NJ paint stewardship, enviro-funding in committee Nov. 26

The New Jersey Senate Environment and Energy Committee will meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 26, 2018, to take up the following bills:


S2815 – Requires paint producers to implement or participate in paint stewardship program.

S3049 – Appropriates $28,883,557 in 2003 and 1992 bond act monies for loans for dam restoration and repair projects and inland waters projects.

S3110 – Makes supplemental appropriation of $50 million from General Fund to DEP and adds language provisions concerning the use of certain environmental settlement monies for natural resource restoration projects.

SCR118 – Urges President and Congress to require interstate natural gas pipelines constructed in N.J. to conform with N.J. regulations for intrastate natural gas pipelines.


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NJ sportsmen lose a round in continuing bear-hunt battle

Murphy administration’s prohibition holds for now. Sporting groups pledge to continue their fight to overturn it

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

A state appeals court has denied a bid by three sporting groups to open state lands to next month’s scheduled black bear hunt.

A state appeals court has denied a bid by three sporting groups to open state lands to next month’s scheduled black bear hunt.
In a 41-page decision issued Friday, the court rejected a challenge by the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance, Safari Club International, and Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation to the Murphy administration’s ban on hunting of bears on state-controlled lands.
In the decision, the latest chapter of recurring controversy and litigation overhunting of black bears, the three-judge panel dismissed arguments by the pro-hunting groups that the closure was impermissibly based on a political campaign promise made by Gov. Phil Murphy.
“The merit (or even the probability of success) of appellants’ claim of public necessity for a hunt to take place on state lands has yet to be established,’’ the court said, noting bear hunters will still have access to other lands and the hunt may be extended if the harvest falls below specified targets.
In August, the governor issued an executive order preventing the hunting of bears on state lands but stopped short of ending the hunt altogether, saying he lacked legal authority to do so. Murphy campaigned on a promise to end the bear hunt, a policy long advocated by animal rights groups and some environmental organizations but opposed by the New Jersey Fish and Game Council.

Increase in black bear population

New Jersey held its first bear hunt since 1970 back in 2003 after a growth in the black bear population led to increased encounters with the public in backyards and outdoors, particularly in northern New Jersey. Despite an outcry from critics, the state has held a bear hunt the past eight years.


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Crab fishers sue fossil fuel industry over climate damage

The lawsuit by the largest West Coast commercial fishing association seeks to hold 30 companies accountable for harming shellfish and livelihoods as the ocean warms.

David Hasemyer reports for Inside Climate News:

Crab fishermen bring in a haul of Dungeness crab in 2006. Warming ocean water has forced fishery closures over the past four seasons that have hurt the industry. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Crab fishing on the West Coast has become so threatened by warming oceans that a coalition of commercial fishers has now joined the climate litigation fray with a lawsuit filed Wednesday to hold 30 fossil fuel companies accountable for losses caused by climate change.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, seeks damages on behalf of crab fishers, their businesses and families, and local communities in California and Oregon.
It describes losses caused by the closing of crab fishing waters over the past four years because of algae blooms in the warming Pacific waters, and warns that these closures will keep happening as warming continues.
“These changes threaten both the productivity of commercial fisheries and safety of commercially harvested seafood products,” the lawsuit says. “In so doing, they also threaten those that rely on ocean fisheries and ecosystems for their livelihoods, by rendering it at times impossible to ply their trade.”
At the heart of the 91-page lawsuit are claims similar to those being used by several California cities that are suing the fossil fuel industry over sea level rise. It accuses some of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP, of negligence, defective-product liability, creating a nuisance, and failing to warn about the dangers of fossil fuel products that the companies knew would result in warming of the oceans and atmosphere.
But this case is unusual in pitting one industry against another.
Because of the ocean warming brought on by greenhouse gas emissions, the crab fishing industry has been deprived of fishing opportunities, and consequently suffered severe financial hardships, the lawsuit says. “These injuries derive from rising ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean generally and periodic extreme marine heat waves—the results of anthropogenic ocean warming caused by the foreseeable and intended use of defendants’ products,” the suit says.
Significant portions of the Dungeness crab fishing region along the Pacific Coast have been closed repeatedly since 2015, including parts along the West Coast this year, according to the lawsuit.
Warming water can generate algae blooms that can cause a buildup in shellfish of domoic acid, a potent neurotoxin that is a health threat to people and an economic threat to the entire crab fishery. Earlier this month, the California Department of Public Health issued a warning not to eat the internal organs of Dungeness crab from the Bodega Bay or Russian River areas because of high levels of domoic acid.

