$42M in Penn Foundation funds for Delaware Rver groups


Millions of dollars more for grassroots efforts in New Jersey and adjoining states to tackle dangers to vital source of drinking water

Jon Hurdle reports for NJ Spotlight:

A multistate initiative to improve water quality in the Delaware River Basin moved into a new phase yesterday with the announcement of another $42 million in private funding to help dozens of grassroots groups tackle the causes of pollution, runoff, deforestation and aquifer depletion.
The Delaware River Watershed Initiative got the new money from the William Penn Foundation which launched the program four years ago with the aim of coordinating the efforts of nongovernmental organizations that bring different approaches to defending water quality.
It focuses on eight regional “clusters” where water quality was given a baseline assessment by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and where the condition of waterways is monitored by experts.

Funds for Highlands and Kirkwood-Cohansey

In New Jersey, the program includes funding for clusters such as the Highlands and the Kirkwood-Cohansey area of South Jersey where local participants have been figuring out how best to work together since the initiative was launched in 2014.
It’s been a challenging but rewarding process deciding how to use the skills of each local group to produce a coherent effort, said Elliott Ruga, policy director of the Highlands Coalition, which is getting about $185,000 over the next three years, about the same as its funding for the first four years of the program.
The Highlands group, one of 11 organizations in that cluster, will use the money to play to its strengths as an advocate and a communicator of the need for better water quality in a region that is the source of drinking water for some 15 million people in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware. It will spend part of the money to create a social media campaign and, in the second and third years of the program, on conferences to bring together the many different groups that want to defend the region’s water quality.
Ruga said the Highlands Coalition recognizes that it doesn’t have the skillset to, for example, preserve land like the Land Conservancy of New Jersey, another member of the Highlands cluster brought together by the DRWI. “They don’t know about community, they don’t know about advocacy, they know about finding willing sellers to purchase land from,” he said. But any communications deficit can be made up within the DRWI by the participation of the Highlands Coalition.
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NJ, others, revving up opposition to EPA mileage choking

Eight-state initiative hopes to have more than 3 million zero-emission vehicles on road by 2025. New York joins the effort but not Pennsylvania or Delaware 

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:
 
It looks like New Jersey is lining up with other states to fight the Trump administration over its steps to weaken tough rules to reduce carbon pollution from cars.
Gov. Phil Murphy yesterday announced New Jersey would join eight other states in a cooperative effort to bolster the sale of zero-emission vehicles, a multistate program targeted to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions from the transportation sector.
His action to join the clean-car initiative follows a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks, as well as an indication that the Trump administration will challenge California’s ability to set tougher air pollution standards for vehicles.
The latter issue is significant to New Jersey because it is one of 12 states that have agreed to require that California’s cleaner cars be sold here. Clean-energy advocates view the program as crucial to the state’s goal of reducing air pollution, including emissions contributing to climate change.

Sisterhood is powerful

“We know we can’t win this fight alone, so we are joining with our sister states in efforts to deploy clean vehicles to advance the health of our communities and tackle the largest source of air pollution in our state,’’ Murphy said in a press release.
By signing a Memorandum of Understanding, New Jersey will join other states including New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California in a concerted effort to implement a comprehensive zero-emission vehicle program.

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U.S. Steel to pay $1.2 million for carcinogen spill



Len Boselovic reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette :


U.S. Steel would pay $1.2 million to federal and state regulators under a deal to settle environmental violations that occurred last April when massive amounts of highly toxic hexavalent chrominum were discharged into Lake Michigan from the steelmaker’s Midwest plant in Portage, Indiana.


The Pittsburgh steelmaker would pay $350,653 to cover the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s costs of responding to the April 11 incident and $300,621 fines to each the EPA and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, under the terms of a consent decree filed Monday in federal court in Hammond, Indiana.


The company would also pay $253,068 in damages and costs to the National Park Service, which had to close the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore because of the spill, and $27,512 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which also had to assess damages from the spill.


The incident closed beaches and prevented the water company serving Portage from taking water from the lake for its public customers.


Hexavalent chromium can cause lung cancer, irritate the nose, throat and lungs, and irritate or damage eyes and skin. The harmful chemical was the subject of the movie, “Erin Brockovich.”


