New Pennsylvania Legislature to consider bills on gambling, property taxes and retirement benefits

Pennsylvania state Capitol in Harrisburg (Rebecca Droke photo)

Karen Langley reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania legislators return to the Capitol this week to start the new year with plenty of old business — and a fresh dose of political pressure — awaiting them.
There are no shortage of big-ticket issues. Lawmakers are likely to consider bills regulating and taxing online gambling, reducing or even eliminating property taxes and again trying to change the retirement benefits for future state and public school workers.
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And, as it has for successive years, the commonwealth’s billion-dollar budget woes will drive the agenda.
“This is going to be a difficult budget year,” said Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills. “I think we all know that.”
With majorities that will grow even larger with Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremonies, Republican legislative leaders, some of whom have hinted at running for governor, will be an even greater force for Gov. Tom Wolf to reckon with.
For the Democratic governor, it’s his last full year to make an impact before asking voters to reward him with a second term.
Lawmakers’ return on Tuesday will be brief. Votes on legislation aren’t expected right away, and after swearing-in day, they won’t reconvene in the Capitol until Jan. 23.
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Bayonne wind turbine’s repair cost still being negotiated

Jonathan Lin reports for The Jersey Journal:
Nine months after the city’s wind turbine underwent complicated repairs due to a broken bearing, the cost of those repairs is still being negotiated, an official said.
Bayonne Municipal Utilities Authority Executive Director Tim Boyle said on Friday that the MUA and its water contractor are still negotiating the cost with turbine manufacturer Leitner-Poma.
The MUA — which will be dissolved as an autonomous agency and become a division within the city Department of Public Works on Jan. 1 — originally estimated the total cost at $298,000.
But Boyle has noted that Leitner-Poma encountered difficulties during repairs on the 260-foot turbine at Oak and Fifth streets that later drove that estimate “skyward,” which in turn has prolonged negotiations.
“There’s been some movement toward resolving it,” Boyle told The Jersey Journal this week, adding that the MUA’s dissolution is not expected to impact cost negotiations.
The MUA official has previously stressed that the bearing that broke was supposed to last 20 years but only lasted three.
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What happens to the Department of Energy’s revolution?

An array of solar panels are seen in Oakland, Calif. (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

Chris Mooney reports for the Washington Post:
As the Obama administration prepares to leave office, it is seeking to underscore just how much has changed in the last eight years in the way we get energy — and to take some credit for it.
Since 2008, costs for wind and solar have plunged by 40 and 60 percent, respectively, according to an analysis provided by the Energy Department. That’s even as the United States has installed 100 gigawatts, or billion watts, of generating capacity in the two technologies combined (75 gigawatts of wind, 25 of solar).
Meanwhile, we now have 500,000 electric vehicles on the road, thanks largely to a 70 percent drop in battery costs. The federal government can’t take credit for all of this (industry invested too, states also promoted renewable energy, and so on), but it helped drive much of it through research investments over decades, said David Friedman, the Energy Department’s acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
“The Department of Energy has really changed the world when it comes to energy, and that’s part of a global competition that’s underway,” said Friedman. 
“Electric vehicles, we can take very I think direct credit for the lithium ion battery of today,” Friedman added. “That core chemistry…was developed and improved at Argonne National Labs through DOE funding.”
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One question asked, “If DOE’s topline budget … were required to be reduced 10% over the next four fiscal years [does] the Department have any recommendations as to where those reductions should be made?”

Another asked, “What is the Department’s role with respect to the development of offshore wind?” This technology, the next step for ramping up wind energy in the United States, is finally arriving in this country at a time when the next president has been particularly critical of offshore wind farms, having battled them in Scotland.
The U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, in Rhode Island, just became operational last week and in a massive auction, the Norway-based oil major Statoil set a new record by laying down nearly $ 42.5 million on a bid for a huge offshore area off the coast of New York. It was “the highest bid ever for a U.S. offshore wind energy area,” according to the American Wind Energy Association.
“We believe that the area that we have now leased…has the potential to develop more than 1 gigawatt of offshore wind, which is a sizable offshore wind park,” said Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s executive vice president for New Energy Solutions. “The biggest ones in Europe are about that size.”
While this type of slow greening of the U.S. energy system should continue no matter who is president, it’s less clear if the clean energy research investments that Friedman hails will remain a priority at the federal level — or if, instead, countries like China and Germany will take the next steps. (The Energy Department invested $ 2.4 billion in wind energy technology research from 1976 through 2014.)
Under Trump, the Department of Energy is set to be run by former Texas Republican governor Rick Perry, who once argued that the department shouldn’t exist — and yet is credited with a wind industry expansion in Texas on his watch. Still, there are fears that his nomination suggests a realignment of department priorities towards fossil fuels and away from renewables.
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Fish seek cooler waters, leaving some fishing nets empty

Photo by Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times



Erica Goode reports for The New York Times:


POINT JUDITH, R.I. — There was a time when whiting were plentiful in the waters of Rhode Island Sound, and Christopher Brown pulled the fish into his long stern trawler by the bucketful.


