Lower limits announced for horseshoe crab catches in NY



The New York Department of Environmental Conservation has advised commercial Horseshoe Crab Permit Holders that:

  • Effective Monday, June 4, 2018, the daily trip limit is decreased to 30 crabs. This trip limit will remain in effect until further notice.

These Changes Only Apply to Commercial Fishing

All horseshoe crab harvest must be reported on the Vessel Trip Report (VTR). Weekly submission of horseshoe crab VTRs is required from April through July. If you need extra VTRs, or would like information on online reporting, please call 631-444-0857.


This action is taken pursuant to the quota distribution schedule of subdivision 44.3 of 6 NYCRR


Postcards have been sent to appropriate permit holders.
See complete list of Commercial Fishing Limits.


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PSE&G says big spending plans won’t hurt ratepayers


Company insists that expenditures will not spike ratepayer’s bills, but Rate Counsel, others remain skeptical

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:
Public Service Electric & Gas plans to align its capital spending with state energy policies by filing requests to invest $2.9 billion on a clean-energy initiative and $2.5 billion to upgrade its power grid.

Public Service Enterprise Group, the utility’s parent, outlined the broad features of the programs yesterday at the New York Stock Exchange to analysts at the company’s annual investor’s conference. The formal filings should be made to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities in the coming weeks and later this year, executives said.

Despite the huge proposed expenditures, PSEG executives argued they will not spike customers’ bills, in part because of the historically low natural-gas prices, which have plummeted in recent years, leading to lower electricity prices and sharply reduced heating costs.The spending proposals reflect the bulk of the company’s planned $14 billion – $17 billion capital investment program over the next five years with 90 percent of the expenditures targeted for the utility. Just last week, PSE&G won BPU approval to spend $1.9 billion to replace cast-iron and unprotected steel mains in its gas distribution system in a separate rate case.
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Even with the investments, Ralph Izzo, the company’s president, CEO, and chairman, said “in a decade, customers will be paying what they were paying back in 2010.’’ Customers’ bills have dropped by 20 percent since the company’s last rate case eight years ago, he said. 

Rate Counsel remains skeptical

Others were more skeptical. “This is just a massive transfer of wealth from the citizens of New Jersey to the shareholders of PSEG,’’ said Stefanie Brand, director of the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel.
Steve Goldenberg, an attorney representing large energy users, said these multi-billion dollar programs, when combined with other initiatives, such as a new $300 million annual subsidy for nuclear power plants, would place an intolerable burden on the business community and ratepayers.

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Multi states sue EPA over landfill methane regulations

Attorneys general sue EPA, claiming illegal delay of landfill regulation

MIranda Green reports for The Hill:
Nine state attorneys general (AG) filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency late Thursday alleging the agency is breaking the law by failing to enforce landfill methane regulations.
The regulation at issue is a 2016 guideline developed to help solid waste landfills reduce emissions. While the guideline went into effect in October 2016, the Trump administration has since delayed the rule, saying it will instead complete a reconsideration of it by the spring of 2020.
The attorneys general say the multi-year delay is a violation of the Clean Air Act.
“We will not turn a blind eye as he illegally refuses to implement this critical landfill methane regulation,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in a statement. “Climate change is the most important global environmental issue of our time. We must act to address it now for the sake of our children.”
Other states joining the lawsuit include Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Landfills are the third largest source of human related methane emissions in the country. The AGs argue that the regulation not only helps to cut the pollution but also the stench in neighboring communities.
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The suit is the second filed against EPA this week. Becerra and 16 other state AGs also sued EPA Wednesday over suspended safeguards for agricultural workers handling pesticides.
California has taken the lead in challenging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt‘s regulatory rollbacks dealing largely with pollution and climate change.

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Fishermen’s offshore energy project gets ‘third wind’ in NJ

Murphy signs bill requiring BPU to accept application from Fishermen’s, third time project will come before state agency

offshore wind

Tom Johnson reports for
NJ Spotlight:

Fishermen’s Energy is going to get another shot at convincing the state to approve its small, pilot offshore wind project about three miles from Atlantic City.

