs could lead to up to 20,000 job cuts in an industry that employs 2.2 million nationwide. In New Jersey, where there are about 48,000 industry jobs, that equates to nearly 440 potential layoffs.
As craft beer canning has skyrocketed from 10 percent four years ago to a projected 40 percent this year, “We just saw the growth trend and with the tax cut we had an opportunity to reinvest and help create jobs,” Muller said. “And then we get our legs cut out from under us. The canning is rocketing off, and these tariffs come in and kind of clobber the whole thing.”
Brewers of all sizes are talking about price. A representative from Anheuser-Busch’s Newark outfit told NJBIZ via email: “A tariff on aluminum is a tax that threatens jobs in the beer industry and has the potential to raise the cost of brewing in the U.S. Furthermore, the tariffs highlight an ongoing problem with the pricing of aluminum, which has become disconnected from market fundamentals.”
River Horse’s Walsh said he too invested in a canning line this spring, a cost to his company of about $150,000. Everything was great, he said, until the last few orders he made to his can supplier.The issue for brewers isn’t just price of aluminum. It’s availability.
“Our primary supplier threw their hands up and said they didn’t have any available,” he said. “When this tariff started, my understanding is the big users of aluminum cans took a bunch of cans out of the market to ensure their supply, so they’re just not trickling down to someone like me.”
Walsh found another supplier, sourcing cans at a higher cost, but seemed unsure about how long they would remain available. Based on recent history, he may not get his next shipment until sometime in January. Some brewers, he said, are waiting 14 to 22 weeks for cans.

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Where will your recycled plastic go? Maybe into highways


TechniSoil Industrial says its roads are eight to 16 times more durable

Ashley Halsey III reports for The Washington Post:

Until about a year ago, few people had reason to wonder where the plastic they tossed into the recycling bin ended up. It was being made into new bottles, bags, straws and beach balls, right?
Wrong: Almost half of it was shipped to China. Then, China announced last year that it didn’t want to buy the stuff anymore.
So, what should we do with all that plastic choking the world’s landfills? Why not recycle it and use it to build roads?
Bound together with plastic polymers, the asphalt will be cheaper and last longer than conventional pavement, according to independent experts.
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One European firm already is combining plastic pellets with hot-mix asphalt to resurface roadways. A U.S. company says that once it finds financial backing, its product “could be deployed within six months” with a process that combines asphalt milled from the road’s surface with plastic urethane.  

Mixing recycled plastic into asphalt is more common in India and Pakistan than in the United States.

These samples show a product using recycled asphalt and G5 polymer from TechniSoil Industrial, a plastic-roadway company. (TechniSoil Industrial)
“Every country is going to come up with ways to reuse this recycled plastic,” said Sahadat Hossain, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. “I work with Africa and developing countries. Everywhere you go, they’re building new roads — hundreds of miles of them. We could put a lot of this [plastic] material to use.”
And an ambitious Dutch company envisions 100-percent-recycled plastic roads built in sectional panels that can be popped into place like Lego blocks. So far, though, its biggest project has been the test of a 30-meter bike path in a city about 60 miles east of Amsterdam.
No one knows how many tons of plastic waste might be put to use in building roads, bike paths or sidewalks. But the plastic problem became prodigious the minute China stopped taking all but a tiny fraction of what the world produces.
More than 583 billion plastic bottles alone will be produced worldwide three years from now, according to the market research firm Euromonitor International. Bottles take close to 500 years to decompose in landfills, and some plastic items last almost twice as long.
By 2050, plastic floating in the oceans will outweigh the fish, according to a 2016 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Without China paying to host the world’s biggest garbage dump, the rest of the world will have no place for an estimated 111 million metric tons of plastic waste that will accumulate in the next dozen years, according to University of Georgia researchers. Since 1992, China has accepted 45 percent of the world’s plastic recycling, they said.
Infusing plastic into highways is in its nascent hour, but the urgency of having no outlet for almost half the world’s plastic suggests traditional recycling may dry up, leaving landfills as the only other option.

