A pump is used to help bring in water from the reservoir at Lee Brothers Cranberry Farm. Continued lack of rain could mean more pumping. photo: Tim Hawk / For The Inquirer
Generations of the Lee family gathered this fall, as they have every year since 1868, to harvest cranberries at the Lee Brothers Farm in Chatsworth, Burlington County.
Stephen V. Lee III, 78, has farmed the fruit for decades. He walked Thursday on the sand road of a bog filled with scarlet berries that bobbed at the water’s surface.
Workers, including family members, stood hip-deep in the water, raking berries toward a submerged vacuum that sucked the fruit to the top of a truck. There, a machine washed them as they bounced along a conveyor that spewed them by the thousands into a truck.
Cranberry harvesting is an annual colorful ritual in New Jersey. But this year is anything but
“I haven’t seen this in my lifetime,” Lee said of a drought that farmers trace to summer.
The hues of the turning leaves that surround the farm are subdued. The grass is brown. A reservoir that pulls from the nearby Wading River is nearly empty. Campers along the nearby Batona Trail are prohibited from lighting campfires.
As Lee climbed into his truck, the temperature was heading toward an all-time high for the day of 82 in Philadelphia, last reached in 1946.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it, try it free for a full month.
Large Fire, Explosion at Lithium-ion Battery Plant Results in Evacuations
From Powder Bulk Solids
A large fire at a lithium-ion battery processing plant just outside Fredericktown, MO, took place around 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 30, 2024.
Smoke could be seen rising from Critical Mineral Recovery, a company that recycles lithium-ion batteries and related materials.
Anyone within the smoke plume, which wind was carrying north of the fire, was urged to shelter in place indoors by closing windows and doors and turning off air conditioning.
Madison County 911 posted on Facebook around 2 p.m. on behalf of the county sheriff’s office telling residents north and west of Fredericktown to leave the area.
The post says, “If you can see or smell smoke in this area, you need to evacuate!”
Fredericktown Fire Department, Cherokee Pass Fire Protection District, Madison County Ambulance District, Fredericktown Police Department, Madison County Sheriff’s Office, and Missouri State Highway Patrol were attending the blaze.
There were no reported injuries at the time of the reports.
Around 7:45 p.m., an emergency dispatcher told The Independent crews were still fighting the fire.
The 225,000-sq.-ft Critical Mineral Recovery battery processing plant in Fredericktown is headquartered in St. Louis, MO.
In a press release in November 2023, which announced the launch of the battery plant, CMR reported it would discharge up to 250 tons of lithium-ion batteries per day, process up to 6,000 tons per month, and send up to 99% of incoming battery contained nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper to refineries and smelters for post-processing and critical mineral recovery.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it, try it free for a full month.
In a significant step forward for renewable energy in New England, the U.S. Department of Interior has concluded its first-ever wind energy lease sale in the Gulf of Maine, though with more modest results than some previous auctions. Two energy companies secured rights to develop floating offshore wind turbines across four parcels, with combined bids totaling approximately $22 million.
The Winners and Their Investments
The provisional buyers are Avangrid Renewables, which purchased two lease areas totaling 223,462 acres for around $11.2 million, and Invenergy NE Offshore Wind, which purchased two lease areas totaling 215,634 acres for around $10.7 million. Invenergy already holds leases off California and New Jersey.
A More Modest Outcome
While the auction represents a crucial milestone in the Biden administration’s ambitious clean energy goals, the results were notably more subdued compared to recent wind energy auctions. For context, developers bid $4.37 billion for six lease areas off New York in early 2022 and $757 million for five parcels in California later that same year. Only half of the available parcels in the Gulf of Maine auction received bids, with prices hovering around the government’s baseline of $50 per acre.
Despite the relatively modest bidding, industry experts and environmental advocates remain optimistic. Kate Sinding Daly from the Conservation Law Foundation noted that while high inflation and economic challenges have impacted the offshore wind industry, the sale demonstrates continued developer interest in the Gulf of Maine’s massive energy potential.
Maine’s Strategic Position
The Gulf of Maine presents unique challenges and opportunities for wind power development. Unlike other regions, its deep waters require floating turbines rather than bottom-mounted installations. Maine is positioning itself as a potential hub for this emerging technology, with the University of Maine developing specialized floating turbine technology alongside industry partners.
“Responsibly developed offshore wind will make us more energy independent, reduce harmful air pollution, and deliver good-paying jobs, all while protecting ocean wildlife and avoiding key fishing grounds,” said Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
Looking Ahead
The lease sales represent only the initial step in a longer process. As Interior Secretary Deb Haaland emphasized, these leases grant companies the right to submit project plans for federal review but do not yet authorize construction. According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the newly-leased areas could potentially power more than 2.3 million American homes.
