Penn State grad uses his environmental science degree to create a floating (and growing) bioremediation business

Colin Lennox put his Penn State degree in environmental science and English (product development and marketing) to good use when he created floating hydroponic mats that pull contaminants out of water bodies. His first big success was with treating acid mine drainage. On the horizon: a unit for cannabis growers. Altoona Mirror reporter Walt Frank has the interesting details–Editor

Mirror photo by Gary M. Baranec / Bioremediation sales representative Andrew Gentry (left) and EcoIslands LLC creator Colin Lenox showcase a piece of solar pump cleaning technology at a pond near Duncansville on Oct. 31.
Colin Lennox wanted to do his own thing and “didn’t want to work for anybody.”
So, in 2010, he put his Penn State degrees in environmental studies and English to use and created EcoIslands LLC, which sold floating islands, hydroponic growth mats that clean water by pulling nutrients out of ponds.
Lennox, 39, admits following the recession was not the greatest time to start a business, which is housed in his home near Penn State Altoona.
“We only sold three floating islands. I did environmental landscaping, anything to keep me outside,” Lennox said.
Lennox carried on and his bioremediation company got involved with acid mine drainage cleanup in 2012.
“We clean acid mine drainage by building wetlands in a box,” he said. “Wetlands are catalyzed by microbes and efficiently cleans mine drainage. If you build wetlands in a box, you can do any bioremediation process that natural wetlands can. The elements are directly affected by microbes.”
Lennox has done work for the Clearfield Creek Water Association.
“He installed one of the first of his metal removal systems at the Glasgow treatment system where the Clearfield Creek Watershed Association had recently overseen an upgrade of an earlier treatment system. His unique experimental system extracted mainly manganese from the partially treated water, and showed great success,” said Arthur Rose, a retired Penn State professor, geochemist and advisor to the association.
Rose said Lennox’s technology represents a new and different approach to mine drainage treatment and has been able to remove a variety of metals – iron, manganese, aluminum, and others — from some very bad water.
“His methods are being recognized as a significant new approach for treating acid mine drainage and other contaminated waters. CCWA is currently collaborating with Colin on testing the removal of iron from a very high-iron acid drainage at our Klondike site near Ashville,” Rose said.
Rose also said Lennox’s technology is not a testing method, it is a treatment method.
Today, acid mine drainage work makes up 85-90 of his business, Lennox said.
“We sell wetlands bioreactors; there are different sizes. In 2017, we started going smaller in size, building 100-gallon bioreactors for home agriculture and demos, but we make them as large as 1,800 gallons,” Lennox said.
EcoIslands LLC received the Technology Award from the Blair County Chamber of Commerce in both 2012 and 2013.
The business received funding from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners in 2014 and 2016. The $50,000 in 2016 was to support its sales and marketing efforts, while also making engineering improvements to its system.
“It has been incredibly important, it got us through our mid-stage generation of bioreactors. The design was good but need improvements. We now have a production unit to produce bioreactor metal removal units, which are very advanced and capable of an enormous microbial diversity, which means a huge array of purposes and markets,” Lennox said.

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Pa court allows Penn Twp. fracking sites to continue

A pond below a drilling rig used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus shale near Houston in Washington County in 2008.

The Tribune-Review reports:

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has ruled development of four Penn Township fracking sites can continue, stymieing a local advocacy group’s attempt to stop the projects.

The Penn Township Zoning Hearing Board in early 2017 approved special exceptions for four well pads proposed by Apex Energy, known as the Backus, Deutsch, Drakulic and Numis pads.

The advocacy group Protect PT appealed the decision to Westmoreland County Court, which ruled in favor of the township.

Protect PT appealed again, to the Commonwealth Court, arguing that the wells would hurt the quality of the air and water in the township, and that the proposals did not adequately address the storage of wastewater.

Once again, the court upheld the zoning board’s decision. An opinion written by Judge Robert Simpson and announced Thursday says Protect PT did not present sufficient evidence to put the board’s decision in doubt.

“We’re very disappointed at the commonwealth’s decision today. We don’t feel the court upheld our constitutional rights as Pennsylvanians to clean air and pure water,” said Protect PT Director Gillian Graber. “We had hoped the court decision would do what the zoning hearing board failed to do.”

Township Community Development Director Bill Roberts said the ruling affirms the work done by the zoning board.

“Obviously we thought the zoning hearing board had done its due diligence,” he said. “We respect the effort that the zoning hearing board puts into these decisions.”

There are more than a dozen fracking wells in various stages of development in the township. In 2016, the township rejected two Apex well pad proposals. Apex sued the township in federal court for $300 million, arguing the denials were unlawful.

The township settled with Apex to avoid the lawsuit, The rejections were reversed, four other wells were approved and Apex agreed to several stipulations, including air and sound quality monitoring during construction.