Court records indicate the April 11 spill resulted in the release of nearly 300 pounds of the carcinogen, hundreds of times more than U.S. Steel was allowed to discharge.


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Get your ‘starter tree’ free from the State of New Jersey



Michael Sol Warren reports for NJ.com:


Get your green thumbs ready: Spring is here and New Jersey is giving 90,000 young trees away for free.


The state forest service’s New Jersey Tree Recovery Campaign is handing out seedlings in communities around the state as part of a continuing effort to replace trees that were lost in Superstorm Sandy.


“Trees provide habitat for wildlife, clean the air we breathe, provide shade, reduce the damaging effects of wind, limit erosion and contribute to a healthier environment,” DEP Acting Commissioner Catherine McCabe said in a press release. “Equally important, trees beautify our communities and improve our quality of life in the Garden State.”


Each participating community has up to 2,000 seedlings to distribute. All of the seedlings are raised at the New Jersey Forest Nursery in Jackson. The types of trees available in each community depends on the location; the forest service assigns species based on what grows best in a given location. More than 30 species of trees are being distributed through the program.


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PennDOT plans $360M of road work in six-county region

Replacement of the Route 22 Lehigh Valley Bridge and reconstruction of the Fullerton exit is one of the most expensive projects in the Lehigh Valley. (HARRY FISHER / THE MORNING CALL)


Tom Shortell reports for The Morning Call:


As the winter weather gives way — one would hope — to spring, road crews across the extended Lehigh Valley region expect to tackle 115 PennDOT projects this year.


Many of these will sound familiar, especially the big ones: revamping the Route 22 Fullerton exit and replacing the adjacent Lehigh River bridge; repaving, widening and adding auxiliary lanes to Interstate 78; and adding traffic circles to Route 222.


Some are new, others are ongoing and will continue beyond 2018. All are found within PennDOT District 5, which covers Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe and Schuylkill counties, and together they will cost $360 million to complete.


About $110 million is being spent in Lehigh and Northampton counties.


The largest project is the ongoing work on Route 22. PennDOT is in year three of a four-year, $64.9 million project. Road crews have already replaced the bridge carrying eastbound traffic over the Lehigh River, and are working on the westbound side. Michael Rebert, the district’s executive director, told reporters Monday crews should complete most of the work on the base of the westbound bridge this year, but the new deck likely won’t be poured until 2019.


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Christie betrays defenders’ dim view of Trump’s intellect

Aaron Blake reports for The Washington Post:

Lost in the debate over whether President Trump should talk to Robert Mueller is this: The arguments against him doing it often betray a remarkably dim view of Trump’s intellect.
To his credit, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was rather blunt Sunday in making the case for Trump refusing the interview. Christie said flatly on ABC’s “This Week” that he worried Trump wouldn’t be able to stop himself from committing perjury (comments start at 8:47 in video above):
He should never walk into that room with Robert Mueller. Because in the end, one of the things that makes the president who he is, is that he’s a salesman. And salesmen, at times, tend to be hyperbolic. Right, and this president certainly has tended to do that.
That’s okay when you’re on the campaign hustle. That’s okay when you’re working on Congress. It is not okay when you’re sitting talking to federal agents because, you know, 18 USC 1001 is false statements to federal agents. That’s a crime. That can send you to jail.
This kind of argument has become rather common when it comes to Trump, but let’s step back for a second and focus on what Christie is really saying: He is saying that not only is Trump prone to hyperbole because he’s a salesman but that Trump can’t be trusted to tell the truth even when not doing so constitutes a felony. Christie is basically suggesting that a 71-year-old man who happens to be the president of the United States can’t differentiate well enough between truth and fiction (or what Trump himself has called “truthful hyperbole“).
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Trump unplugged: How Trump has acted under oath
Others who have argued that Trump shouldn’t talk to Mueller have danced around this point a little more artfully. Christie has said in the past that he didn’t think the evidence warranted an interview with a sitting president. White House lawyer Ty Cobb and others have alluded to the prospect of a “perjury trap” — the possibility that the interview could basically be an elaborate setup to get Trump to make a false statement.
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