EnviroPolitics Blog

Candidate for NJ governor seeks to chop Highlands logging

Tom Johnson writes for NJ Spotlight:

Sen. Lesniak moves to keep chainsaws, earthmovers, and wood chippers out of forested preserve, source of drinking water for millions of New Jerseyans

logging

The Legislature may throw a roadblock into plans to begin logging in the New Jersey Highlands.

Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Union) yesterday said he will sponsor a bill to prohibit logging in the 860,000 acres of forested expanse and the source of drinking water for more than 6 million residents.

The legislation is designed to close a loophole in the original law establishing protections for the Highlands and also to shut the door on a pilot to allow limited logging on hundreds of acres of land at the Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

The project, pending before the state Department of Environmental Protection, has caused a sharp rift between New Jersey Audubon and most of New Jersey’s environmental organizations, who view it as undermining one of the key provisions of the Highlands law, preserving mature forests.

“It’s something that shouldn’t happen in the Highlands,’’ said Lesniak, referring to the plan to allow trees to be felled at the Sparta Mountain. He added the bill might prevent the project from moving forward.

“It is designed to do that, for sure,’’ said Lesniak, a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this June. “We’re hoping it will send a message to the DEP to slow down what they are doing.’’

The controversy surrounds a stewardship plan put together by New Jersey Audubon and the DEP that would allow trees to be logged at the wildlife management area, a 3,4000-acre preserve straddling Morris and Sussex counties and four townships.

About 10 percent of the forested area would be cut, a plan proponents argue would allow the young forest to develop and enhance wildlife diversity while at the same time protecting water resources. The plan expands a smaller effort to create a habitat for the golden-winged warbler, a songbird experiencing rapid declines in its population in the state.

Lesniak’s proposal drew praise from environmentalists who joined him at a press conference in the State House.

“We support this legislation to protect our forests from logging in the name of stewardship,’’ said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “Our forests were bought for all of us to protect the environment, preserve habitat for important wildlife species, and safeguard clean water.’’

Besides the logging ban, Lesniak also is sponsoring another bill that would designate all state-owned lands as adhering to the so-called Landscape Project. The program, overseen by the DEP, is designed to help preserve and protect endangered plant species found in New Jersey.

“There is a real danger from the equipment that would be used in logging that would go through wetlands and other sensitive, ecologically important areas,’’ Lesniak said.

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EPA ‘ditch’ protections will soon become states’ problem

COURTESY OF DNREC WETLAND MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

A photo of a Delmarva bay in spring shows the wetland flooded. In summer and fall this same wetland is dry.Under Obama’s Waters of the U.S. Rule this isolated wetland would be protected, if Trump withdraws the rule,it would not be protected under the Clean Water Act.

Susan Phillips reports for StateImpact:

On the campaign trail, President Trump promised to get rid of regulations, especially those designed to protect the environment. One of those regulations has to do with water. In fact very small bodies of water. It’s often referred to as the Waters of the U.S. Rule (WOTUS), or the clean water rule, and it’s the Obama administration’s attempt to define which isolated wetlands, or intermittent streams, are regulated under the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972.

The Trump administration is expected to announce this week a reversal of the rule, which was challenged in court soon after it was enacted in 2015 and has since been blocked from enforcement.

When Congress passed the Clean Water Act 25 years ago, it defined waters that would need some protection from pollution as “navigable.” For most of us that means big enough to float a boat. But when it comes to pollution sources, the need to provide clean water extends upstream of large river systems.

“Everyone agrees it doesn’t strictly mean navigable anymore,” says Owen McDonough, with the National Association of Home Builders – one of the industry groups that opposes WOTUS. “We’re not talking about, for instance, things like the Susquehanna River, or Chesapeake Bay. But as you get farther and farther upstream, into headwaters of streams, that’s been a pretty difficult line to draw.”

McDonough says the gray area included intermittent or ephemeral streams, those that may not flow unless there’s a heavy rain, or isolated wetlands, or ponds. Those areas that are sometimes land, sometimes water.

