U.S. Steel to pay $1.2 million for carcinogen spill



Len Boselovic reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette :


U.S. Steel would pay $1.2 million to federal and state regulators under a deal to settle environmental violations that occurred last April when massive amounts of highly toxic hexavalent chrominum were discharged into Lake Michigan from the steelmaker’s Midwest plant in Portage, Indiana.


The Pittsburgh steelmaker would pay $350,653 to cover the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s costs of responding to the April 11 incident and $300,621 fines to each the EPA and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, under the terms of a consent decree filed Monday in federal court in Hammond, Indiana.


The company would also pay $253,068 in damages and costs to the National Park Service, which had to close the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore because of the spill, and $27,512 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which also had to assess damages from the spill.


The incident closed beaches and prevented the water company serving Portage from taking water from the lake for its public customers.


Hexavalent chromium can cause lung cancer, irritate the nose, throat and lungs, and irritate or damage eyes and skin. The harmful chemical was the subject of the movie, “Erin Brockovich.”


Court records indicate the April 11 spill resulted in the release of nearly 300 pounds of the carcinogen, hundreds of times more than U.S. Steel was allowed to discharge.


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Get your ‘starter tree’ free from the State of New Jersey



Michael Sol Warren reports for NJ.com:


Get your green thumbs ready: Spring is here and New Jersey is giving 90,000 young trees away for free.


The state forest service’s New Jersey Tree Recovery Campaign is handing out seedlings in communities around the state as part of a continuing effort to replace trees that were lost in Superstorm Sandy.


“Trees provide habitat for wildlife, clean the air we breathe, provide shade, reduce the damaging effects of wind, limit erosion and contribute to a healthier environment,” DEP Acting Commissioner Catherine McCabe said in a press release. “Equally important, trees beautify our communities and improve our quality of life in the Garden State.”


Each participating community has up to 2,000 seedlings to distribute. All of the seedlings are raised at the New Jersey Forest Nursery in Jackson. The types of trees available in each community depends on the location; the forest service assigns species based on what grows best in a given location. More than 30 species of trees are being distributed through the program.


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PennDOT plans $360M of road work in six-county region

Replacement of the Route 22 Lehigh Valley Bridge and reconstruction of the Fullerton exit is one of the most expensive projects in the Lehigh Valley. (HARRY FISHER / THE MORNING CALL)


Tom Shortell reports for The Morning Call:


As the winter weather gives way — one would hope — to spring, road crews across the extended Lehigh Valley region expect to tackle 115 PennDOT projects this year.


Many of these will sound familiar, especially the big ones: revamping the Route 22 Fullerton exit and replacing the adjacent Lehigh River bridge; repaving, widening and adding auxiliary lanes to Interstate 78; and adding traffic circles to Route 222.


Some are new, others are ongoing and will continue beyond 2018. All are found within PennDOT District 5, which covers Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe and Schuylkill counties, and together they will cost $360 million to complete.


About $110 million is being spent in Lehigh and Northampton counties.


The largest project is the ongoing work on Route 22. PennDOT is in year three of a four-year, $64.9 million project. Road crews have already replaced the bridge carrying eastbound traffic over the Lehigh River, and are working on the westbound side. Michael Rebert, the district’s executive director, told reporters Monday crews should complete most of the work on the base of the westbound bridge this year, but the new deck likely won’t be poured until 2019.


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Christie betrays defenders’ dim view of Trump’s intellect

Aaron Blake reports for The Washington Post:

