PADEP, 100 others urge reversal on pollution fine limits

 EQT Corp. natural gas compressor station along the Monongahela River – Rebecca Droke photo, Post-Gazette

Laura Legere reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Nearly 100 Pennsylvania elected officials, environmental groups and businesses signed on to legal briefs this week to support the Department of Environmental Protection in a state Supreme Court case that could severely restrict the maximum fines the state can issue for pollution to state waterways.

The environmental agency is appealing a Commonwealth Court decision from January that said fines for spills into state streams and groundwater must be based on the duration of the initial release and not on the days pollution continues to flow through the hydrologic system or seep out of contaminated soil.
The case could revise a four-decade-old interpretation of the state’s signature clean water law and invite challenges to nearly a dozen other major state environmental laws that contain similar language, according to former DEP Secretary David Hess, who wrote an online post calling it “one of the most important environmental cases in recent decades.”
Downtown-based EQT Corp. brought the case to challenge DEP’s position that residual pollution constitutes a continuing violation of the state Clean Streams Law, which the company said “leads to the absurd result of never-ending and unquantifiable liability.”
A three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed with EQT and said DEP’s reading “would be tantamount to punishing a polluter indefinitely,” or at least for as long as any remnant of the initial pollution stays in state waters, “even when a polluter is taking aggressive steps to remediate.”
DEP is urging an environmental hearing board to fine EQT at least $4.5 million for a wastewater pit leak and its aftereffects, which DEP says polluted high quality streams, an exceptional value wetland and an expansive area of groundwater around a Marcellus Shale drilling site in Tioga County beginning in 2012.
EQT contends the most it can be fined is less than a tenth of what the DEP is seeking
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How to fix Penn Station? Build a transit hub in Queens

Rendering by ReThink of the proposed station and park.
Joe Anuta reports for Crain’s New York Business:

A Manhattan think tank is pushing a plan to end the misery of Penn Station commuters, who are having an especially horrid month, by recasting the West 34th Street hub as just another stop for New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road, rather than the terminus for both. Having trains pass through the station instead of stopping and turning around, which results in a daily traffic nightmare, would also open up possibilities beyond alleviating congestion.

Part of the idea, named ReThinkNYC, calls for moving rail yards in Sunnyside, Queens, to the Bronx. That way a major new transit hub could be built on the Queens site, connecting the region’s commuter lines and the subway system for a fraction of the cost of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to build a deck over Sunnyside Yards. With that kind of transit access, a business district could sprout up around the station, taking advantage of a 280-acre blank canvas across the East River from the most expensive office towers in the city.


“It should be part of the region’s central business district,” said Lane Rick, a principal at ReThink Studio, the group behind the idea. “It should be [like] a Midtown East.”


ReThink Studio also envisions green space akin to Central Park, but much smaller, where the rail yard currently sits. The plan is ambitious but not impossible. Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road already run through Sunnyside but don’t stop there. Adding the station, along with others in the Bronx and New Jersey, could be done in conjunction with the planned Gateway tunnel project beneath the Hudson River without raising the $25 billion price tag. The park and the commercial center could be absorbed into the current Sunnyside Yards effort.


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Energy, enviro-bills before Senate panel today in Trenton


The New Jersey Legislature’s Senate Energy and Environment Committee is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, May 15, in Room 10, on the third floor of the State House Annex in Trenton, to consider the following bills:  

A-1645  Schaer, G.S. (D-36); Webber, J. (R-26);
Dancer, R.S. (R-12); Pintor Marin, E. (D-29)
Expands definition of “acquisition,” for
purposes of county and municipal open space trust funds, to include demolition,
removal of debris, and restoration of lands being acquired.
Related Bill: S-195
      
A-4580  Taliaferro, A.J. (D-3); Burzichelli, J.J.
(D-3); Quijano, A. (D-20); Houghtaling, E. (D-11)
Appropriates $2,900,000 from “2009 Farmland
Preservation Fund” for grants to certain nonprofit organizations for
farmland preservation purposes.
Related Bill: S-2989
     
A-4581  Houghtaling, E. (D-11); Andrzejczak, B.
(D-1); Singleton, T. (D-7); Downey, J. (D-11)
Appropriates $22,385,743 to State Agriculture
Development Committee for farmland preservation purposes.
Related Bill: S-2987
    
A-4582  Andrzejczak, B. (D-1); Mazzeo, V. (D-2);
Taliaferro, A.J. (D-3); Zwicker, A. (D-16); Houghtaling, E. (D-11)
Appropriates $32.5 million from constitutionally
dedicated CBT revenues to State Agriculture Development Committee for county
planning incentive grants.
Related Bill: S-2990
     
A-4584  Zwicker, A. (D-16); Taliaferro, A.J. (D-3);
Burzichelli, J.J. (D-3); Houghtaling, E. (D-11)
Appropriates $7,500,000 from constitutionally dedicated
CBT revenues for planning incentive grants to municipalities for farmland
preservation purposes.
Related Bill: S-2988
     
S-195  Kyrillos, J.M. (R-13); Smith, B. (D-17)
Expands definition of “acquisition,” for
purposes of county and municipal open space trust funds, to include demolition,
removal of debris, and restoration of lands being acquired.
Related Bill: A-1645
     
