Hitting the ‘gas’ pedal for electric vehicles in New Jersey

Ambitious ‘roadmap’ wants to see 300,000 plug-in vehicles on the road by 2025; 2 million by 2035

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

electric car

The state needs to broaden its efforts to create a top market for electric vehicles by accelerating building the charging infrastructure for the cars and by providing lucrative incentives to spur motorists to buy them.
In an ambitious ‘’roadmap’’ to helping the state comply with mandates to clean up its transportation fleet, a new coalition urged policymakers to establish aggressive targets for ushering in an era of zero-emission vehicles.
With only 10,000 zero-emission cars on the road in the state, a new coalition says it wants to have a total of 300,000 plug-in vehicles motoring about New Jersey by 2025 and 2 million by 2035.
It called for the state to come up with $300 million to finance rebates for drivers to buy plug-in cars, a strategy successfully employed by other states, according to ChargEVC, a coalition promoting electric vehicles.
Sound fanciful? Not to Sen. Bob Smith, a Democrat from Middlesex County and the chairman of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee. He has the committee staff already drafting a bill that would allocate $150 million a year from the state’s clean-energy fund to foot the bill.
In three years, Smith said the bill would provide enough money to provide the rebates to buy plug-in vehicles and still leave $150 million to finance building the infrastructure for electric cars.
Smith said the Transportation Trust Fund and the highway authorities are other options for helping to build the infrastructure needed to ease the range anxiety — the fear car batteries will run out of juice without a charging station in sight.
“This single initiative — getting more EVs on our roads — can deliver massive benefits for all,’’ said Pamela Frank, CEO of ChargEVC. “All electric customers save money with more electricity on our grid. Total net savings could be in the billions depending on how aggressive we choose to be.’’

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Ferry service is the subject of NJ Assembly meeting

The New Jersey Assembly’s Transportation and Independent Authorities Committee will meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, September 18, 2017 in the Stevens Institute of Technology, Howe Center, 1 Castle Point Terrace, Bissinger Room, 4th Floor, Hoboken, N.J. 

The committee will take testimony from invited guests concerning the operation of ferry services and subsidization of those services, including the subsidy provided for ferry service connecting the Atlantic Highlands with Jersey City and Hoboken.

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Vote tomorrow on Delaware River basin fracking ban

Associated Press photo

Frank Kummer reports for Philly.com:

The Delaware River Basin Commission said Monday that it would consider a resolution Wednesday to make permanent the current moratorium on natural-gas development near the river, a move met with both joy and caution by environmentalists.

The DRBC measure would “include prohibitions related to the production of natural gas utilizing horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing” within the 13,539-square-mile basin.

“The revised draft regulations also would include provisions for ensuring the safe and protective storage, treatment, disposal or discharge of hydraulic fracturing-related wastewater where permitted, and provide for the regulation of inter-basin transfers of water and wastewater for purposes of natural-gas development where permitted,” the commission said in a statement.

The DRBC, a regulatory body with representatives from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the federal government, will vote only to introduce the resolution, beginning a months-long process. The resolution would direct the commission’s executive director, Steven J. Tambini, to prepare revised rules that would be brought up for public comment by Nov. 30. Hearings would be held.

Wednesday’s meeting is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at the Linksz Pavilion at Bucks County Community College in Newtown.

The moratorium was initiated in 2010 by the DRBC, which oversees the water supply of 15 million people. If a permanent ban is approved, it would apply to Pike and Wayne Counties in northeastern Pennsylvania, part of the nation’s largest gas field, the Marcellus Shale.



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A renewed claim that Exxon settlement cheated the public

Bayway Refinery, Linden, NJ

New Jersey’s $225 million settlement with Exxon
Mobil short-changed the public, four environmental organizations and a Democratic
state senator told an appeals court Monday, adding they should be allowed to
push for more case 


Michael Catalini reports for the Associated Press:

