Layers of fracking contaminants found in reservoir bottom

Mike Reuther reports for the Sun-Gazette:

Releasing millions of gallons of treated water from hydraulic fracturing wastewater into area surface waters may have had a longer-lasting impact than originally thought, according to a study.

Penn State researchers have revealed that many of the pollutants remained intact after wastewater was treated at facilities.
The study, published in a recent issue of Environmental Science and Technology, considered sediment samples collected from a reservoir in western Pennsylvania.
“There wasn’t a water keeper who was sitting in these rivers collecting these samples at a great continuous clip, so in a way, a lot of information just flowed by,” said Penn State environmental professor Bill Burgos, who along with his colleagues conducted the research.
“But in certain reservoirs, where sediments collect over time, there are layers of sediment that are like rings of a tree; you can look into the sediments and capture time and spatially composite samples.”
The study considered sediments that built up over time to reconstruct the oil and gas activity occurring during the boom days of Marcellus Shale drilling from roughly 2008 to 2015.
“You need a lake or reservoir that allows sediments to lay down undisturbed in those layers,” Burgos said. “The (term) we use is a ‘coherent temporal record.’ You only get a coherent temporal record if it’s a lake that continuously accumulates sediments and isn’t subject to a flood or scour.”
The research noted that large quantities of oil and gas wastewater with high loads of chloride, barium, strontium, radium and organic compounds left high concentrations in the sediments and pore water.
The organic contaminants, nonylphenol ethoxylates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (carcinogens) were found with the highest concentrations in sediment layers deposited five to 10 years ago during the peak of Marcellus Shale activity.
It was noted that while the findings show long-term contamination of watersheds, the effects on the environment and human health are still unknown and difficult to assess.
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E-vehicle sales surging, charging stations not keeping pace

With more than 10,000 plug-ins on the road in New Jersey, sales grew by 79 percent over prior year

electric vehicle charging station


Tom Johnson reports
for NJ Spotlight:


It might be a tad unnerving trying to find a charging station at times, but that hasn’t prevented over 10,000 drivers in New Jersey from buying electric vehicles.
Even with fewer than a thousand public charging stations in the state, the sale of electric plug-in vehicles is growing rapidly, according to an analysis by ChargEVC, a coalition supporting the growth of the market for electric vehicles.
Consider the numbers: Sales of model year 2016 electric vehicles grew by 79 percent over the prior year in New Jersey. Sixty percent of those 10,000 cars were sold in the past two years, the coalition analysis found.
“Interest in these cars is growing,’’ said Pam Frank, CEO of ChargEVC. “We expect this trend will continue as more affordable vehicles with longer range become available in the next 24-36 months.’’


Surprising trend

The trend is surprising given the frustration vented by clean-energy advocates over what they view as the state’s lackluster efforts to build the infrastructure for electric vehicles. By most accounts, the number of charging stations in New Jersey is in the hundreds.
“There’s a lot more that we could have done in New Jersey over the last seven years,’’ lamented Chuck Feinberg, president of the New Jersey Clean Cities Coalition, an organization that promotes the use of alternative-fueled vehicles.
The transformation of the transportation sector, the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions, is widely seen as crucial to New Jersey’s efforts to improve its air quality and curb climate-warming pollution. At a legislative hearing last week on climate change, several speakers addressed the need to accelerate the use of electric vehicles.
Compared to neighboring states, New Jersey offers fewer incentives to build the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, a step that can ease range anxiety of motorists fearful their car will run out of power before they can charge the battery.


‘Out of juice’

“We need to catalyze EVs by building out an infrastructure so you don’t have to worry about running out of juice when you are out on the road,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey.


Read the full story here

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Former NJ Senate President John Russo dead at 84

John Russo
Credit: Princeton Public Affairs

By Steph Solis of the Asbury Park Press:


Former Senate President John Russo, a man who defined Ocean County politics for two decades, died late Saturday night after battling an illness. He was 84.

Russo, a Democrat, was arguably Ocean County’s most powerful politician, rising to the ranks of Senate president in 1973 and launching an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1985. He served five terms in the state Senate before stepping down in 1991.

“Ocean County lost a legend last night,” said Russell Corby, who worked as Russo’s director of legislative services.

Russo, who served 18 years in the state Senate, was known as a law-and-order legislator. He was known as the father of the state’s death penalty law and sponsored the state’s ban on assault weapons. In an interview with the Press in 1991, Russo said his greatest regret was never getting a ban on handguns passed in the state Senate.

“Hopefully, I leave – not with any statues in the park, but just maybe with a feeling of respect that I did the best I could,” Russo told the Press at the time.

Russo was also the architect behind New Jersey’s cap on state spending, the first such law in the nation. He cited that as one of his two proudest achievements in the Legislature; the second was a law that exempted senior citizens from paying income tax on their first $10,000 in earnings.

As a Democrat, Russo defied the odds, winning five terms in heavily Republican Ocean County. Once Russo left the scene — with the exception of the 1991 legislative race to succeed him — Democrats have never again won a statewide race in Ocean County.

