The following six energy and environment bills are among a list of 52 pieces of legislation scheduled for votes by the New Jersey State Senate on Monday, Marcy 26, 2018:

S534 (Oroho / Sarlo) – Excludes corrugated containers sold by the manufacturer from definition of “litter-generating product”; exempts such sales from user fee imposed under “Clean Communities Program Act.”


S1082 (Cruz-Perez / Singleton) – Provides tax credits to vineyards and wineries for qualified capital expenses.


S1242 (Turner / Greenstein) – Requires boil water notices to be provided to municipal officials within one hour.


S1496 (Smith / Greenstein) – Prohibits sale and distribution of mercury relays and switches under certain circumstances.


S1793 (Smith / Greenstein) – Concerns low emission and zero emission vehicles; establishes Clean Vehicle Task Force.


A839 / S258 (Land / Andrzejczak / Mazzeo / Van Drew / Singleton) – Prohibits offshore oil and gas exploration, development, and production in State waters, and issuance of DEP permits and approvals for activities associated with offshore oil and gas activities.

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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