Feds give green light to Chesterfield (NJ) gas compressor

Natural gas compressor station off Bordentown-Chesterfield Road (Carl Kosola,Burlco Times)


David Levinsky reports for the Burlington County Times:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given a utility company the go-ahead to put its natural gas compressor station here into service over objections from the governing body and neighboring Bordentown Township, as well as residents and environmental groups.

The federal agency informed Oklahoma-based Williams Transco on Friday that it can begin operations. In its notification letter, the commission said the authorization was based on its review of the company’s recent construction reports and a Feb. 6 field inspection of the station site, which is off Route 528 near the two towns’ border.
“We find that Transco has adequately stabilized areas disturbed by construction and that (site) restoration is proceeding satisfactorily,” wrote J. Rich McGuire, director of the FERC’s Division of Gas-Environment and Engineering, in the authorization letter, which was posted on the agency’s website.
The letter did not address objections from Chesterfield, Bordentown Township, environmental groups or the nine residents who sent written comments to the agency in opposition to the utility’s request.
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New Orleans approves gas power plant over local protests

Julie Dermansky reports for DESMOG:


Despite hearing over four hours of public comments mostly in opposition, New Orleans City Council recently approved construction of a $210 million natural gas power plant in a predominantly minority neighborhood. Entergy is proposing to build this massive investment in fossil fuel infrastructure in a city already plagued by the effects of climate change.


Choosing a gas plant over renewable energy options flies in the face of the city’s own climate change plan and the mayor’s support for the Paris Climate Accord, said several of the plant’s opponents at the heated meeting when City Council ultimately voted to approve the plant.


“It is not enough to plan for how we will adapt to climate change. We must end our contribution to it,” wrote Mayor Mitch Landrieu in the introduction to the city’s climate action plan. Released in 2017, the plan calls for halving the city’s greenhouse gas pollution by 2030.


Members of a coalition opposing the plant, formed in 2016 after Entergy first announced its plans, expressed outrage that the council was unwilling to at least postpone its vote after hearing over four hours of public comments, many against it.


This coalition includes residents from New Orleans East, where the plant is slated for construction, community activists, and environmental justice groups.

Members of the New Orleans East Vietnamese community waiting to get into the New Orleans City Council meeting


























New Orleans regulates its own utilities, giving the City Council direct oversight of Entergy, the company that provides power to the city. The council’s Utility Commission voted to approve the project on February 21, weeks ahead of a Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) hearing on March 6 which considered Entergy’s air permit application and the full City Council vote on March 8.


Before the public weighed in at the council meeting, the City Council’s energy consultants from Dentons US LLP, a Washington, D.C.-based utility law firm, concluded that the project was in the city’s best interest. The consultants determined that the proposed 128-megawatt plant and its seven natural gas-fired engines would ensure the city has enough power at peak energy times and avoid outages that have afflicted the city.


The plant will be built in New Orleans East, home to predominantly African-American and Vietnamese communities, an area that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has designated as a flood zone.


Among those speaking before the council vote were a few who favored the project, citing jobs and energy security as their reasons for supporting it.

Representatives of Entergy in the front row at the New Orleans City Council meeting.



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Gentrification: From slums to sleek towers in Philly


Society Hill view from Society  Hill  Tower  Photo by, Kimberly Payton  WHYY

Jake Blumgart and Jim Saksa report for WHYY News:

Harry Schwartz, 84, remembers when his neighborhood, Society Hill, was one of the poorest parts of Philadelphia. But by the time he moved there as a young lawyer in 1969, things had changed. City planners had fixed up crowded blocks of crumbling old houses and razed a congested, old wholesale produce market to make way for majestic modernist towers. Schwartz and his pediatrician wife were attracted to Society Hill’s architectural gems, tucked among its cobblestoned, walkable streets. Soon, they found themselves surrounded by a community of artists, activists, and young professionals like them.
They loved
it. Society Hill allowed them to bike to work and walk to friends’ houses for
Julia Child-inspired dinner parties. Today, Schwartz lives in an airy, sun-lit
condo in the soaring towers that replaced the old Dock Street Market. His
living room windows overlook some of the city’s most coveted addresses.Philadelphia’s Dock Street Market in 1928. Photo: Philadelphia Evening BulletinThe
reinvention of Society Hill in the 1960s is widely considered one of the first
instances of gentrification — although no one called it that at the time. The
term was coined in 1964 by a British sociologist to describe the nascent
phenomena of the middle-and-upper-class moving into the meaner parts of London.
Since then, the term has only become more fraught, hard to precisely define,
and often racially loaded. No one wants to identify themselves as a gentrifier,
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In Hudson Yards dispute, far more than cost is at stake