Over the years, Congress tried and failed to clarify the rule. Past administrations tried and failed as well. And the courts seemed to add to the confusion over what among these tiny waterways deserved protection from pollution discharge and run-off, and what didn’t.

This photo shows the same Delmarva Bay as above but in summer. These coastal plain wetlands are seasonally wet, fed by groundwater and rain.

COURTESY OF DNREC WETLAND MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

This photo shows the same Delmarva Bay as above but in summer. These coastal plain wetlands are seasonally wet in winter and spring, fed by groundwater and rain. They become dry in summer and fall.

Everyone said they wanted clarity

In 2015, Obama Administration tried once and for all to define exactly what would be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act. After several years of research, including analysis of 1,200 peer-reviewed studies. the EPA defined a tributary as having a “bed, banks and ordinary high water mark,” which flowed downstream. It defined “adjacent wetlands and waters” as those “within a minimum of 100 feet and within the 100-year floodplain to a maximum of 1,500 feet of the ordinary high water mark” to the regulated tributaries or waterways.

And it included protection for isolated wetlands, like Prairie potholes out west, coastal prairie wetlands in Texas and what’s known locally as Delmarva bays. These are isolated, small wet areas fed by groundwater and seasonal rain. There are more than one thousand of these wetlands in Delaware, where they serve as nurseries for frogs and salamanders.

“They’re really unique and contain rare plant species,” says Mark Biddle, an environmental scientist with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Biddle says Delaware itself doesn’t regulate non-tidal wetlands, so without the federal clean water rule, the Delmarva bays would not be protected from pollution discharges.

Industry has long pushed for clarity on these waters. In the absence of clear definitions, it was up to different regional offices of the Army Corps of Engineers to decide what required a permit and what didn’t. But when the EPA announced the rule in 2015 it garnered criticism from the oil and gas industry, builders, and farmers who think it goes too far.

The Farm Bureau began what it called the “Ditch the Rule” campaign, criticizing the regulation as causing even more confusion for farmers who feared they would need a permit to discharge into every ditch or puddle on their farm.

COURTESY OF DNREC WETLAND MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

An aerial view of a coastal plain ponds in Delaware, also known as Delmarva bays. If the Trump administration scraps the Waters of the U.S. Rule, these waters would not be protected from pollution discharges.

Don Parrish with the American Farm Bureau Federation says the EPA did a bad job listening to their concerns.

“I think as much as anything the administrator really belittled a lot of farmers concerns, the administrator called some of our concerns silly and ludicrous,” he said.

Parrish says the threats to farmers are very real, because not getting a permit carries heavy fines or even jail time. He says the way the rule was written, it made it very difficult for farmers and ranchers to know if they would be breaking the law.

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Congressman from NJ tries again to get Trump tax return

Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-New Jersey)

Herb Jackson reports from The Record‘s Washington Bureau:

Continuing in his quest to examine President Trump’s tax returns, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. tried unsuccessfully Monday night to use a legislative maneuver to force the House to exercise powers granted in a 1924 law.

“The American people have the right to know whether or not their president is operating under conflicts of interest related to international affairs, tax reform, government contracts or otherwise,” said Pascrell, D-Paterson.

Pascrell’s “privileged resolution” tried to compel the Ways and Means Committee to use its power to obtain Trump’s tax returns and make them available to the full House, which would in effect make them public.

Pascrell used a provision of the rules that lets members raise questions of privileges affecting the entire House, and Pascrell said his measure fit that description because it involved Congress serving to check on the power of the executive branch. But Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican presiding in the chamber, ruled that Pascrell was trying to direct a committee to meet, and that did not meet the standard. Pascrell appealed, and the majority tabled his appeal in a largely party-line vote of 299-185-2.

Pascrell said he was pleased that two Republicans voted “present” rather than with the majority, and one of them, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, agreed to sign a letter Pascrell is preparing to send to the chairmen of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees seeking disclosure.