Gov. Phil Murphy yesterday signed without comment a bill (S-1217) that requires the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to accept an application from Fishermen’s and review it within 90 days.
For Fishermen’s, it will be the third time the 24-megawatt offshore-wind project will have come before the regulatory agency. The two previous times, the BPU rejected the proposal as being too expensive to ratepayers, who will pay for the electricity from the wind turbines.

A jump-start

To clean-energy advocates and legislators, however, the bill is viewed as jump starting the state’s nearly eight-year-old effort to develop offshore wind as a viable and cleaner source of electricity in the state.
“Wind energy offers the opportunity to create jobs in a growing sector of the economy at the same time we generate clean energy that helps protect the environment,’’ said Senate President Steve Sweeney, the sponsor of the bill.
For Murphy, the project, if approved, offers a chance to get an offshore wind project operating before he has to run for re-election a little more than three years from now. Murphy has established a goal of developing 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity along the Jersey coast by 2030. None of the big offshore wind farms currently in development are likely to be operating until 2023 at the earliest.
Since the Fishermen’s project was last before the BPU, the company reached a preliminary agreement earlier this spring to be acquired by EDF Renewable Energy, a global developer of clean-energy projects. EDF has developed 400 megawatts of offshore wind capacity in Europe.
EDF executives are confident the Fishermen’s Energy project will get a better reception this time around. Former Gov. Chris Christie initially backed offshore wind, but soured on the technology, viewing it as too expensive to utility customers, who already pay some of the highest energy bills in the country.

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Will NJ ban grocery plastic bags, tax them, or do nothing?


One piece of legislation would phase out plastic bags entirely, while another would charge consumers a nickel — with the money going toward lead abatement

plastic bags

Tom Johnson reports for
NJ Spotlight:
California did it four years ago. Hawaii has a de facto ban. And last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags by next year.
Will New Jersey follow suit? At least one legislator thinks it should. Assemblyman John McKeon, an environmental advocate from Essex County, introduced a bill (A-4040) last week proposing a ban to phase out noncombustible plastic carry-out bags three years after enactment.
It is no small problem. Each year, Americans use 380 billion plastic bags, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Last year, in a beach cleanup by Clean Ocean Action, more than 80 percent of the haul was some kind of plastic. Some towns along the Jersey Shore are already banning plastic bags or imposing fees on their use.
“The ecological damage being done by the bags that we all use just bares the irresponsibility of all of us,’’ McKeon said of the source of litter that fills landfills, despoils waterways, and threatens marine life.
The idea of a ban is backed by many environmentalists, but so far only two states have prohibited the use of plastic bags — although several major cities have adopted bans, including San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston. McKeon’s latest bill is an updated version of a measure that has been kicking around the Legislature for years.
In New Jersey, the debate over an outright ban on plastic bags may come down to whether a better approach might be to impose a 5-cent fee on single-use carry out bags as proposed by a bill (A-3267) sponsored by Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle (D-Bergen).
That bill is backed by the New Jersey Food Council, which views it as a sound approach to dealing with the issue, according to Linda Doherty, its president.


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Related news story: 
Plastic pollution killed sperm whale found dead on Spanish beach

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Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not

Plastics and papers from dozens of American cities and towns are being dumped in landfills after China stopped recycling most “foreign garbage.”

Bales of recyclable material pile up in Seattle as China’s ban on U.S. exports takes hold.  .CreditWiqan Ang for The New York Times
Livia Albeck-Ripka reports for The New York Times:
Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway.
In recent months, in fact, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of American cities and towns — including several in Oregon — have gone to landfills.
In the past, the municipalities would have shipped much of their used paper, plastics and other scrap materials to China for processing. But as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import “foreign garbage.” Since Jan. 1 it has banned imports of various types of plastic and paper, and tightened standards for materials it does accept.
While some waste managers already send their recyclable materials to be processed domestically, or are shipping more to other countries, others have been unable to find a substitute for the Chinese market. “All of a sudden, material being collected on the street doesn’t have a place to go,” said Pete Keller, vice president of recycling and sustainability at Republic Services, one of the largest waste managers in the country.
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