The development includes important stipulations requiring companies to:
Make every reasonable effort to enter into labor union agreements for construction
Develop communication plans with Native American tribes
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it, try it free for a full month.
The (Newark) Star-Ledger and two sister dailies, the Times of Trenton and South Jersey Times, will cease publishing print editions in 2025 but continue to invest in their online news operations. The separately owned Jersey Journal also will shutter its print editions due to the resulting loss of the Ledger’s printing plant in Montville.
The decisions come as little surprise to anyone who has watched daily newspapers shrink in profitability in recent decades due to rising costs and the loss of subscribers to digital competitors.
More than a dozen once prominent daily newspapers have gone out of business since 2017, including the Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examiner, Cincinnati Post, Kentucky Post, Tampa Tribune and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The Easton Express-Times also has announced it is sifting to online-only publishing in 2025. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette already has limited its print editions to Thursday and Sunday.
Steve Alessi, President of NJ Advance Media which publishes the Star Ledger, put a positive spin on the announcement of his newspaper’s switch to digital only. “It’s important to emphasize that this is a forward-looking decision that allows us to invest more deeply than ever in our journalism and in serving our communities.”
Alessi said that that ceasing print publication will allow NJ Advance Media to reallocate resources to strengthen its core newsroom. He said that the newsroom has more reporters than it did a year ago and has plans to continue to grow in 2025 as the organization looks to bolster reporting in previously under-covered areas of the state.
While the loss of daily newspapers has deprived readers of local news coverage in many locations across the nation, some New Jersey journalists who left the Star-Ledger due to earlier layoffs or buyouts have created digital publications like NJ Spotlight News which has proven to be a worthy competitor to the dailies in statewide reporting. Others like the Patch publications provide readers with “hyper local” digital news.
How long can daily print publications like the Bergen Record, Asbury Park Press, Atlantic City Press and Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News hold on before going exclusively digital? Also saddled high printing costs and shrinking subscriptions, the answer likely is not for long.
It’s a sad passage for former newspaper reporters and editors like me (Elizabeth Daily Journal and Trenton Times) and for a previous generation of readers who cherished the smell and feel of the dependable daily broadsheet. But computer access gives us much wider opportunities to track news from around the country and around the world. And few will miss the soggy log of paper tossed into a front- yard puddle by an adolescent delivery boy.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it, try it free for a full month.
A novel collaboration between solar installer Sunrun and utility Orange & Rockland shows how New York could tap household solar generation to advance climate goals
Bear Mountain Bridge in Fort Montgomery, New York (Brian Logan / Getty Images)
A network of more than 300 solar-powered homes started supplementing the New York grid this summer — the result of an unusual partnership that could unlock more localized clean energy for the state.
Sunrun, the nation’s largest rooftop solar installer, teamed up with utility Orange & Rockland, which serves some 300,000 customers in the suburbs and rural areas northwest of New York City, to make a compelling offer: Households signing up for solar from Sunrun could also get a free LG Chem battery pack, or a heavily discounted Tesla Powerwall.
“It’s kind of hard to turn that down,” said Christian Woods, the energy-storage project manager overseeing the program for Orange & Rockland. If anything, he said, customers were asking if this was “too good to be true.”
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it, try it free for a full month.
The Inflation Reduction Act restored American manufacturing jobs – and gave China an opportunity to extend its dominance in some clean energy technologies.
By Bloomberg News, October 29, 2024
Nestled among the corn fields of Pataskala, Ohio, Illuminate USA’s sprawling new solar factory is buzzing. Hundreds of freshly hired local employees are hoisting pallets, soldering equipment and inspecting their work as sheets of glass are transformed into state-of-the-art photovoltaic panels. They’re collecting hourly wages that start at double the state minimum. The factory has also delivered contracts to area electricians and suppliers.
Inside the plant, signs in both English and Mandarin admonish workers to clean up trash. Machine displays also toggle between the two languages. More than 100 Chinese nationals are on site working alongside more than 1,000 American colleagues, and bridging the language barrier requires lots of hand gestures and smartphone-enabled translation. Illuminate says much of this is temporary, and most of the Chinese workers will leave once the Americans are up to speed.
But long after they return home, Longi will continue to profit. The joint venture benefits from millions in economic development incentives and federal tax credits for domestic clean energy manufacturing. For its part, Longi avoids anti-China tariffs and deepens its foothold in one of the world’s fastest-growing solar markets.
The Illuminate USA plant in Pataskala. Photographer: Maddie McGarvey/Bloomberg
Companies based in or linked to China are replicating the strategy across the US. They are building or planning to build at least a dozen plants with 30 gigawatts of module-making capacity, according to a Bloomberg review of public statements, filings and other documentation. All told, the facilities would be able to supply roughly three-quarters of today’s US panel needs.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it, try it free for a full month.