Graber said Protect PT is considering whether to appeal the case to the state Supreme CourtLike this? Click to receive free updates
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After microbrew flap, Gov. Murphy replaces ABC director


State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced Friday that Murphy will nominate attorney and municipal judge James B. Graziano to become the division’s new director.
David Levinsky reports for the Burlington County Times:
TRENTON — Gov. Phil Murphy is moving to replace David Rible as the head of the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control just a few months after the division issued and then overturned controversial rules about activities and special events at microbreweries.
State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced Friday that Murphy will nominate attorney and municipal Judge James B. Graziano to become the division’s new director. He will replace Rible, who is leaving the post to pursue other opportunities, the Attorney General’s Office said.
Graziano’s nomination is subject to advice and consent of the state Senate. He will begin serving as acting director of the agency on Nov. 26, officials said.
“James is a seasoned civil litigator and experienced municipal judge whose legal background makes him an excellent candidate to lead the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control,” Grewal said in a statement.
Rible, a Wall Township police officer who represented the 30th Legislative District in the state Assembly from 2008 until the summer of 2017, when he was nominated to lead the ABC by then-Gov. Chris Christie in June and then confirmed by the Senate the following month.
Rible remained in his position under Murphy’s new administration but created controversy in September when the division issued a special ruling capping the number of in-house public events microbreweries could hold each year at 25 and restricted the number of private events and live sports broadcasts permitted in the tasting rooms. The ruling also banned menus from local restaurants from being displayed there.
Rible said the ruling was meant to define the terms set in a 2012 amendment that created limited brewery licenses, which cost between $1,250 to $7,500 a year depending on the number of barrels brewed annually. No microbrewery is permitted to make more than 300,000 barrels per year, or 9.3 million gallons of beer.
Burlington County is currently home to eight microbreweries.
The ruling created a stir with brewery owners, patrons and local government officials and were frozen shortly after it was issued. Since then, Assemblymen Joe Howarth, R-8th of Evesham, and Wayne DeAngelo, D-14th of Hamilton, have introduced legislation to allow microbreweries to host an unlimited number of events each year, eliminate a state-mandated tour breweries are now required to offer patrons, and allow brewery owners to sell water, soda and unprepared snacks on site with beer.
The legislation also would let brewery owners provide menus to customers and work with vendors to serve food on site.

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Clean Water Action asks AG to review Oyster Creek deal

Photo: KyleAndMelissa22 at English Wikipedia [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Clean Water Action has requested a review by the NJ Attorney General of the proposed deal to transfer the Oyster Creek license and $982 million decommissioning fund to a Camden (NJ)-based company that has partnered with a Canadian energy giant reportedly facing corruption charges in that country.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the deal between Oyster Creek owner, Exelon, and Holtec International Inc., a dry cask storage manufacturing company. A decision is expected by May, 2019.
The company that takes control of the Oyster Creek decommissioning will not only have access to the fund, but also nuclear materials and over a million pounds of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
“This is a state and national security issue,” said Janet Tauro, Clean Water Action, NJ Board Chair. “Every precaution must be taken to ensure that those nuclear materials do not fall into the wrong hands.”

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Murphy pitches offshore wind institute to Princeton profs

Gov. Phil Murphy speaking at Princeton University on Nov. 9.

Gov. Phil Murphy speaking at Princeton University on Nov. 9. – ()
Gov. Phil Murphy pitched his New Jersey clean energy goals to dozens of researchers and professors at Princeton University 
on Friday, pointing to the potential economic benefit of boosting such an industry.
Murphy’s appearance marked an effort to ramp up the state’s clean energy industry and build support for its proposals. The industry would entail the widespread use of offshore wind and community solar programs and more controversially, nuclear energy.
The governor said he wants New Jersey to be able to produce 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and be 100 percent reliable on clean and renewable energy by 2050.
And his economic master plan, laid out Oct. 1, calls for an offshore wind institute that would research wind-based technologies and provide industry technical training — a point Murphy highlighted again Friday.
“We want to make New Jersey the home base for any innovation company in the energy sector.”

– Gov. Phil Murphy

“We are committed to not just making New Jersey a state that runs on clean energy, but the place where vital research and development, and even the manufacturing of component parts, happens,” he said.
Murphy suggested Princeton’s vast experience with innovation and R&D would combine well with his plans to boost the state’s startup and innovation economy, especially as it relates to the clean energy industry.
  “We want to make New Jersey the home base for any innovation company in the energy sector,” Murphy said, pointing to the proposed incubator-rent subsidy program and $500 million Innovation Evergreen Fund that would be used to fund life sciences, financial technology, digital media and cybersecurity startups looking to set up in the state.
But the governor’s clean energy goals drew the skepticism of environmental activists, several of whom staged a small protest outside. They urged Murphy to hit the brakes on nearly a dozen proposed gas-powered electric plants and natural gas pipelines to demonstrate his commitment to a clean-energy economy.
Jeff Tittel, head of the environmental advocacy group New Jersey Sierra Club, suggested Murphy’s talk of a clean-energy economy would be nothing more than “hot air” if he did not take action against those projects.
Murphy said while he “respects what they’re doing,” New Jersey is the state moving the fastest toward its clean-energy goals.
“I hope their colleagues in Oklahoma and Texas and other places that want to drill offshore for oil and gas, I also hope that they’re standing loud and clear in those states, because I know where we are in New Jersey,” Murphy told reporters.

