Philadelphia Water Department utility representative Michael Cossie dye-tests storm water and sanitary sewer connections to investigate crossover issues, in which household sewage flows into the storm water system and vice versa (Tim Tai photo)

Frank Kummer report for Philly.com:

Last week, Joe Ferretti, a Philadelphia Water Department supervisor, pried open a manhole next to a scenic Schuylkill River bank, flicked on a flashlight and peered down.

Ferretti saw evidence sewage was flowing freely into the river at a stone outfall known as S050204.

In some Philadelphia homes, human waste, shower water, dirty dish grease and other stuff that belongs in the sanitary sewer system is going down the wrong pipe, sending it to waterways that feed the Delaware River — the city’s primary source of drinking water.

For years, water department workers like Ferretti have been on a painstaking hunt for “cross connections,” a mild-sounding name that means mixed-up pipes that threaten public health. Between showers, toilet flushes, and sink use, a typical Philadelphia resident uses up to 85 gallons of water a day. That equates to about 272 gallons a day for a typical Philadelphia home – and if there’s a cross connection, that could mean 100,000 gallons going into the river each year.

The stone outfall Ferretti examined — outfall S05204 — is at Kelly Drive in the city’s East Falls section. Water department crews had methodically worked their way up to a block on Ainslie Street, about half a mile from the river, looking for the home, or homes, that were producing the sewage. On a bitterly cold day last week, the crew spent hours outside on their detective work, literally following their noses.

Mariner East pipeline construction (Jeremy Long, Lebanon Daily News)

Leg
Laura Legere reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Pennsylvania environmental regulators were aware for days that collapsed soil along the path of the Mariner East pipeline construction project had exposed a parallel pipeline in Chester County this month before they informed safety regulators at another agency, according to testimony at a state Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Instead, safety inspectors with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission first learned about the sinkholes from local residents on March 3.

Four days later, the commission ordered an emergency shutdown of the exposed pipeline, known as Mariner East 1, to avoid potentially “catastrophic results” until the ethane, butane and propane pipeline’s stability can be confirmed.

Domenic Rocco, who runs the state Department of Environmental Protection’s regional permit coordination office, acknowledged that department officials did not notify the PUC when they first recognized subsidences related to Sunoco Pipeline’s Mariner East pipeline expansion project in November and only belatedly communicated with the PUC when more sinkholes appeared this month.

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w more home building along
transit routes to r
 
educe gas-guzzling commutes. Some
who support the goal have denounced the method

A kelp forest off Mexico’s Pacific coast. A project presented this week at an energy research conference
proposes using tiny robots to farm seaweed for use in biofuels.CreditReinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty ImagesBrad Plumer reports for The New York Times:

Off the coast of California, the idea is that someday tiny robot submarines will drag kelp deep into the ocean at night, to soak up nutrients, then bring the plants back to the surface during the day, to bask in the sunlight.

The goal of this offbeat project? To see if it’s possible to farm vast quantities of seaweed in the open ocean for a new type of carbon-neutral biofuel that might one day power trucks and airplanes. Unlike the corn- and soy-based biofuels used today, kelp-based fuels would not require valuable cropland.

Of course, there are still some kinks to work out. “We first need to show that the kelp doesn’t die when we take it up and down,” said Cindy Wilcox, a co-founder of Marine BioEnergy Inc., which is doing early testing this summer.

Ms. Wilcox’s venture is one of hundreds of long shots being funded by the federal government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.Created a decade ago, ARPA-E now spends $300 million a year nurturing untested technologies that have the potential — however remote — of solving some of the world’s biggest energy problems, including climate change.

This week at a convention center near Washington, thousands of inventors and entrepreneurs gathered at the annual ARPA-E conference to discuss the obstacles to a cleaner energy future. Researchers funded by the agency also showed off their ideas, which ranged from the merely creative (a system to recycle waste heat in Navy ships) to the utterly wild (concepts for small fusion reactors).

The 24-megawatt Fishermen’s Energy pilot could pick up a tailwind thanks to governor’s ambitious clean-energy agenda

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:


Fishermen’s Energy, a small, pilot offshore wind farm three miles from Atlantic City, may happen after all.

The 24-megawatt project, twice rejected by the Christie administration, could be revived under a bill (A-2485) up for consideration on Thursday in a legislative committee.


The resurgence of the project reflects a renewed commitment to develop offshore wind farms along the Jersey coast, a goal first pronounced in legislation adopted with widespread support and fanfare nearly eight years ago, but left to wither in the wind by the previous governor.


Gov. Phil Murphy has made it a top priority in his clean-energy agenda, establishing a goal of 3,500 megawatts of capacity of offshore wind by 2030. While two developers are working on plans to begin fulfilling that target, their projects are unlikely to be operational until 2023 at the earliest. 


Refocusing on Fishermen’s Energy
That has advocates refocusing on the Fishermen’s Energy proposal, which would be built in much more shallow state waters than the other two projects, intended to be constructed in federal waters up to 20 miles off the coast.


“It’s a ready-to-go project,’’ said Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo (D-Atlantic), the sponsor of the bill, when asked why he is pushing to revive the measure. “It’s a good effort to diversify our energy portfolio.’’


“We have a fully permitted, ready-to-build project,’’ agreed Paul Gallagher, chief operating officer of Fishermen’s Energy. The $210 million project will be slightly smaller than previous versions submitted to the state Board of Public Utilities, consisting of four, six-megawatt turbines, Gallagher said. 


Previously, the BPU rejected the project as too costly to ratepayers, who will help pay for the facility through a subsidy on their electric bills. The Division of Rate Counsel disputed that assessment the last time the project came before the board, but that was when Fishermen’s had a federal grant of roughly $47 million.


The project also is backed by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), who is sponsoring it in the Senate and trying to include it as part of a comprehensive clean-energy package that props up nuclear power plants and ramps up renewable energy goals in New Jersey.


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