John F. Russo is pictured on the front page on Nov. 7, 1973, the morning after he won his state senate race. (Photo: ASBURY PARK PRESS ARCHIVE)

Former Assemblyman John Paul Doyle was Russo’s running mate and served with him for 18 years.

“It’s kind of hard to think that there ever were Democrats elected to more than a municipal office in Ocean County,” he said. “In 1973, the stars were aligned.”

Doyle and Daniel Newman ran for the General Assembly with Russo in 1973, forming the Russo-Newman-Doyle trio. They created a joint constituent services office so residents had one place to go to meet their legislators.

Russo led the operation, determined to work 110 percent, Doyle said. He reached out to constituents and knew how to connect with the working man.


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New California law allows for faster shutdown of polluters

Children play in a neighborhood behind a metal-processing facility in Paramount. (Katie Falkenberg, LA Times)

Tony Barboza reports for  the Los Angeles Times:

Local air quality officials are gaining new powers to quickly stop polluters when they endanger people’s health under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday.

The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, follows years of frustration in communities such as Paramount, Boyle Heights and Maywood — where regulators have struggled to stop highly polluting operations after discovering hot spots of Chromium-6, lead and other dangerous pollutants.

Currently, air regulators seeking orders to curtail operations that violate rules and threaten public health must go through an administrative hearing board. The process can take months, while the pollution continues unabated.
As a result, residents “were being told: ‘You are in grave danger, but we can’t do anything about it,’ ” said Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), who wrote the legislation.
“What we’re saying today is that when we have imminent health threats, that trumps the right to do business,” Garcia said.
The new law will give pollution control officers the power to issue immediate orders to stop polluting operations when violations pose an “imminent and substantial” danger. The orders are temporary, pending a hearing before an administrative board.
South Coast Air Quality Management District Executive Officer Wayne Nastri welcomed the legislation as “an important new tool to protect public health.”
At Anaplex Corp., a metal-finishing facility in Paramount, it took the South Coast air district months to secure an administrative order to curtail operations after the carcinogen Chromium-6 was detected last fall at levels up to 350 times normal. The district has said it would have used the new authority to stop dangerous levels of lead from the now-shuttered battery recycler Exide Technologies in Vernon and Chromium-6 from Hixson Metal Finishing in Newport Beach, among other cases.
Some industry groups opposed the legislation, while cities backed it as giving air districts the tools they need to protect residents.
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Monsanto skipped a test on weed killer now killing crops

                   

Kate Cox reports for Consumerist:

There’s a problem in farm country this year: Acres of crops are unexpectedly withering away, but it’s not due to drought or natural blight. Instead, the crisis seems to be related to a new herbicide from Monsanto. Users of the recently released plant-killer didn’t realize it would spread beyond their fields, because — according to a new report — Monsanto skipped over tests that would have highlighted this problem.

The product is a new formulation of the chemical dicamba, which Monsanto sells as XtendiMax with VaporGrip. And Reuters reports today that Monsanto went to significant lengths to avoid submitting XtendiMax to testing that would determine how much drifting on the wind it would do.

University Researchers Barred From Looking

Reuters spoke with several of the independent researchers — at universities in Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois — who had contracts with Monsanto to test pre-release samples of XtendiMax.
These contracts are common, Reuters explains. When a company like Monsanto is developing a new agricultural product, it commissions tests from independent labs and then submits the results and data to regulators. A company will also provide samples to universities for more testing.
University researchers say they asked permission to study the volatility of XtendiMax — that is to say, how likely it is or isn’t to vaporize and drift across fields on the wind — but were denied. In fact, their contracts with Monsanto explicitly forbade doing volatility testing, several researchers said.
One added that being blocked from doing some certain kind of test was extremely unusual. “This is the first time I’m aware of any herbicide ever brought to market for which there were strict guidelines on what you could and could not do” in testing, a scientist from the University of Arkansas told Reuters.
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NJ lawmakers solicit and get advice on climate action











































The environmental committees of the New Jersey Legislature met at the Jersey Shore town of Lavalette yesterday in a special joint meeting to solicit advice from academic and other experts on the effects, present and future, of climate change on the state and its coastline–and how to combat it.


What they got was three hours of warnings and lists of specific recommendations from a range of concerned parties, including researchers at Rutgers University, planning organizations, a baykeeper, riverkeeper, shore protectors, and representatives of solar, fishing and even surfing interests.


Unfortunately, the meeting was not recorded for immediate digital access (as all committee and voting sessions are when conducted in Trenton) but a stenographer was present and a transcript eventually will be made available.


In the meanwhile, we offer the following media coverage of the event:


Tom Johnson of NJ Spotlight writes: ” In rare meeting of both legislative environmental committees, lawmakers get a tough assessment of what New Jersey needs to do to fight climate change: Full story here 


NJTV News report by David Cruz




Russ Zimmer’s Asbury Park Press story and video



Related: DRAFT New Jersey Climate and Health Profile Report

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