NJ court: You’re grandfathered to build on mountain


Conservationists may try to raise enough money to save an 85-acre site on a mountain in New Jersey’s scenic Highlands. If they fail, a developer now has court approval to send in the bulldozers.

A New Jersey appellate court ruled Friday that permits issued by the Christie administration for a controversial and long-delayed, 204-unit development on High Mountain in Oakland were appropriately approved.

James M. O’Neil covers the story for The Record.  
Tom Johnson reports it here for NJ Spotlight


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Breathing easier as EPA rescinds smog-standard delay

Andrea Sears reports for Public News Service:
Smog causes hundreds of premature deaths nationally every year. (Robert Young/Flickr)
Smog causes hundreds of premature deaths nationally every year. (Robert Young/Flickr)

NEW YORK – Environmental and public health groups are breathing a sigh of relief that the Environmental Protection Agency will not postpone implementation of standards for smog-forming ozone.

In June, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the standards, scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 1, would be put on hold for a year.

Fifteen states, including New York, and a coalition of organizations last week filed a lawsuit challenging that decision. The EPA rescinded the postponement the next day.

Graham McCahan, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, says the delay would have been “unlawful” and had been imposed without considering the impact of smog on children, asthma sufferers, the elderly and anyone with heart or respiratory problems.

“So this is a really welcome development that they have reversed course and we can begin getting these emission reductions in place as soon as possible,” he states.

Pruitt had maintained there was confusion among the states over the standard’s requirements, and that the EPA needed to review the regulations.

But McCahan points out that the states already have collected the data and made their recommendations to the EPA for designating areas that need to improve air quality.


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As Philadelphia’s housing market booms, economists warn the city may be in a bubble—or something worse

Drew  Nugent and his band at realtor’s open house in Philadelphia’s  Kensington section

Jim Saksa reports for Plan Philly:


Stephanie Somers knows how to throw a party.

At an open house for a set of townhouses built out the shell of an 105-year-old rectory, the realtor picked a Prohibition theme. Curious neighbors and would-be buyers sipped speakeasy cocktails while a jazz band played and a burlesque troupe dressed up like flappers danced the the Lindy Hop. Between the performances, guests admired the arabesque bathroom tiles, reclaimed-wood floors, and impressive roof deck views.
Swanky open houses are rare, but not unheard of, in some of Philadelphia’s wealthier neighborhoods, where asking prices this high — $680,000 for a three bedroom rowhome — are par for the course.
But not here. This open house is in East Kensington, just a few blocks from some of the most notorious drug corners in the United States, let alone Philadelphia. For decades, this neighborhood attracted more blight than developers, even separated from the most disinvested parts of Kensington by Lehigh Avenue and Conrail’s railroad tracks.
But attitudes are changing enough to justify home values more than four times the city’s median sales price of $143,000. Just a few weeks after the open house, all but one of the five units were under contract (that lone holdout was still under construction, not yet ready to be shown to potential purchasers). According to Somers, the young professionals and empty nesters buying expensive homes in places like Kensington, Francisville, Brewerytown and Point Breeze aren’t letting a neighborhood’s tough reputation keep them away.
“I think there is a level of familiarity that doesn’t scare off these buyers from purchasing an exquisite piece of property there, on the border of Kensington and East Kensington,” said Somers.
“Y’know, it’s Kensington,” added Somers. “I mean, they’re buying in Kensington.”
According to data compiled by Drexel University economist Kevin Gillen, the average home for sale in Philly spends less than two months on the market before it’s sold. That’s a turnaround time Philly hasn’t seen since just before the housing bubble broke in 2007.
After years of anemic economic growth, the city has finally started to recover from the Great Recession. Lots of long-time renters are ready to buy for the first time. Those first-time buyers allow sellers to cash in the equity from their starter homes in order to upgrade. Many are opting to stay in the city and buy new construction filled with amenities: The latest appliances, granite countertops, central air, a roof deck, and off-street parking figure prominently in the listings.
Parrish House
The $168,000 Parrish House townhomes feature granite countertops,
stainless steel appliance and reclaimed wood cupboards
.
The combination of pent-up demand and a housing market where supply is lagging means skyrocketing prices.
“Right now, Philadelphia is outperforming not only most other metro areas in other cities, but even its own suburbs,” said Gillen. “That’s good news for us because, for quite a while, house prices here were depressed. House prices in Philadelphia County fell about 23 to 25 percent from peak to trough during the recession.”
While the timing of the city’s recovery from the recession partly explains the increase in demand for new houses, this may also mark a shift in consumer preferences.
Cities today aren’t as smelly, dirty and dangerous as they were forty, twenty or even ten years ago. Like many other cities growing again after long post-war population declines, Philadelphia has seen its violent crime rates steadily decline.
And the buyers spending nearly $700,000 for a rowhome in East Kensington, or a half-million for homes in Brewerytown or Point Breeze aren’t purchasing a starter home.
Jennifer Tran 
Jennifer Tran and Eric Griffin in the spacious, airy kitchen of their Francisville home

In Francisville, Jennifer Tran and Eric Griffin have no intention of leaving. The couple in their early thirties purchased a lovingly restored four-bedroom rowhome for $500,000 back in 2013. “We tried to build in all the things we need to stay here [and] not have to leave the city just go get a yard or get some outdoor space,” said Griffin.
The house has a large back yard for their dog, Olli, and enough space to raise a family if and when the time is right. “[We] tried to have everything here that would keep us here in the city, longterm.”