“We used to come right here and catch two, three, four thousand pounds a day, sometimes 10,” he said, sitting at the wheel of the Proud Mary — a 44-footer named, he said, after his wife, not the Creedence Clearwater Revival song — as it cruised out to sea.


But like many other fish on the Atlantic Coast, whiting have moved north, seeking cooler waters as ocean temperatures have risen, and they are now filling the nets of fishermen farther up the coast.


Studies have found that two-thirds of marine species in the Northeast United States have shifted or extended their range as a result of ocean warming, migrating northward or outward into deeper and cooler water.


Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring and monkfish, to name just a few species, have all moved to accommodate changing temperatures. 

Read the full story here 


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Court orders EPA to review its oil and gas waste rules

Truck delivering fracking waste water to a recycling plant in Pa. StateImpact photo



Jon Hurdle reports for StateImpact:

A federal court directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review and possibly update its regulations on oil and gas waste, in a decision that was welcomed by environmental groups who had sued the agency, claiming its rules have failed to keep pace with the fracking boom.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a consent decree late Wednesday saying the EPA must review the regulations, and if necessary issue a new rulemaking if it deems an update to be appropriate. The actions must take place by March 2019, the court said.
The consent decree, which is designed to settle a dispute between two parties without either admitting guilt or liability, is the outcome of a lawsuit against EPA by seven environmental groups who claimed that the agency has failed to review oil and gas waste regulations, as required every three years under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.
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In the suit, filed in May, the plaintiffs said existing regulations are too weak to stop the escape of toxic materials such as benzene and mercury that have been used in the fracking boom since the mid-2000s.
The environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Integrity Project argued that EPA should use the law to stop drillers spreading fracking waste on fields and roads, and require landfills and pond that receive fracking waste to install liners that prevent leakage.
The suit also urged EPA to use the rules to address the disposal of waste water in underground injection wells, a practice that has been linked to earthquakes in several states.
On Thursday, the plaintiffs welcomed the court’s decision. 
“This consent decree is a step in the right direction toward fulfilling EPA’s duty to the public,” said Adam Kron, senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project.  “EPA has known since 1988 that its rules for oil and gas wastes aren’t up to par, and the fracking boom has made them even more outdated.”
Amy Mall, senior policy analyst for NRDC, said that any move by the incoming Trump administration to block the decree would leave the government in violation of the court order. “We are certainly very hopeful that the incoming administration will not violate the federal government’s legal commitments,” she said.
Among the incidents that could have been averted by updated EPA regulations, was one in Tioga County, Pennsylvania in 2012 when a pond holding 6 million gallons of fracking waste water leaked pollutants including strontium and arsenic into groundwater and a nearby stream.
The EPA referred an inquiry to the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to comment. A spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute could not be reached for comment.
The other plaintiffs were Earthworks, San Juan Citizens Alliance, West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, and the Responsible Drilling Alliance.
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Utility employs Google mapping cars to sniff out gas leaks

Using the same cars that take pictures for Google Maps, Google and PSE&G are able to detect areas with the most intense methane gas leaks caused by aging, cast iron pipes and replace them with plastic pipes. 


It’s a big job. The state has approved the utility’s spending of $905 million for the replacements. PSE&G says even more is needed. Andrew Schmertz has the story for NJTV NEWS. 

Google Street View car equipped with methane detectors (Photo: PSE&G)


James M. O’Neil reports for The Record:


To prioritize which aging gas mains to replace, the utility used a Google Street View car equipped with methane sensors.

PSE&G collaborated on the leak detection effort with the Environmental Defense Fund, Google and Colorado State University. The utility learned about work EDF and Google had done mapping gas leaks in Boston and Indianapolis, and asked to work together to do the same in North Jersey.

The EDF collaborators have since mapped gas leaks in Dallas, Syracuse, Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh and elsewhere. This was the first project in which the EDF group worked directly with a utility to map out leaks.
The PSE&G gas main replacement project is designed to improve safety, waste less gas and reduce emissions of methane — the main component of natural gas — that contribute to climate change.


“Reducing methane emissions is one of the quickest ways we have to protect the climate,” said EDF President Fred Krupp.

“It takes courage to invite an environmental group to come sniffing around for leaks in their system. By tackling these leaks faster, PSE&G will achieve a lot more environmental benefit for their infrastructure dollars.”

Read the full story here


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