EDA approves $18.3M for Camden hotel with Norcross ties


Jim Walsh reports for the Courier-Post:


A state agency has approved an $18.3 million tax break for a Camden Waterfront hotel proposed by an investor group affiliated with Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III.


The Economic Development Authority, which endorsed the incentive at a June 13 meeting, earlier this year backed a $245 million tax break for a Waterfront office tower planned by the same investors.


The EDA also approved a $3 million low-interest loan for the eight-story hotel at Cooper Street and Riverside Drive.


The 180-room hotel will cost about $52.8 million, with hotel owner CHP Land LLC covering 40 percent of the expense.



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1,000-acre nature preserve in Sourlands closer to reality

The New Jersey Conservation Foundation reports:

A plan to create a 1,042-acre nature preserve in the Sourland Mountains, spanning the border of Hunterdon and Somerset counties, has taken a significant step forward.
New Jersey Conservation Foundation announced today that it has secured an option from landowner John Higgins to purchase 269 key acres in East Amwell Township, Hunterdon County. The property is a connector between 151 acres preserved earlier this year and 622 preserved acres in neighboring Hillsborough Township, Somerset County.
“This beautiful property is another piece of the puzzle to create more than 1,000 contiguous acres of preserved land for public enjoyment and wildlife habitat,” said Michele S. Byers, executive director of New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “We’re very pleased to secure the option from John Higgins, who has already preserved hundreds of acres. We’re grateful to Mr. Higgins for agreeing to sell this property, and we look forward to completing the purchase in 2018.”
The announcement of the purchase agreement was made at a gathering on the property to celebrate Open Space Month in June.
Open Space Month celebrates the rich variety of lands that have been permanently preserved throughout the state and highlights the importance of continuing to preserve natural areas and farmland. It also recognizes the essential role of public-private funding partnerships that can leverage state funding with county, local and private funds.
Located off Wertsville Road, the 269-acre Higgins property contains woodlands, farm fields, a scenic lake and several tributaries of the Neshanic River. The Neshanic flows into the Raritan River, a source of drinking water for over a million New Jerseyans.
Once the purchase is completed, the land will be open to the public for passive recreational activities, including, hiking, horseback riding, birding and nature observation.
The 1,042 acres will be managed as a single preserve spanning Somerset and Hunterdon counties.
Funding Partners
Funding partners for the project will include the New Jersey Green Acres Program, Hunterdon County, East Amwell Township, Raritan Headwaters Association and Hunterdon Land Trust.
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More than half of all New Jersey bees died off last year

Scott Fallon reports for The Record:


More than 48 percent of the bees died in 2013 and more than 53 percent were lost in 2016. This year, 41 percent died, according to a recent national survey.


Nationwide, honeybee deaths average 33 percent a year.


Video: Bergen County beekeeper 


“We don’t have all the answers as to why one state is significantly higher than others,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, survey director for the Bee Informed Partnership, a consortium of scientists and beekeepers. “It’s something that we have to look at much closer.”


Continuing to lose 40 to 50 percent of bees would be a major hit to the state’s agricultural industry. The honeybee, New Jersey’s official state bug, is a $7 million industry and the bees help pollinate nearly $200 million worth of fruits and vegetables annually. Major crops in New Jersey, including cranberries, blueberries, apples and cucumbers, rely on honeybee pollination.



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More emails show Pruitt’s close ties to fossil fuel industry

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt

By AP writers Michael Biesecker and Adam Kealoha Causey:

Newly obtained emails underscore just how closely Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt coordinated with fossil fuel companies while serving as Oklahoma’s state attorney general, a position in which he frequently sued to block federal efforts to curb planet-warming carbon emissions.

The latest batch of Pruitt’s emails, provided to The Associated Press on Thursday, runs more than 4,000 pages. They include schedules and lists of speaking engagements from the years before Pruitt became the nation’s top environmental watchdog, recounting dozens of meetings between Pruitt, members of his staff, and executives and lobbyists from the coal, oil and gas industries. Many of the calendar entries were blacked out, making it impossible for the public to know precisely where Pruitt traveled or with whom he met.


A June 2016 email that was released showed a board member of the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance seeking a last-minute meeting with Pruitt’s team to brief them “regarding a pending federal tax issue that is related to the state’s position on the Clean Power Plan.”

The trade group represents independent oil and gas producers, including the billionaire Harold Hamm, a political backer of Pruitt and frequent adviser to President Donald Trump. At the time, Oklahoma was one of more than two dozen mostly GOP-led states suing the EPA in federal court to stop the Obama administration’s effort to regulate carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

“Greg is Govt Relations for Denbury Resources and is a gem of a dude,” wrote DEPA Executive Director Pete Regan, referring to oil and gas lobbyist Greg Schnacke. “He serves on DEPA executive Comm w Harold Hamm. AG Pruitt was on multiple exec calls on 2015 giving updates re ‘sue and settle’, endangered species cases, etc. … Greg worked closely with Sen. Bob Dole and has great stories.”

A spokesman for Pruitt at the EPA declined to comment, referring questions to the office of current Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter. Prior to his appointment by the state’s Republican governor, Hunter had worked as a top staffer for Pruitt.


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$500 Million for NJ sewage treatment and drinking water


Funds to be distributed by Environmental Infrastructure Trust, well-regarded financier for clean-water projects for several decades

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

wastewater treatment

The state plans to help finance more than a half-billion dollars in clean water projects next year to reduce pollution from sewage treatment plants and to upgrade drinking-water systems.
A legislative package to provide money — funded by federal grants and repayment of loans — to scores of facilities won approval yesterday from the Assembly Environment Committee, measures expected to get to the governor’s desk before lawmakers break for their summer recess.
The legislation provides the funds to the state’s Environmental Infrastructure Trust, the popular and well-regarded financer of clean-water projects for the past several decades. Since its inception in the 1980s, it has funded $6.7 billion in upgrades for 1,234 projects.
In the upcoming 2018 fiscal year, the legislation will provide $539 million in low-interest loans mostly to local governments to upgrade their wastewater treatment plants and to improve plants delivering drinking water to customers throughout New Jersey.
In this year’s allocation, $323 million will be set aside for clean-water loans to wastewater plants and $216 million for drinking-water systems. Of the money going to the former, $224 million will be for loans to facilities making upgrades and repairs following Hurricane Sandy.

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Activists to basin commissioners: Ban drilling and fracking


Thomas Friestad reports for the Bucks County Courier Times:

The Delaware River Basin Commission met before a copy of Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” painting Wednesday morning at Washington Crossing Historic Park. In response, environmental activists encouraged the board to “have courage like the men in the boats” by banning fracking and drilling in the Delaware River Watershed.
About 75 activists hailed from the basin’s four states — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware — and roughly half spoke on behalf of different groups during the public comment section of the meeting in Upper Makefield.
“Fracking damages the beauty of our communities, fracking wastewater trucks destroy our roads and fracking wells leak methane into our water,” said Marguerite Chandler, a member of the group No Fracking Bucks. “Very few decisions can make the impact on future generations that this one (to ban the practices) can.”
The five commissioners had placed an indefinite moratorium on watershed fracking in May 2010, voting unanimously to postpone judgment on fracking projects until members could study and discuss the practice’s impact and draft regulations, a process that remains ongoing, according to the commission’s website.
But speakers argued that an outright ban is necessary to safeguard the watershed over the long term.
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