Lessons learned as NJ cuts backlog of enviro cleanup cases

Nine years into a program to cut down on New Jersey’s overload of chemically contaminated sites, the results have been impressive

John Oberer

John Oberer is a Licensed Site Remediation Professional, vice president with GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., and a former president of the NJ Licensed Site Remediation Professionals Association.
May 7 will mark the ninth anniversary of New Jersey’s adoption of a Licensed Site Remediation Professional (LSRP) program aimed at reducing a giant backlog of environmental remediation cases in the state while ensuring protection of human health and the environment. At the birth of the LSRP program almost nine years ago, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) had a backlog of more than 20,000 cases with more new cases pouring in every day.
This Op-Ed was published in NJ Spotlight on May 4, 2018
Drawing on aspects of a similar program in Massachusetts, in May 2009, the Legislature enacted, and then-Gov. Jon Corzine signed into law, the Site Remediation Reform Act. Its core mission was to empower a group of state-certified and -licensed remediation professionals to take remedial actions through to conclusion, without having to ask the NJDEP for sign-offs every step of the way.
The results have been enormous. In the coming weeks, the state’s LSRPs will issue their 12,000th Response Action Outcome certification, or RAO. After decades of inaction, delay, and indecision on remediating sites contaminated with hazardous and toxic chemicals, New Jersey is seeing comprehensive progress, thanks to a strong cadre of LSRPs who bring deep qualifications to the work —and are held to the highest standards of responsibility and ethical conduct.


Lessons learned

We’ve learned a lot in New Jersey about the positive impact that can be achieved when government gives the private sector the tools and accountability to take charge of remediating contaminated sites. I’d cite four particularly important lessons:

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Jersey electric customers may help pay Pennsy’s bills

PSEG head acknowledges nuclear plants in Pennsylvania could benefit from subsidies awarded to his company

salem nuclear

Salem nuclear power plant


















:

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight

If and when Gov. Phil Murphy signs a controversial bill to subsidize nuclear power, out-of-state plants could be among the beneficiaries.
At least that is the view of Ralph Izzo, chairman, CEO, and president of Public Service Enterprise Group, the giant energy company that lobbied and pushed the subsidy bill through the New Jersey Legislature.
In a quarterly earnings call with analysts Monday, Izzo acknowledged out-of-state nuclear units would be eligible to receive the subsidies, a point critics of the bill occasionally made during the months-long debate on the legislation. They were largely ignored.
“The bill simply says that New Jersey wants 40 percent of its power supply by nuclear energy and it does not limit it geographically,’’ Izzo said, responding to a question from an analyst.
Among the nuclear units Izzo mentioned as potentially qualifying for the subsidies would be Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania, a unit half-owned by PSEG, as well as other nuclear plants in the state, Limerick and Susquehanna.
If so, it would mean not only would New Jersey ratepayers be paying for electricity that they subsidize in the state that is exported out-of-state, but also to companies located in other states.

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Lobbyist helped arrange trip to Morocco for EPA’s Pruitt


The Sofitel Marrakesh Imperial Palace Hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco, was one of EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s stops in the country in December. (Kevin Sullivan/The Washington Post)
report for the
Washington Post:
MARRAKESH, Morocco — A controversial trip to Morocco by Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt last December was partly arranged by a longtime friend and lobbyist, who accompanied Pruitt and his entourage at multiple stops and served as an informal liaison at both official and social events during the visit.
Richard Smotkin, a former Comcast lobbyist who has known the EPA administrator for years, worked for months with Pruitt’s aides to hammer out logistics, according to four individuals familiar with those preparations. In April, Smotkin won a $40,000-a-month contract, retroactive to Jan. 1, with the Moroccan government to promote the kingdom’s cultural and economic interests. He recently registered as a foreign agent representing that government.
The four-day journey has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and the EPA inspector general, who is investigating its high costs and whether it adhered to the agency’s mission to “protect human health and the environment.”
Information obtained by The Washington Post shows the visit’s cost exceeded $100,000, more than twice what has been previously reported — including $16,217 for Pruitt’s Delta airfare and $494 for him to spend one night at a luxury hotel in Paris. He was accompanied by eight staffers and his round-the-clock security detail

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NJ Bar Association weighs in on key development case


Attorneys from the Gibbons law firm have presented ‘friend of the court’ arguments on behalf of the New Jersey Bar Association before the state supreme court in a case involving the timing of development applications before municipal planning boards.


The case, Dunbar Homes, Inc. v. Zoning Board of Adjustment of the Township of Franklin, has drawn considerable attention from developers, planners, municipalities and real estate attorneys.


Gibbons attorneys provide a summary here with a link to their brief.


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NJ Assembly panel to meet on bills to boost state wineries

By Frank Brill
EnviroPolitics Editor


The NJ Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee will take up legislation designed to help state grape growers and wineries at 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 3. 



The committee won’t meet, as usual, in Trenton, but instead is taking its session on the road to the Jessie Creek Winery at 1 Route 47 North in Cape May Court House.


The following bills will be considered:

A1046 / S1057 (Houghtaling / Andrzejczak / Mazzeo / Van Drew / Gopal) – Requires EDA, in consultation with Department of Agriculture, to establish loan program for certain vineyard and winery capital expenses. (pending referral)

A1054 (Houghtaling / Andrzejczak / Taliaferro) – Clarifies certain responsibilities of licensed wineries and retail salesrooms. (pending referral)

A1055 (Houghtaling / Taliaferro / Andrzejczak) – Authorizes temporary waiver from requirement that farm winery use NJ grown fruit. (pending referral)

A1205 (Barclay / Gusciora) – Revises acreage requirement for plenary winery licenses. (pending referral)

A1512 (Burzichelli / Holley / Dancer) – Permits wineries to operate salesrooms in certain municipalities with restrictions on the sale of alcoholic beverages.

A3121 (Burzichelli) – Permits students over 18 years of age to taste wine or malt alcoholic beverage for educational purposes while enrolled in authorized enology or brewing training program.

A3344 (Taliaferro) – Exempts certain plenary winery licensees from filing requirements imposed on retail sellers of litter-generating products.

A3643 (Andrzejczak / Freiman) – Creates viticulture trail tourist directional signs.

A3921 (Mazzeo) – Authorizes annual issuance of permit to sell alcoholic beverages at seasonal farm market. (pending intro and referral)

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Giant chicken farms overrrun Delmarva; Illness feared

Georgina Gustin reports for Inside Climate News:


As the country’s demand for chicken has soared—Americans eat three times more chicken now than they did 50 years ago—Delmarva-area production has soared along with it. Last year, the region produced more than 600 million chickens, more than double the tally from the 1960s. Much of that meat is shipped out of Norfolk, Va., the poultry industry’s fourth-largest port, to feed a booming global demand.

Now, tourists headed to the peninsula’s beaches speed along a flat coastal plain studded with gleaming chicken complexes, as an older generation of obsolete barns collapses in the background.


But recently, more residents have started pushing back against Big Poultry. They’re tired, they say, of seeing bucket-loaders routinely dump hundreds of dead chickens into “mortality composters.” They’re tired, they say, of the smell, of driving home on roads flecked with manure, or pulling into their driveways at night through showers of manure particles and feathers that drift past headlights like falling snow.

It’s not just the unpleasantness or diminishing property values that bothers people. Many residents worry that emissions from chicken barns—ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter—mostly from chicken manure and urine, are making them sick and worsening the region’s rates of asthma and respiratory illnesses.


Even though these animal feeding operations, or AFOs, emit climate-warming gases and air pollution that’s linked to illness, these air emissions are not generally regulated or monitored under federal or state law.


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