S-2987  Cruz-Perez, N. (D-5); Oroho, S.V. (R-24)
Appropriates $22,385,743 to State Agriculture
Development Committee for farmland preservation purposes.
Related Bill: A-4581
     
S-2988  Sweeney, S.M. (D-3)
Appropriates $7,500,000 from constitutionally dedicated
CBT revenues for planning incentive grants to municipalities for farmland
preservation purposes.
Related Bill: A-4584
      
S-2989  Lesniak, R.J. (D-20); Oroho, S.V. (R-24)
Appropriates $2,900,000 from “2009 Farmland
Preservation Fund” for grants to certain nonprofit organizations for
farmland preservation purposes.
Related Bill: A-4580
      
S-2990  Whelan, J. (D-2); Van Drew, J. (D-1)
Appropriates $32.5 million from constitutionally
dedicated CBT revenues to State Agriculture Development Committee for county
planning incentive grants.
Related Bill: A-4582
      
For discussion only:

SCR-151  Smith, B. (D-17); Bateman, C. (R-16)
Amends Constitution to dedicate revenues from societal
benefits charge for various energy-related uses established by law.  Related Bill: ACR-235

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Rutgers EcoComplex helps NJ green entrepreneurs grow


NJTV News Correspondent David Cruz reports:


Consider the humble basil plant. It grows fast, tastes good and is good for you.

That’s not a stretch of a metaphor for what happens at the Rutgers University EcoComplex Clean Energy Innovation Center in Burlington County, an incubator where, quite literally, small business and environmental stewardship grow in the same soil, even though, for the most part here, there is no soil.

“We are providing them an incubator,” said EcoComplex Director Serpil Guran. “If you think about little hatchlings, your business is like a little egg, your hatching and you need support, and we’re nurturing young companies. We’re providing, as you see in our greenhouse or in our tech scale up labs. So we provide lab space, business support. We have business experts, how to write a business plan and human resources support, labeling, marketing and maybe introduction to legislators.”


 

Basil growing hydrophonically in EcoComplex greenhouses

Like Reed Gusciora and Herb Conaway, assemblymen who organized this tour to showcase efforts in the Garden State, like the EcoComplex where entrepreneurs can find the fertile ground to do good and do well. 


Tenant companies that have taken root here here include Olive Creek Farms, run by George Saridakis and his wife, Susan.


“We really couldn’t start a venture like this without a facility such as the EcoComplex because they enable us to, at least when we started, they enabled us to acquire a facility that had the technology that we needed without the multi-million dollar investment to try a concept,” said Saridakis, standing among a quarter acre indoor field of basil being grown hydroponically. 


“In this one zone … we can produce the same amount of basil that would be grown on 15 acres in the field on an annualized basis,” he said.



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NJ neighbors fear cleanup will flood basements with toxics

James M. O’Neill reports for The Record:


Some North Jersey residents who live above one of the largest vapor intrusion sites in the country are so worried about a proposal to flush away the contaminated groundwater beneath their homes by pumping clean water into the ground that they have lobbied the state to hold a public hearing on the plan.

The groundwater under about 450 homes in Pompton Lakes is contaminated with PCE and TCE, cancer-causing solvents that were dumped at a DuPont munitions facility decades ago and spread through groundwater to the adjacent neighborhood.

In 2008, officials discovered the solvents were vaporizing up through the soil in some of the basements in the area.

The pilot test will involve a process called hydraulic surcharging, to see if pumping clean water into the ground at various points in the neighborhood can dilute or flush out the contamination.

Residents are worried that pumping more water into the ground will raise the water table enough to flood their basements with contaminated water, bringing more pollution into their homes.

And after talking with a number of insurance companies, residents say they would not be able to obtain homeowners insurance policies that would cover damages that could occur from this sort of project.

“I don’t think hydraulic surcharging is the answer,” said Lisa Riggiola, a former borough councilwoman and member of a residents’ advocacy group. “There are better ways to tackle this.”

The group sent a letter to the state Department of Environmental Protection requesting a public hearing. Riggiola said she was told the request will be granted, but no date has been set.



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Urban Coast Institute names Harrington Associate Director

This news release from Monmouth University

Former UCI Advisory Committee Member Is One of East Coast’s Leading Voices on Coastal Resilience and Beaches

Dr. Thomas Herrington
WEST LONG BRANCH (NJ) – Dr. Thomas Herrington has been appointed as the first associate director of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI). The hire reflects the UCI’s continued growth and Monmouth’s commitment as the “Coastal University” to expand its capacity as a leading research and policy center.
Herrington has extensive experience working at the state, regional and national level and is one of New Jersey’s leading experts on coastal processes, beach management and ocean engineering. He will work closely with UCI staff, Monmouth faculty, students and other partners to help find solutions to the challenges facing coastal communities, sustainable coastal economies and health ocean ecosystems. 
Prior to joining the UCI, Herrington served as the director of the ocean engineering graduate program at the Stevens Institute of Technology from 2007-17 and the director of the New Jersey Coastal Protection Technical Assistance Service from 2002-17. He has over 25 years of experience in coastal sustainability and hazard mitigation research, including the analysis of storm surge and wave impacts on coastal communities. He is well acquainted with the UCI, having recently served as a member of its Advisory Committee.

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