Osprey population flying high again over New Jersey coast

Back in 1975, New Jersey’s osprey population plummeted to fewer than 70 breeding pairs. The latest count shows 515 nesting osprey couples and 150 breeding pairs of eagles, most of them along Barnegat Bay.


Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, a nonprofit that builds and repairs marshland nesting platforms for the birds, is facing potential funding cutbacks and seeks volunteer support.

Brenda Flanagan has the story for NJTV NEWS.




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The March for Science on April 22 – A good idea or not?

                                                                 July 2016 climate protest in Philadelphia  (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

NewsWorks reports today:

Scientists and science fans are planning a March for Science on April 22nd, calling for the attention “to defend the vital role science plays in health, safety, economies and governments.” As a response to the election of President Trump, the march has sparked a debate within the science community.
Earlier this morning on Radio Times, Marty Moss-Coane talked with climate scientist and Columbia University professor, James Hansen, about science’s role in political activity. He said he wants to focus on solutions.  
“We’ve filled this law suit against the federal government to try to force them to do their job,” Hansen said. “The Citizens Climate Lobby who advocate a carbon fee and dividend. We need these correct policies.”
However, Robert Young, a geologist from Western Carolina University said that politicizing science will not help with creating better science-based policy.

“We’re not going to convenience the professional climate change skeptics,” Young said. “Rather than marching on Washington, I’ve suggested that we need to march into our local communities.”
To hear more about what the science community is discussing, listen to the full interview on Radio Times.
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How do you say Happy Birthday, Jacob in Swedish?

From the New York Times‘ Daily Briefing, Chris Stanford writes:

Over a dinner of crayfish in Stockholm in 1924, two men decided that Sweden needed its own car manufacturer, one that would make vehicles suitable for the harsh local climate and whose guiding principle was safety.

From their idea came Volvo — a Latin translation of “I roll” — which rolled its first car off the assembly line 90 years ago today. The original model, the ÖV4, was affectionately called “Jakob.”


A Volvo shipment to the U.S. in 1960.
Stan Wayman/LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

The Swedes were hardly the first to produce automobiles; Karl Benz and Henry Ford, among others, had been at it for decades.
In 1999, Ford Motor bought Volvo, which was then sold in 2010 to Geely, a Chinese automaker, for $1.3 billion.

For the new owner, buying Volvo was momentous: “We are like a poor farm boy pursuing a famous movie star,” Li Shufu, Geely’s chairman, said.

By the end of next year, the company, which is still based in Sweden, plans to make up to 100,000 cars annually in South Carolina.

It’s a head-spinning tale of globalization that started over a humble meal almost a century ago.

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How a judge scrapped Pa. families’ tainted-well verdict


Sharon Kelly and Steve Horn report for DESMOG:
For many residents of Carter Road in Dimock, Pennsylvania, it’s been nearly a decade since their lives were turned upside down by the arrival of Cabot Oil and Gas, a company whose Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) wells were plagued by a series of spills and other problems linked to the area’s contamination of drinking water supplies.
With a new federal court ruling handed down late last Friday, a judge unwound a unanimous eight-person jury which had ordered Cabot to pay a total of $4.24 million over the contamination of two of those families’ drinking water wells. In a 58 page ruling, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the country. Read more

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DEP chief celebrates 30 years of recycling in New Jersey

DEP Commissioner Bob Martin celebrates NJ’s 30-year-old  Recycling Act

NJDEP Commissioner Bob Martin yesterday celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the enactment of the New Jersey’s Recycling Law.
He addressed an overflow crowd at the Spring Meeting of ANJR, the Association of New Jersey Recyclers, held at the Rutgers Eco-Complex in Burlington County.

More than 200 ANJR members attended the event yesterday in Burlington County
 
The commissioner noted that the Recycling Act– the nation’s first– had set a recycling goal of 50 percent for all municipal solid waste. New Jersey has never been able to surpass 40 percent but Martin said his department is committed to enhancing household recycling and is implementing several initiatives, including a new web app that will make it easier for residents to participate by clarifying what materials can be recycled and what cannot, on county-by-county basis.

The DEP also is moving to increase recycling inspections in conjunction with County Environmental Health Agencies, he said.

Martin also hailed the recent enactment of legislation that updates and extends a state law governing the recycling of such electronic products as used computers and televisions. He said that the amendments are expected to further increase the recycling of so-called ‘e-waste’ which had already posted a sizable collection increase last year–from 46 million pounds to 53 million pounds.

Taking a bow for his role in recycling was former legislator Paul Contillo who sponsored the Recycling Act in the state Senate. Arthur Albohn, deceased, was the bill’s sponsor in the Assembly.
 
Contillo’s daughter, Angela Andersen, the recycling coordinator in Long Beach Township, also addressed her recycling colleagues, encouraging them to continue to build on the recycling foundation  established by many others, including her father.

Sending messages of congratulations were former Gov. Tom Kean, who signed the recycling legislation into law, and Mary Sheil who was a driving force behind recycling in its early years at the NJDEP.

 
At the business meeting that preceded the commissioner’s address, ANJR applauded outgoing president Dominick D’Altilio for years of service and elected former NJDEP Recycling Chief Guy Watson as its new president.
 

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New Jersey proposes to tighten soot-pollution regulations

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

Fine particulate matter from factories and other sources is linked to respiratory ailments and may cause tens of thousands of premature deaths annually

Polluting smokestack

The state is proposing to tighten an important rule to limit pollution from factories and other businesses that emit a contaminant linked to many respiratory ailments and other illnesses.
In a proposal in the New Jersey Register late last month, the state Department of Environmental Protection is recommending adoption of federal rules governing fine particulate matter, or soot, a pollutant believed to cause tens of thousands of premature deaths a year.
The new regulations are designed to maintain the state’s compliance with the federal air quality standard for particulate matter, a standard that New Jersey only achieved four years ago.
If adopted, the new regulation would require major sources of the pollutant, approximately 270 facilities and about 18,000 minor facilities, to use the best available pollution control technologies when seeking new permits to increase emissions of certain pollutants from their plants or businesses.

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