Lost in the debate over whether President Trump should talk to Robert Mueller is this: The arguments against him doing it often betray a remarkably dim view of Trump’s intellect.
To his credit, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was rather blunt Sunday in making the case for Trump refusing the interview. Christie said flatly on ABC’s “This Week” that he worried Trump wouldn’t be able to stop himself from committing perjury (comments start at 8:47 in video above):
He should never walk into that room with Robert Mueller. Because in the end, one of the things that makes the president who he is, is that he’s a salesman. And salesmen, at times, tend to be hyperbolic. Right, and this president certainly has tended to do that.
That’s okay when you’re on the campaign hustle. That’s okay when you’re working on Congress. It is not okay when you’re sitting talking to federal agents because, you know, 18 USC 1001 is false statements to federal agents. That’s a crime. That can send you to jail.
This kind of argument has become rather common when it comes to Trump, but let’s step back for a second and focus on what Christie is really saying: He is saying that not only is Trump prone to hyperbole because he’s a salesman but that Trump can’t be trusted to tell the truth even when not doing so constitutes a felony. Christie is basically suggesting that a 71-year-old man who happens to be the president of the United States can’t differentiate well enough between truth and fiction (or what Trump himself has called “truthful hyperbole“).
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Trump unplugged: How Trump has acted under oath
Others who have argued that Trump shouldn’t talk to Mueller have danced around this point a little more artfully. Christie has said in the past that he didn’t think the evidence warranted an interview with a sitting president. White House lawyer Ty Cobb and others have alluded to the prospect of a “perjury trap” — the possibility that the interview could basically be an elaborate setup to get Trump to make a false statement.
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Stronger investment winds forecast for NE offshore energy


Favorable regulatory climate, natural attributes like wind speed, shallow waters, proximity to cities with high energy demand play into favorable assessment

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

With costs declining and a favorable regulatory environment, the U.S. offshore wind market will grow rapidly in the coming years, according to Moody’s Investors Service in a new analysis of the sector.
The Northeast, particularly New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, should see significant investment in offshore wind, partly with support from policymakers, partly thanks to varied natural attributes, like good wind speed, shallow waters, and proximity to large centers of power demand, according to the analysis.
The analysis could help New Jersey bolster its lagging efforts to tap the technology to accelerate its transition to cleaner energy. Gov. Phil Murphy has established a goal of having 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030, the most aggressive target in the nation.
“Europe and Asia have been leading the way in developing the 32 gigawatts of offshore wind estimated to come online by 2020,’’ says Leslie Ritter, an assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s. “But with over 13 gigawatts currently under development, the U.S. is poised to become a more material player in the industry as well.’’
Although prices for offshore wind remain substantially higher than U. S. wholesale power-market prices, forecasts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory project costs to decline to more competitive ranges in the coming years. 

Putting wind on hold

While onshore wind is cheaper than conventional energy power, the cost of offshore wind has hindered development along the Eastern Seaboard. In New Jersey, the Christie administration twice rejected a pilot, 24-megawatt project three miles off Atlantic City because of its projected impact on electric customers, who would pay for the project’s power.
In a sign of an improved regulatory climate, that project, dubbed Fishermen’s Energy, is being revived under a bill (A-2485) moving through the New Jersey Legislature, and scheduled to be taken up this week by committees in both houses.
The bill, part of a package of bills designed to promote a clean-energy agenda in the state, include a measure that would ramp up the renewable energy goals in New Jersey to have 50 percent of its electricity come from such sources by 2030, a target identical to one established in New York.
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An electric Harley: Heresy or the motorcycle’s salvation?

Is an electric Harley the future for millennials–and the company?

Connor Smith writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer:


…Another major pivot is the company’s continued investment in electric vehicle technology. On March 1, Harley-Davidson announced investment in Silicon Valley start-up Alta Motors, which makes lightweight electric motorcycles.​ Harley plans to spend $25 million to $50 million annually over the next several years to develop electric motorcycle technology.

Though an electric bike may seem to be the antithesis of the classic Harley road bike, Roese believes marketing and advertising can help align the new bikes with the existing brand.

“One of the ways to do it is don’t make it look super slick and clean and gleaming as though from some weird science fiction future, but rather, make it more grungy,” Roese said. “Keep it black, make it look like something a superhero from the Marvel Universe would use.”

And that’s what they did with Project LiveWire, its prototype electric bike, which Harley plans to bring to market in the next 18 months. Audiences across the world saw it in action during a scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character rode one as her stunt double chased a CGI villain through the streets.

According to a 2014 study by market research company Ipsos, conducted for the Motorcycle Industry Council, 73.8 percent of millennial motorcycle owners were interested in purchasing an electric motorcycle in the future, with top factors being gas prices and the environment.


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