A power struggle at the largest private development in the country markks a turning point in NYC’s consruction industry 
Joe Anuta and Daniel Geiger report for Crains:
One construction worker is accused of logging 12-hour shifts seven days a week for an entire year, an improbable schedule that earned him $600,000. And two senior tradesmen making $42 an hour to swing hammers were instead selling coffee and snacks full-time to laborers on break.
These and other abuses by union workers building the massive Hudson Yards complex were alleged in a lawsuit filed last week by the megaproject’s developer, a partnership led by The Related Cos. The suit asserts the schemes inflated costs by $100 million over the past five years at the nation’s largest private development—a $20 billion, 18-million-square-foot undertaking.
But the case is not about recouping lost money so much as it is an effort to break the grip of the most powerful labor organizer and lobbying group on the city’s unionized construction industry.
Related wants to exclude the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York from labor negotiations for the second phase of Hudson Yards, which includes millions of square feet of residential and mixed-use space over the western section of the rail yards as well as a soaring, 3-million-square-foot office tower at West 33rd Street and 10th Avenue.
Led by its imposing president, Gary LaBarbera, the trades council has responded with a smear campaign against Related that is nasty even by labor-dispute standards. LaBarbera, a close ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has called the developer “greedy” and a “union buster” at union rallies and has described Hudson Yards as a “prison.”
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Schuylkill Action Network launches redesigned website

The
Schuylkill Action Network (SAN) today announced that it has launched a completely redesigned and revamped
website: SchuylkillWaters.org. The SAN is a collaborative network of nonprofits, government
agencies, water utilities, and academia working together to protect clean water
in the Schuylkill River Watershed.
In a press release, the organization said:

As the website’s name
implies, SchuylkillWaters.org is designed to be more than just a resource to environmental
partners. It has been structured as a one-stop-shop with information and
resources for individuals and groups with a variety of interests – from
farmers, to municipalities, water utilities, teachers, and more!
The new website has a clean,
refreshed look, improved functionality, and is now mobile-friendly for use on
smartphones and tablets. Created to better serve the needs of the users, the
redesigned website has many new features including:
  • ·        
    Grant directory that highlights available funding opportunities and can be
    filtered by area of interest
  • ·        
    Upgraded “News” and “Events” webpages for individuals
    to stay up to date on what’s going on in the region
  • ·        
    “Explore the Schuylkill” map with key recreational opportunities by county

 The launch of the website
coincides with the SAN’s 15 Year Anniversary, celebrating 15 years of
successful partnerships and innovative projects that protect and restore the
Schuylkill River and its tributaries. There will be special events and new
opportunities to engage with the Schuylkill River and SAN partners throughout
the year. Stay updated about 15 year anniversary events by visiting the Events webpage.
The
Schuylkill River is part of the Delaware River Watershed that spans four states
and provides drinking water for 15 million people.  The Partnership for the Delaware Estuary is working
with the Schuylkill Action Network and other partners across the region to
protect and restore the waterways that keep communities healthy and the economy
thriving.

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Pruitt wanted a debate on climate science. Kelly said no.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly,  Getty photo

Lisa Friedman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis report in the NY Times:

John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has killed an effort by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to stage public debates challenging climate change science, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, thwarting a plan that had intrigued President Trump even as it set off alarm bells among his top advisers.

The idea of publicly critiquing climate change on the national stage has been a notable theme for Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A. For nearly a year he has championed the notion of holding military-style exercises known as red team, blue team debates, possibly to be broadcast live, to question the validity of climate change.

Mr. Pruitt has spoken personally with Mr. Trump about the idea, and the president expressed enthusiasm for it, according to people familiar with the conversations.

But the plan encountered widespread resistance within the administration from Mr. Kelly and other top officials, who regarded it as ill-conceived and politically risky, and when Mr. Pruitt sought to announce it last fall, they weighed in to stop him. At a mid-December meeting set up by Mr. Kelly’s deputy, Rick Dearborn, to discuss the plan, Mr. Dearborn made it clear that his boss considered the idea “dead,” and not to be discussed further, according to people familiar with the meeting. All spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe internal White House deliberations and meetings.


During that meeting, according to two attendees and a third person briefed on the discussion, administration officials and White House aides were in agreement that Mr. Pruitt’s idea was unwise. Their main concern was that a public debate on science — particularly on an issue as politically charged as the warming of the planet — could become a damaging spectacle, creating an unnecessary distraction from the steps the administration has taken to slash environmental regulations enacted by former President Barack Obama.


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