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Chinese companies are getting around their country’s ban on scrap imports by buying U.S. plastic and paper plants

Scrap broker Song Lin, left, and his business partner Zhang Yan with discarded plastic barrels at the recycling plant they intend to open in Montezuma, Ga. The barrels, from nearby dairy farms, will be turned into pellets for export to China.
Scrap broker Song Lin, left, and his business partner Zhang Yan with discarded plastic barrels at the recycling plant they intend to open in Montezuma, Ga. The barrels, from nearby dairy farms, will be turned into pellets for export to China. Photo: Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal 

Bob Tita reports for the Wall Street Journal:

Chinese companies are setting up shop in the U.S. to obtain the scrap paper and plastic their government has deemed too dirty to import.

U.S. shipments to China of old cardboard, newspaper and discarded plastic slowed after China this year implemented more-stringent standards on the purity of imported scrap. That change has left Chinese packaging companies and plastics manufacturers short on materials.

Some of them are buying or building plants in the U.S. to manufacture the paper for corrugated boxes, pulp and plastic pellets for which they can’t find enough raw material in China.

Companies including some of China’s biggest paper makers are discovering a glut of cheap recycled material in the U.S.

“Right now, plastic waste is everywhere after China stopped taking it,” said Song Lin, a longtime broker of plastic scrap in the U.S. who is preparing to open a factory in Georgia that will turn discarded plastic into pellets for export to China.

The moves are a boost to the U.S. scrap industry, which collapsed in recent months amid sharply lower exports to China. For now, investors are mostly subsidiaries of Chinese plastic and paper producers, or firms supplying large clients in China, and have experience navigating the logistical and regulatory challenges of exporting to the country.

ND Paper LLC, a unit of China’s Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Ltd. , in recent months acquired paper mills in Biron, Wis., and Rumford, Maine, for $175 million from British Columbia-based Catalyst Paper Corp. The firm also bought a pulp mill in Fairmont, W.Va., for $55 million and a pulp mill in Old Town, Maine, this month from OTM Holdings. That mill had been idle since 2015, and ND Paper expects to restart operations early next year.  
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Big Oil is using brute financial force to kill sustainability initiatives in two states

There is seemingly no limit to the fossil fuel money that will fight decarbonization

But it kind of is (despite this 2014 protest). Spencer Platt/Getty Images

David Roberts reports for Vox:
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it vividly clear that averting catastrophic climate change means rapidly reducing the use of fossil fuels, getting as close to zero as possible, as soon as practicably possible. The US needs to fully decarbonize by mid-century or shortly thereafter.
Big Oil, at least with its public face, has acknowledged that reality and is supporting a revenue-neutral carbon tax in the US (one that, not incidentally, would shelter the industry from legal threats based on climate change). It is attempting to act, or at least to be seen as acting, as a reasonable partner in the federal climate effort.
Down at the state level, where media pays less attention? Not so much.
Take what’s happening in Washington and Colorado. In those states, citizens who are tired of waiting for their elected officials to act are resorting to direct democracy: with ballot initiatives, up for votes on November 6, that would directly take on fossil fuels. (Washington’s would put a price on carbon emissions; Colorado’s would radically reduce oil and gas drilling.)oil wells

    Shutterstock

According to their public records, in just those two states, just this year, oil and gas — both directly and through PACs — has dumped $47 million into efforts to crush the initiatives. That number could easily top $50 million by the time of the election. On two underdog state initiatives!
Climate hawks often debate whether it works to frame Big Oil as the villain in the climate fight. But it’s not really a “messaging” question here. In these state fights over fossil fuels, Big Oil is playing the villain in a very non-metaphorical, non-symbolic way, in the form of spending outrageous amounts of money to fight off climate action.
These initiatives illustrate, if it wasn’t already obvious, that state-by-state climate policy is going to be an uphill battle. In each state, support for the climate side comes from underfunded citizen and public-interest groups — and for the most part, only the ones inside the state. Meanwhile, Big Oil, backed by ideologically aligned billionaires like the Koch brothers, has effectively unlimited funds to spend on every one of these fights. It’s overwhelmingly asymmetrical.
Let’s take a quick look at each one.

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