Lonely fight to save an EPA lab from Trump’s climate cuts



Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) speaks at a rally outside U.S. EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., earlier this week. Photo by Camille von Kaenel.

Camille von Kaenel reprts for E&E News:


ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Dozens of new cars and trucks go into surgery each day on the quiet green campus here in the heart of auto country. Engineers expose their guts, hook them up to big computers with wires and tubes, and pretend to drive them on massive treadmills in an effort to ensure new vehicles don’t emit harmful pollution.
U.S. EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory is little known but envied around the world as the gold standard for crafting and policing environmental rules for vehicles. Now, the Trump administration’s charge against its predecessor’s climate change initiatives has put a target on its back.
The jobs of nearly half of the 436 scientists and engineers working here could be on the chopping block under President Trump’s budget plan. But so far, only a handful of advocates have lined up to fight for the lab’s future.
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Kushners drop Jersey City’s Bayfront development

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump

David Kocieniewski and Caleb Melby of Bloomberg News report:



A company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has abandoned plans to buy a sprawling industrial site in New Jersey from Honeywell International Inc., a major federal contractor, and develop it into a residential community.

Kushner Cos. had been the leading bidder for the 95-acre formerly contaminated site known as Bayfront, which is co-owned by Honeywell and Jersey City, city officials said. The company had submitted plans to build as many as 8,100 housing units to be marketed to Orthodox Jewish residents of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn who are being priced out of that neighborhood.

Last fall, the Kushners bid about $150 million, tens of millions higher than competitors, according to people involved in the negotiations. Honeywell heard from others who would only make an offer once the environmental approvals for the cleaned-up site were final. So the bidding is scheduled to reopen later this year and Kushner Cos. had been expected to continue in the process, the people said.


Full story continues here





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Consol Energy sees potential in Utica that others don’t

 Consol Energy horizontal gas drilling rig in Greene County, Pa. Mladen Antonov photo for/AFP -/Getty Images

Anya Litvak reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:


Consol Energy Inc. held its annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday. It lasted for 10 minutes.

Shareholders of the Cecil-based energy company approved its nominated directors and auditors, agreed to an annual vote on executive compensation and approved the executive compensation packages put before them. They also voted against requiring the company to offer further disclosures of its political activities, such as lobbying.
After the meeting, CEO Nick DeIuliis said the company is optimistic about its ability to drive down the cost of producing natural gas from the Utica Shale, a formation deeper than the Marcellus that most other oil and gas companies believe cannot yet compete with the Marcellus economically.
Consol believes it can and that the Utica wells the company is drilling now will prove that, Mr. DeIuliis said.
He also said the time for selling its Bailey Mine Complex in southwestern Pennsylvania “is looking good right now.”
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Senate blocks overturn of Obama rule on methane venting

Matthew  Daly reports for the Associated Press:

In a surprising win for environmentalists and Democrats and a blow to the fossil-fuel industry, the Senate on Wednesday failed in a bid to reverse an Obama-era regulation restricting harmful methane emissions that escape from oil and gas wells on federal land.

The vote was 51-49 in the Republican-led Senate with three GOP lawmakers – Maine’s Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona – joining forces with the Democrats to block efforts to overturn the rule.

Graham and Collins had publicly opposed the repeal effort, but McCain’s vote surprised many on both sides of the debate.

Read the full story here


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What’s new with e-waste recycling in New Jersey?

Scott Brubaker, deputy director of the division of solid and hazardous waste at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), discusses changes that, as of Jan. 9, 2017, expand and strengthen the state’s electronic waste recycling law.

The law had already required manufacturers of computers and televisions to recycle their worn-out products when they enter the waste stream. The amendments add printers and fax machines to the products that must be recycled and applies the law to schools and government offices as well.


It also insures that all geographic areas of the state have convenient droop-off locations for worn-out e-waste products and it gives the DEP more enforcement authority.

Interview recorded on April 12, 2017 at the annual meeting of the Association of New Jersey Recyclers (ANJR)

#ANJR #recycling #Ewaste #NJDEP #DEP #computers #TVs #televisions #printers #faxmachines

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NJ seafood restaurant off the hook in flesh-eating lawsuit

A N.J. restaurant isn’t liable for serving a woman who ate raw shellfish, and then developed a flesh-eating bacteria.


Tom Davis reports for Brick Patch:

A Jersey Shore restaurant isn’t liable for serving a woman who ate raw shellfish, and then developed a flesh-eating bacteria that caused her amputate her leg, a judge ruled this past week
Maureen Horan of Pennsylvania sued The Windrift Hotel and Resort, a beachfront vacation spot in Avalon, after contracting an illness after the July 30, 2010 visit to the resorts, a just ruled on Friday.
Two days after, Horan ate three raw clams from the menu’s “Jersey Shore Sampler,” according to nj.com. She was hospitalized with what doctors said was a Vibrio vulnificus sepsis infection and fasciitis.
Doctors later amputated her leg to stop the further spread of bacteria, the report said. The Cape May County Board of Health food inspector also found several violations.
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