Tran and Griffin are the kind of couple that a decade or two ago would have moved to the suburbs. She works at the Navy Yard and he works in Manayunk, which would have made a home somewhere along the Main Line just as convenient a commute as Francisville. But they’ve made a commitment to Francisville, and so far that bet is paying off. 
When they bought it, their home was the most expensive one on the block. Since then, the vacant lots across the street have been replaced with new condos and they no longer own the priciest parcel on the street. As Francisville fills, housing prices continue to rise.
Ruokai Chen made a similar bet along the border of Fishtown and East Kensington, purchasing a home for $415,000 last year. Based on neighborhood trends and comparables, the actuary expects the value of his home to continue to go up. In his late twenties, Chen managed to save for the large down payment thanks to the combination of a high-earning job and having graduated debt-free courtesy of a Curtis Institute education. 
It’s the same story all across the neighborhoods surrounding Center City, fueling the highest housing prices the city has ever seen. “The level of house prices in Philadelphia is at an all time high,” said Gillen. “It’s about 12 or 14 percent higher than its previous peak back in 2007, during the previous peak before the boom.”
Notably, Tran, Chen, and other buyers PlanPhilly spoke with for this article all mentioned—without prompting—the quality of their local neighborhood school, noting it in marked, favorable contrast to their lowly impressions of the School District of Philadelphia as a whole.
Ironically, part of what is fueling Philadelphia’s housing demand, and thus the spike in housing prices, is the city’s relative affordability compared to other metro areas, says Nela Richardson, an economist with the web-based real estate company, Redfin.
“I went to school in Philly 20 years ago,” said Richardson, who graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, “The city already had it [back then], and people finally awakened to the to the fact that you can get the Philly urban experience for half the cost of DC and a quarter of the cost of New York.”


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Pacific Northwest’s fiery week sign of hotter times ahead?

Reuters / Ben Nelm
Eric Halthaus reports for Grist:
It’s feeling a little apocalypse-y in the Pacific Northwest this week.
With excessive heat warnings and temperatures reaching the triple digits from northern California through Washington state (places where air conditioning is far from a given), it’s a bit hard to fathom that this week should have been even hotter.
All-time records could have been set up and down the coast, if it hadn’t been for the thick smoke streaming down from more than 100 massive forest fires in British Columbia, about 500 miles north.
You heard that right — the smoke in places like Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver was so thick it changed the weather. At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, smoke even kept flights from taking off. (From the air, you couldn’t even see the ground.) In Seattle on Thursday, the air quality was worse than in Beijing.
Welcome to climate change, 2017 edition.
This interplay between fire and hot weather has inspired a bleak and eerie feeling for people in this part of the country. As climate scientist Sarah Myhre writes for Seattle’s alternative newspaper, the visceral experience of climate change in the future might feel a lot like it does this week in the Emerald City.
Hot temperatures increase evaporation rates and dry out the soil, resulting in even hotter temperatures. Drier weather makes wildfire more likely, and wildfires in a hot and dry environment can spark pyrocumulus clouds — freak thunderstorms borne literally of the heat of the fires themselves, whose lightning can spark new fires. (This actually happened in northern California on Wednesday.)
It’s no wonder it feels like a sneak peak at the end of the world.
It’s normally fairly dry this time of year from Sacramento to Juneau, but the last six weeks have been exceptional. This summer’s wildfires in British Columbia are the worst in more than half a century. If it doesn’t rain this weekend — and it’s not forecast to — Seattle will set a new a new all-time record for consecutive days without measurable rainfall.
In a normal year, Seattle reaches 90 degrees only three times. In this week’s heatwave alone, Seattle may reach that mark seven days in a row. In parts of southern Oregon, temps rose above 110 degrees this week even despite the smoke. And the latest forecast shows that the smoke might stick around for at least another week.
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Is the future fading to black for nuclear power in NJ?




Salem and Hope Creek nuclear generating stations in Salem County, NJ. Photo:Gary Emeigh,,The News Journal 

Herb Jackson is Washington Correspondent for The Record:

New Jersey’s biggest utility is telling state officials it may close two nuclear plants in Salem County if the flood of cheap natural gas accessed by fracking shale deposits makes them unprofitable.

Closing the Hope Creek and Salem reactors run by Public Service Enterprise Group, combined with the scheduled closure of Exelon’s Oyster Creek plant in Ocean County, would leave New Jersey nuke-free.

But that would force PSEG to scramble for other ways to generate about half the electricity the state uses, and those alternatives all come with consequences of their own for the utility and for customers.


PSEG chief executive Ralph Izzo said shifting to gas alone would be more expensive because of added capital costs and price increases caused by increased demand. It also would increase carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of 3 million more cars, and make New Jersey more vulnerable to supply disruptions, especially during extended winter cold snaps, he said.

“You would have 97 percent of the state’s power coming from natural gas,” Izzo said during a recent Washington, D.C. visit to receive an award from a trade group for the company building solar arrays on landfills.

“We believe gas is abundant, we believe it’s going to be low-cost for a long time to come, but we also know at some time in the future you’re going to have a polar vortex, you’re going to have a disruption in a pipeline,” Izzo said.

The company has “begun a conversation” with state officials about creating a “zero-emission credit” in the electricity market that rewards nuclear plants for not creating air pollution. Izzo argued that power sources such as wind and solar already get federal tax credits that compensate for their higher costs.

Read the full story here


Related news story:
NJ CANT hopes lawmakers won’t subsidize PSEG nuclear

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