New Jersey’s $225 million settlement with Exxon Mobil short-changed the public, four environmental organizations and a Democratic state senator told an appeals court Monday, adding they should be allowed to push for more cash.
State Sen. Ray Lesniak and an attorney for the environmental groups continued their yearslong push to intervene in New Jersey’s settlement with the Texas petroleum company on Monday, arguing before a three-judge appeals court in Trenton that the trial judge was wrong to deny them the ability to intervene in the 2015 settlement.
The state’s legal fight against Exxon goes back to 2004, when New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection brought a suit against Exxon over decades of pollution at two oil refineries in Bayonne and Linden. A months-long trial was about to result in trial Judge Michael Hogan’s decision when Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s administration and Exxon announced the settlement.
Lesniak, an attorney, argued for himself on Monday before the court. He called the lower court’s decision “unfair, unreasonable and not in the public interest.”
Lesniak and the environmental groups’ attorney, Edward Lloyd, said they not only want the right to intervene but also challenge the merits of the settlement. They argued that the state accepted far too little compared with the earlier $8.9 billion estimate the state had calculated was needed for cleanup.
Allan Kanner, an attorney representing the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, and Ted Wells, Exxon’s lawyer, argued that Hogan was correct to reject the previous intervention attempts on the grounds that they didn’t have standing.
Lesniak said that as a resident of Elizabeth, New Jersey, near where the contaminated sites noted in the suit are located, he believes he has standing. Lloyd argued before the judges that the question of standing was incorrectly applied to the groups by the trial court judge.
The 2015 deal also included the settlement of claims concerning more than 1,000 retail gas station sites and additional refinery locations across the state that were not initially part of the litigation.
Christie hailed it as the largest settlement of its kind in state history and pointed to it as a sign his administration was “aggressively litigating against polluters.”
But Lesniak and environmental organizations said the state settled for “pennies on the dollar,” and sought to challenge the deal.
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Sen. Bateman supports permanent fracking ban by DRBC

Senator Christopher “Kip” Bateman (R-Somerset, Mercer, Middlesex, Hunterdon) is urging the Delaware River Basin Commission to approve a permanent ban on fracking in the basin, following reports that the commission could vote on the matter this week.
http://www.senatenj.com/uploads/stop-fracking-pipelines-520.jpg
In a news release, Bateman said:

“If we allow fracking in the Delaware River Basin, 17 million people could be exposed to contaminated water. There is too much uncertainty at the federal level right now to allow the temporary ban to expire without putting our own permanent protections in place immediately.

“I believe that ignoring the safety and environmental concerns surrounding fracking in sensitive areas like the basin is completely irresponsible. I’m not willing to stay silent and allow oil and gas companies to come here and put our families at risk.

“The commission has a responsibility to protect the increasingly fragile natural resources we rely on from pollution. It can start by immediately voting ‘yes’ on a permanent ban on fracking in the basin. It’s the right thing to do.”

The Delaware River Basin supplies water to parts of the Mercer County region in New Jersey, as well as areas of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York. The commission, which is made up of representatives from all four states, in 2010 enacted a 7-year temporary moratorium on fracking within its jurisdiction. The commission’s next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017.

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Christie backed off at lewd and for that he got screwed


Daily News writers Denis Slattery and Terence Cullen report:

Raunchy recordings of President Trump bragging about infidelities and lewd behavior cost Chris Christie his shot at a cabinet position, according to former White House aide Stephen Bannon.
The New Jersey governor’s reaction to the release of a 2005 recording of Trump making sexually degrading comments about women to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush sealed his fate, Bannon tells CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in an interview set to air Sunday.
Bannon said the weekend after the scandalous tape was released was a “litmus test” in terms of who was really with Trump.

“Billy Bush Saturday showed me who really had Donald Trump’s back to play to his better angels,” he told CBS News.

Trump huddled his top advisers together on Oct. 8, a day after millions of Americans heard him describe grabbing women by the genitalia.
Bannon recalled then-Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus gave Trump an ultimatum: “You either drop out right now, or you lose by the biggest landslide in American political history.”

The conservative adviser — who went on to spend six months as the White House’s chief strategist — claims he was the only one in the room who said Trump still had an “absolutely 100%” chance of winning.

“(Voters) knew Donald Trump was just doing locker room talk with a guy,” he continued. “And they dismissed it. It had no lasting impact on the campaign.”
Anyone in Trump’s inner circle who thought otherwise was bound to pay a price, Bannon said.  
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