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Study doesn’t quell ruckus over lead in Newark pipes

water_pipe_leaching_lead
 It’s “not possible” to pin down exactly when lead started dissolving from pipes and into Newark’s water because of possible inconsistencies in testing, according to a city-commissioned report.
Rebecca Panico reports for TAPinto Newark:

The city had CDM Smith, an Edison-based engineering firm, investigate what was causing elevated levels after Newark received its first notice of noncompliance from the state in 2017. Preliminary results from the 143-page study were received by officials last month and prompted the city todistribute lead filters.

The report mirrors what Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has been telling reporters and residents. City officials onOct. 12 held a press conference to announce what the report had found, but the mayor was unsure when the chemical that is used to prevent lead from dissolving in pipes had stopped working.

The reason?

It could have simply been that the water wasn’t running long enough when samples were taken over the years, the report says. Or maybe the homes that were selected for testing in the last 20 years didn’t have lead service lines. The report also says samples did not proportionally represent areas served by the city’s two different water supplies.

An environmental advocacy group known as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is suing the city and state Department of Environmental Protection over elevated levels of lead. The NRDC today said the findings in the city’s report validate its claims — that Newark wasn’t properly monitoring residents’ water from the start.

“CDM Smith’s report shows that, if the City of Newark was unaware of the lead problem, it was because of the City’s own failure to properly monitor lead in Newark’s drinking water, as required by federal law. We agree,” said Claire Woods, an attorney with the NRDC.  “As alleged in our complaint, Newark failed to take the required number of samples from ‘Tier 1’ homes that were and are most at risk for lead—homes with lead service lines or lead in their plumbing—in violation of the Lead and Copper Rule.”

Baraka pinned the NRDC as an outsider seeking to regulate the city’s water. The NRDC is headquartered in New York City and has offices in California, so the mayor referenced the group’s West Coast location during a Thursday press conference. 

“We should not give an outside agency – by the way, who we do not know that came from California – to manage or to tell us what we need to do or not do as a result as it to our water,” Baraka said.

“In fact, we have a regulatory agency…It’s called the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the other one is called the EPA, the national EPA. And they have provided sufficient oversight and we’ve done everything — in fact we’ve done more than what they asked us to do.”

While the city has been reeling from the results of the CDM Smith study, a new violation cropped up. State records that were firstreported by NJ Advance Media show that high levels of haloacetic acids were found. The chemical could possibly cause cancer when exposed to it over long periods of time.

FIRST DRAW SAMPLES

The report says that even if samples of water were taken correctly under the guidelines of the Lead and Copper Rule — a federal regulation that limits the concentration of lead in drinking water to 15 parts per billion — it may not have shown the problem.

“True lead levels are not always reflected in compliance sampling for the [Lead and Copper Rule] and an underlying issue may have been developing without Newark’s knowledge,” the report says.

It’s just that “first draw” samples that were taken may not have indicated there was a problem, according to the report. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency requires that first draw samples of drinking water be taken after no one has turned on a faucet for at least eight hours. Water is collected in a 1-liter container immediately after opening a faucet or valve.

“This sample only represents the water closest to the faucet (typically the first 10-20 feet of the premise plumbing), whereas the stagnant water in the lead piping may not be drawn until much later, depending on the layout of the home plumbing,” the report states.

If high levels of lead do not show up in that initial sample, no further samples are required, the EPA requirements say.

Volunteer customers — or individual residents — collect samples, according to EPA guidelines, the CDM Smith report and the state DEP spokesman. Mistakes that are made by customers could cause false positives or negatives, which is why at least 10 percent of samples need to exceed 15 parts per billion before the state issues a notice of non-compliance.

State DEP spokesman Lawrence Hajna explained that volunteers for sampling are generally chosen after a water system does a “material evaluation” to determine which area is most likely to have old plumbing. Letters are then sent out to property owners in those areas asking for volunteers.

“First, they have to do a material evaluation determining which housing units are likely to have a lead issue,” Hajna said. “So those with lead service lines, or those with older plumbing, where they have a pretty good idea that they used lead soldering, copper pipes — that kind of thing.”
Newark Water and Sewer Utilities Deputy Director Kareem Adeem said the city has begun to do more widespread testing as well. Any resident who wants their water tested can get it done at no cost by asking the city to do so.


Read the full story 

Related news stories:
Newark claims employee tampered with lead sample
Head of troubled Newark, NJ water system has died 
Assured water was safe, Newark residents outraged after testing

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