“This is going to be a slow process,” Pascrell said. “I knew it when i got in.”

Pascrell’s resolution noted that there are nearly 1.1 million signatures on a petition on a White House website calling for the immediate release of Trump’s tax returns along with necessary information to etermine whether he is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars federal officials from receiving gifts or things of value from foreign governments.

A 1924 law used twice before in history allows the chairmen of the House and Senate committees that write tax policy to compel the Treasury Department to provide copies of any citizen’s confidential tax information. Pascrell on Feb. 1 asked the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Texas Republican Kevin Brady, to invoke the power. Brady rejected the request, and he was backed up by fellow Republicans in a party-line committee vote on Feb. 14.

In offering a privileged resolution, Pascrell argued that his measure deserved to be brought up ahead of measures posted for votes by the majority. The maneuver was used last year by House conservatives to force a vote on impeaching the director of the Internal Revenue Service, but a last-minute deal prevented an impeachment vote.

The “privileged resolution” is more often used by the minority party, currently the Democrats. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tried to force a vote on a change to gun control policy in 2015, for example, and her effort had the same result as Pascrell’s.

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Pipeline will cross 2,000 streams, wetlands, roads in PA

Sunoco Logistics says it expects no problems through construction and beyond, though environmental groups across the state fear the worst.

Dillon Carr reports for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Freshly approved permits in hand, Sunoco Logistics is digging away on its Mariner East 2 pipeline — a project that will quadruple the volume of natural gas liquids flowing across Pennsylvania once the company navigates more than 2,000 streams, wetlands, roads and railways between Western Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia area.

The company says it expects no problems through construction and beyond, though environmental groups across the state fear the worst.

“When they get it wrong, people die or lose homes, water quality, air quality. They have long-term repercussions,” said Melissa Marshall, community advocate with the Mountain Watershed Association.

The Melcroft-based conservation group, with Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Clean Air Council, appealed a recent DEP decision to permit construction of the pipeline.

Judge Bernard A. Labuskes Jr. of the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board on Thursday rejected a request by the environmental groups to reconsider a decision he made a week earlier to not block the DEP-issued permits and thus halt pipeline construction.

A hearing is scheduled to start Wednesday before Labuskes to consider arguments from the environmental groups about whether the DEP review process was adequate.

Sunoco is awaiting final water-crossing permits from the Army Corps of Engineers. Company spokesman Jeffrey Shields declined to say where work on the Mariner East 2 pipeline is under way in Pennsylvania.

NEW MILES

Mariner East 2 will cross 36 miles and 270 properties in Westmoreland County; none of the approximately 250 oil and gas companies with production in the county are currently laying pipeline, according to the DEP.

About 580 miles of existing pipelines form an underground spider web across the county. Those include gas transmission and hazardous liquid lines, according to National Pipeline Mapping System data.

Pennsylvania has more than 12,000 miles of large-diameter oil and gas pipelines, with the miles of natural-gas gathering lines expected to at least quadruple by 2030, according to a February 2016 report from the Governor’s Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force.

The Mariner East project of Philadelphia-based Sunoco Logistics carries natural gas liquids from Marcellus and Utica shale gas wells in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia to the company’s Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County, where it is processed, stored and distributed to market.

The initial phase involved Mariner East 1, an older gas pipeline that ran from Philadelphia to Delmont with an additional 50-mile spur to Chartiers, Washington County, that went online in 2014.

A second line — Mariner East 2 — will allow the company to ship more ethane, butane and propane to Marcus Hook.

To traverse the 306 miles from the border with the West Virginia panhandle to the facility outside Philadelphia, crews installing the Mariner East 2 will cross roughly 750 streams, 575 wetlands, 670 roads and 25 railroads.

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CT governor proposes to double can and bottle deposits

Anna Bisaro reports for the New Haven Register:

Raising the refund amount for containers recycled at redemption centers from 5 to 10 cents is expected to bring $12 million in revenue to the state, according to Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget proposal.