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Forecasters Blew It, Rutgers Climatologist Says










Tom Haydon reports in TapIntoBayonne:
Thursday’s autumn snowstorm hit much harder than weather forecasts predicted, the worst of it when most people would be on the roads for the evening rush hour, said Rutgers University professor and state climatologist David Robinson.
“The weather forecast was incorrect. I’m not a forecaster and I don’t like to throw darts, but it was a blown forecast,” Robinson said.
Contributing to the problem was the colder than expected air temperatures. Warmer air was expected to change the snow to rain, Robinson said.
Snow came down fast, an inch to two inches an hour at times during the storm, and it occurred “at the absolute worst time,” he said.
“Everything had to align just right, and unfortunately it did,” Robinson said. Had the storm hit after the evening commute home, plows could have cleared city streets overnight, he said.

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The #MeToo movement falls flat in the Pa legislature

Despite sexual misconduct scandals in both chambers, leadership will remain largely unchanged.
harrisburgstatecapitol
Sarah Anne Hughes reports for BillyPenn:
HARRISBURG — The General Assembly adjourned for the final time this session without any meaningful movement on #MeToo legislation, despite the fact that several of the body’s own members have faced accusations of sexual misconduct.
In the wake of those scandals, leadership on both sides of the aisle will remain largely unchanged.
There were no votes on a package of bills offered by Democrats that would offer greater sexual harassment protections and accountability in state government. The legislation, which was offered in both the House and Senate, would ban non-disclosure agreements that hide the names of accused lawmakers and forbid the use of taxpayer money to settle sexual harassment claims against elected officials.
While the Republican chair of the Labor and Industry Committee, Rep. Rob Kauffman, initially supported the House bill, he withdrew his support after accusing Democrat Leanne Krueger-Braneky of politicizing the issue. Kauffman refused to allow Krueger-Braneky to respond to the accusation during a committee hearing.
Other bills in the Democrats’ package would:
  • Extend Pennsylvania Human Relations Act workplace protections to businesses with fewer than four employees
  • Extend protections to interns at workplaces across the state
  • Update Employment Fair Practices notices to include examples of sexual harassment
What did pass was a Republican-introduced resolution directing the bipartisan Joint State Government Commission to study sexual misconduct in state government.
Another House resolution that would establish the Task Force on Harassment and Sexual Misconduct in the Workplace also passed, but still needs Senate approval.

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NJ in sweet spot for offshore energy investments

At NJ Spotlight offshore-wind roundtable, advocates help chart a path to administration’s aggressive goal — 3,500 megawatts of capacity by 2030

liz burdock

Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the Business Network for Offshore Wind
Tom Johnson reports
for NJ Spotlight:
By 2030, more than 10,000 megawatts of electricity could be produced from wind turbines located along the Eastern Seaboard, with New Jersey well-positioned to reap the economic benefits associated with this emerging industry, according to offshore wind advocates.
The Murphy administration’s aggressive goals to build more than one-third of that projected capacity make it an attractive place to invest and grow the sector, proponents said at an NJ Spotlight event on the state’s energy future in Hamilton on Friday.
Offshore wind is viewed as a key component of Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to have 100 percent of New Jersey’s power come from renewable energy by 2050. By 2030, the state hopes to develop 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity; it plans to decide next spring who will build an initial 1,100 megawatts, followed by two additional solicitations of 1,200 megawatts each in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Only one offshore wind farm in Rhode Island is currently operating in the United States.

Delivering transparency and a timeline

“You’ve done everything right to attract the industry to the state,’’ said Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the Business Network for Offshore Wind, a panelist at the roundtable.
“You have given them scale; you have given them transparency, and you’ve given them a timeline. What I think you will see is an enormous amount of job growth and investment in the state.’’
Thomas Brostrøm, president of Ørsted North America, a leading offshore wind developer with projects in six states, said his company is excited about developments in New Jersey and the wider Eastern Seaboard relative to renewables and offshore wind. “We basically can see 10,000 milliwatts built essentially over the next 10 years, and that is very, very big,’’ he said.
If all those projects get built, it could create 96,000 jobs in the region, Burdock said. “It’s a big pie — there is a lot to go around,’’ she added, especially if states cooperate in growing the sector instead of competing against one another.

High cost of doing nothing

Board of Public Utilities President Joseph Fiordaliso

Joseph Fiordaliso, president, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities
But Board of Public Utilities president Joseph Fiordaliso, whose agency is overseeing the state’s offshore wind plan, noted that prices are going down in a keynote to kick off the event. “Can we afford not to spend the money?’’ he asked, referring to offshore wind’s importance to mitigating the effects of climate change.
Others argued the costs for offshore wind, much like those for solar, have declined dramatically in the past few years. “The U.S. and New Jersey has hit the timing absolutely perfect,’’ Brostrøm said, noting costs have dropped by more than 60 percent.
The state has long been targeted as one of the best places to locate offshore wind farms, largely because of bountiful wind resources off the coast and a relatively shallow continental shelf. The ocean off New Jersey also has the most variable temperatures from summer to winter in the world, a big factor in its wind resources, according to Josh Kohut, an associate professor at the Center of Ocean Observing Leadership at Rutgers University.



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