NJ Gov. Murphy names Kevin Corbett to head NJ Transit

Tom Bergeron reports for ROI:

Kevin Corbett is Gov. Phil Murphy’s pick to head — and rebuild — New Jersey Transit, ROI-NJ has learned.

Corbett currently serves as vice president, strategic development in the U.S. Northeast Region of AECOM, a global infrastructure firm. He has a long history of working at transportation, shipping, infrastructure and city planning organizations and on related boards.

Corbett would have to be approved by the NJ Transit board, with that approval coming as early as this week.

The announcement of Corbett will be made as soon as Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the selection. The source requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the position.

Murphy has made remaking NJ Transit a top priority for his administration.

On Monday, the governor signed an executive order calling for a comprehensive, independent audit of NJ Transit, saying, “The public deserves a true accounting of how this once-model agency fell so far, so fast.”

Murphy criticized NJ Transit both during his campaign and after winning the election, calling it a “national disgrace.”

“Mass transit is not optional; it’s pass or fail,” he said earlier this month when he took a ride on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail to Jersey City. “Getting that right is a huge priority for us, and it’s not where it needs to be.”

The selection of Corbett is evidence of how Murphy is approaching NJ Transit, the source said.

Corbett’s background has involved transportation, but in a much wider scope, combining transportation needs with infrastructure, city planning, shipping and the environment.



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Trump pressing Sessions to have FBI Deputy Director fired

Jonathan Swan reports for Axios:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions — at the public urging of President Donald Trump — has been pressuring FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but Wray threatened to resign if McCabe was removed, according to three sources with direct knowledge.
  • Wray’s resignation under those circumstances would have created a media firestorm. The White House — understandably gun-shy after the Comey debacle — didn’t want that scene, so McCabe remains.
  • Sessions told White House Counsel Don McGahn about how upset Wray was about the pressure on him to fire McCabe, and McGahn told Sessions this issue wasn’t worth losing the FBI Director over, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • Why it matters: Trump started his presidency by pressuring one FBI Director (before canning him), and then began pressuring another (this time wanting his deputy canned). This much meddling with the FBI for this long is not normal.
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Ex-NJ Sen. Ray Lesniak: Missing the circus, not the clowns

Sen. Raymond Lesniak




Editor’s Note: The (Newark) Star Ledger Editorial Board hosted recently retired New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak for a Q&A session which produced interesting results. That’s not surprising since Lesniak, a self-described ‘lone wolf,’ is quite the  interesting person.  Below is the newspaper’s setup, written by Dave D’Alessandro, followed (via the link) by the Q&A.

Even if he had never entered politics, the opening line to Raymond Lesniak’s biography would require some debate.
He founded New Jersey’s first recovery high school for young people battling addiction. He won a landmark case for reproductive rights, Ponter v. Ponter, which established a woman’s right to obtain sterilization without the consent of her husband. His law firm is among the best-connected in the state, though it was largely a result of Lesniak being the most formidable political power broker and fund-raiser in Central Jersey. He’s the guy who testified on behalf of the crack addicts who robbed him at gunpoint in his bedroom – who would do that?
But as he enters retirement, his record over 40 years in the state Legislature – the second-longest stint in our history – has also established the 71-year-old lawmaker as a champion for environmental protection, social justice, education, women’s rights, and animal welfare.
Legislation that banned the death penalty and mandatory minimums and validated marriage equality all have Lesniak’s name on it.
We spoke with the eccentric and outspoken state Senator spoke after he stepped down Jan. 8.


Read the Q&A here

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Stormy Daniels suddenly a draw at a Greenville strip club

Trophy Club employee “Bird” arranges letters on the marquee in Greenville, S.C. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)

Dan Zak reports for The Washington Post:

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Year two of the Trump presidency began here overnight much like year one had ended: with his alleged ex-mistress smashing people’s faces into her bare chest at a strip club between an airport and a cemetery.

Adult film star Stormy Daniels, who once claimed to have slept with Donald Trump not long after he married Melania, performed at 11 p.m. Saturday — the anniversary of his inauguration — and 1 a.m. Sunday here on the outskirts of town.
“HE SAW HER LIVE,” the Trophy Club’s flier said. “YOU CAN TOO!”
The federal government remained shut down, but Daniels was open for business.

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Conventional drilling causing radioactivity spike in rivers?

Treated oil and gas wastewater flows into a western Pennsylvania stream. (Photo: Avner Vengosh, Duke)

Treated oil and gas wastewater flows into a western PA stream. (Photo: Avner Vengosh, Duke)
Reid Frazier reports for StateImpact:

Treatment plants that handle conventional oil and gas waste water are causing a buildup of radioactive materials at the bottom of three Western Pennsylvania waterways, according to a new study from researchers at Duke.

“We concluded that recent disposal of treated conventional (oil and gas waste) is the source of high (radium concentrations) in stream sediments at (waste) facility disposal sites,” the authors wrote.

The study found high levels of radium, a naturally occurring, radioactive material, in river and stream sediment at levels up to 650 times those found upstream of three industrial waste treatment plants that handle fluid produced by conventional oil and gas wells.

“I don’t see it as a life-threatening risk, but it’s one of those chronic effect that over the long term it will have a toll on the environment,” said Avner Vengosh, one of the study’s authors. “What is the toll? We can only speculate.”

In 2011, Pennsylvania asked treatment plants not to handle waste water from Marcellus shale producers, and in 2016, the EPA banned the process.

But treatment plants in Pennsylvania can still take waste water from conventional, or shallower, oil and gas operations. Those operations don’t generally use hydraulic fracturing, but they still produce waste water, said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute at West Virginia University.

This fluid is also called “brine,” a salty mixture that brings with it minerals and elements found in gas-rich rock formations.

“What you have coming up to the surface is a mix of water and gas, and sometimes oil,” he said.

Ziemkiewicz says even conventional waste water can be high in radium, so he’s not surprised at the study’s result.

“When we’ve compared conventional and unconventional brines, chemically they’re almost identical,” he said. “It would be surprising to me if radium didn’t show up.”


Ziemkiewicz says drinking water facilities must remove radium from drinking water; the most obvious concern he has would be for the accumulation of radium in the food chain, and eventually, fish.


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Philadelphia may scrap E-V charging station program

Andrew Maykuth reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A city task force has recommended scrapping Philadelphia’s contentious curbside electric-vehicle parking program while stepping up efforts to create more off-street charging stations accessible to the public.


The Electric Vehicle Policy Task Force, created last year after City Council voted by 11-6 to impose a moratorium on the program that allows EV owners to install a private curbside charger on city streets, posted a draft report Friday that recommends abandoning the 11-year-old program.


The 16-member panel included Councilmen David Oh and Mark Squilla, who sponsored the moratorium, and its report reflects their view that the curbside EV parking program is not sustainable in the long term.


Fewer than 70 electric-vehicle owners have signed up for the parking privilege, which requires the owner to pay an annual fee and the expense of installing the charger. But that was enough to trigger a backlash in parking-starved areas like Society Hill and Fairmount, where owners of conventional vehicles struggled to find an open space while electric-vehicle slots stood vacant.


The report says the program “is not reliably accessible to the public, it is not scalable, it does not meet the needs of EV owners without access to curbside parking, and it has had limited effectiveness in encouraging more EV use.”


Read the full story

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