Further, it likely would have the added benefit of increasing the redemption rate, keeping more glass and plastic out of the waste stream, said Dennis Schain, spokesman for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Under the current bottle bill, consumers in Connecticut can return soda, water and beer bottles and cans to redemption centers for a 5-cent return on each container. Distributors give unclaimed deposits to the state. The governor’s proposal aims to increase that deposit for each container to 10 cents.

“Since its start in 1980, there has been little change in the deposit amount,” said Chris McClure, a spokesman for the state Office of Policy and Management. Michigan, which has a 10-cent deposit, “reports the highest recycling rate of any state and we would hope to match their results,” McClure said.

The Michigan Department of Treasury reported in 2014 that the state had an average redemption rate of more than 96 percent.

McClure said the provision would not go into effect until July 1, 2018, and the expected $12 million in revenue would be for fiscal 2019.

Based on data provided by DEEP, redemption rates have varied greatly since 2009, with the fourth quarter of 2013 clocking a redemption rate as high as 76.1 percent, but the second quarter of 2016 coming in at 42.3 percent.

If the provision were passed, Connecticut would join Michigan as the only other state that offers 10 cents per bottle or can deposited at a redemption center. Oregon will be going to a deposit of 10 cents per bottle or can in April, according to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

Other states with bottle-redemption bills include California, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont. Most have a 5-cent return value, though California and Vermont offer 15 cents for liquor bottles.

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Low natural gas prices have NJ nukes crying for subsidies

This needs to be fixed or the plants will close,’ according to Ralph Izzo, head of PSEG

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

Ralph Izzo, chairman, chief executive officer and president of PSEG

Public Service Enterprise Group is still talking with state lawmakers about financial incentives for its fleet of nuclear power plants, but it is not saying much about the discussions, although it is raising the prospect of the units closing.

With electricity prices depressed, the Newark company has been quietly lobbying policymakers to help its plants, much the way New York has approved subsidies to keep reactors in the state operating.

The talks have yet to produce any legislation in Trenton, but Ralph Izzo, the chairman, president, and CEO of PSEG, which owns three units in South Jersey, acknowledged Friday the company is “having extensive discussions’’ with policymakers.

Word of the discussions has alarmed consumer advocates and some environmentalists who question why the public should pay to help run those plants, which benefitted from more than a decade of ratepayer support, including just paying off so-called stranded costs associated with deregulation.

“PSEG is clearly raising the rhetoric,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “This is saber-rattling, trying to shake out subsidies for their nuclear fleet.’’

In a call with NJ Spotlight after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Izzo repeated earlier statements that the nuclear plants were currently profitable but noted that may not be the case when the current contracts for the power they produce expire.

“That needs to be fixed or those plants will be closed,’’ Izzo said, the first time he has raised publically the possibility that some power generators have used to convince other states to subsidize the carbon-free electricity the plants produce.

New Jersey gets roughly half of the electricity it needs from nuclear plants, the only conventional power source free of greenhouse-gas emissions. The company is trying to convince officials of the benefits of nuclear, include its lack of air pollution, reliability, and importance to South Jersey’s economy, Izzo said.

In the past, Izzo has frequently called on the federal government to adopt a national policy embracing ways to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and still believes it is the best way to deal with global warming.

More recently, historically low natural gas prices have driven power prices so low that nuclear plants have found it hard competing in the deregulated energy market, causing owners to seek subsidies or get out of the business.

At its own earnings call last week, FirstEnergy repeated its intention to leave the competitive power business and close or sell its power plants, including nuclear units, unless Ohio consider reregulating the business.

Last year, Exelon agreed to buy nuclear reactors in upstate New York after the governor agreed to subsidize the plants with ratepayer payments amounting to nearly a half billion dollars a year.

The low gas prices also contributed to a decision by PSEG to close two coal-fire plants in New Jersey this June. The company reported a write-off of $555 million related to the Mercer and Hudson plants closing on its Friday earnings call.

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