AECOM gets $41.5M for NYC wastewater resiliency

AECOM, an integrated global infrastructure firm, announced that it has been awarded a five-year term $41.5-million program and construction management contract as part of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s Wastewater Resiliency Program.

The program is built on the city’s Wastewater Resiliency Plan, which was released in October 2013 following Superstorm Sandy to prepare for the impacts of future storms. The plan provides a scientific analysis of severe weather events and identifies more than 500 construction projects to harden the city’s wastewater facilities.
As part of this program, AECOM will provide program and construction management for the design and construction of $200 million in resiliency upgrades for the city’s 14 wastewater treatment plants and more than 50 pumping stations located throughout its five boroughs.
“Remembering the damage that Superstorm Sandy inflicted on New York City, coupled with the predicted future increase of extreme weather and the well documented rising sea level, the need to make the city’s infrastructure more resilient is critically important,” said AECOM’s Paul Storella, vice president, NYC metro water business unit leader.

“We are honored to work with the DEP and look forward to meeting its needs by delivering a program that aims to increase resiliency and, in turn, better protect the city’s surrounding waters and public health.”

“The Department of Environmental Protection has put together an intelligent plan to make its wastewater infrastructure more resilient, and our team is very excited to partner with them and to bring AECOM’s global expertise to this important New York City program,” said Chris Toomey, AECOM senior vice president and program director.
Work is expected to be completed in five years.
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The Bridgegate case goes to the jury which has questions

Bridgegate: November 1, 2016
The arguments have ended and the jury finally is deliberating in the long-running Bridgegate trial. NJTV NEWS’ Michael Aron said the smiles that have been on the faces of defendants Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni in recent weeks vanished today when the judge provided answers to three jury questions. Those answers were seen as helping the prosecution.  See video above


Bridgegate: October 31, 2016
Yesterday, in closing arguments, Bridge Anne Kelly’s defense attorney, Michael Critchley, told the jury that the prosecution’s case hinges on the testimony of their star witness and former associate of Governor Christie, David Wildstein. Critchley labeled  Wildstein as “a congenital liar” and “the Bernie Madoff of New Jersey politics.” See video below

Related news coverage:
Jury asks judge about Kelly and Baroni’s Bridgegate motives
Defense lawyers and prosecutors bicker at Bridgegate trial
Defense Furious After Judge Advises Jury About Rules

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Amish object to well-brine spraying on their rural Pa. roads

Siri Lawson holds a jam jar full of mud and fluids from roads after  brine was applied to the road outsidef her house
There are 44 miles of dirt roads in Pennsylvania’s rural Farmington Township, Warren County, hard against the New York state line, and it’s not uncommon to see horse-drawn Amish buggies clip-clopping up and down them. In summer, Amish children walk the roads barefoot.
Don Hopey writes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
It’s also not uncommon over the last decade to see tanker trucks spraying and spreading thousands of gallons of salty “brine,” wastewater from gas and oil well drilling, onto those same roads.
Supervisors of the township, located north of the Allegheny National Forest, say their constituents want them to keep road dust down for health and aesthetic reasons, and the tanker truck spraying is an economical way to do that — they don’t pay a dime to the two companies that apply the wastewater.
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But more than 50 Amish who live along and travel those dirt roads, and their “English” neighbors, have signed petitions asking the supervisors to stop what they say is the too frequent and excessive spreading of briny liquids that are sickening residents, polluting nearby streams and farm ponds, making the roads slick and dangerous to drive and quickly rusting out cars, trucks, trailers and buggies.

At an Amish farm and sawmill along Cemetery Road, one of the township’s dirt lanes, Noah Byler took a break from inspecting a compound bow and arrow set in the back of a neighbor’s pickup to say his family is opposed to the brine application.
“It seems every time they put brine down on the road he gets sick,” said Mr. Byler, who is Amish, pointing to his 12-year-old brother, Ammon, who stands along the road when waiting for his school bus. “Last summer he had to go to the hospital once for his breathing problems. He has an inhaler now.”



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Dennis Hart named to lead Chemistry Council of NJ

Dennis Hart 


The man who formerly oversaw drought control programs and infrastructure trust funds for the New Jersey  Department of Environmental Protection has been named as the new executive director of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey (CCNJ)


Dennis Hart joins the CCNJ after six years with the Utility and Transportation Contractors
Association of New Jersey where he is currently the director of utility
operations.

In a career spanning more than thirty-five years,  Hart spent a majority of it working
at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection starting as an enforcement case
manager in the Division of Water Resources, and rising to the rank of assistant commissioner
of Environmental Regulation. He was later appointed administrator of the New Jersey Water
Supply Program by Governor McGreevey to manage New Jersey’s efforts in responding to
one of the worst droughts in the state’s history. 


As assistant commissioner for Environmental Regulation, Hart led a staff of 550 employees
within the Divisions of Water Quality, Environmental Financing Program, Solid and
Hazardous Waste Management, Air Quality Permitting, Pollution Prevention and Permit
Coordination, and the Environmental Safety Health and Analytical Programs, managing an
operating budget of more than $41 million. 


In 2003, he was appointed executive director of the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust, where for seven years he
managed a portfolio of loans and investments in excess of $4 billion. During his tenure he completely transformed the program, which
was recognized by the USEPA in 2007 with the Pisces Award for Clean Water Financing Innovation. 


“Dennis has the right regulatory background and management experience that will help advance CCNJ’s mission, and advocacy
priorities,”said Shawn Blythe, chairman of the CCNJ Executive Committee and Board of Directors. “I know that the entire Executive
Committee, Board of Directors, and staff share my confidence that Dennis Hart will be an excellent addition to the CCNJ team.” 


Hart succeeds Hal Bozarth, who was CCNJ’s executive director for more than thirty years until his passing on June 12, 2016. 


Hart will assume his new role by mid-November, and will be the keynote speaker at CCNJ’s Plant Operations Management
Workshop at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on December 6. 


The Chemistry Council of New Jersey, founded in 1955, is the trade and advocacy organization that represents the interests of more
than 75 New Jersey manufacturers in the business of chemistry. Its membership consists of large and small companies that are part of New Jersey’s
chemical, pharmaceutical, consumer products, petroleum, flavor & fragrances, and precious metals industries.


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Bridgegate: Closing arguments expected today

Prosecutors are expected to begin closing arguments today at the finale of the federal trial of two former allies of Gov. Chris Christie accused of closing access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to exact revenge on a political rival.

The Asbury Park Press‘s Paul Berger and Peter J. Sampson report:

The closing arguments, coming at the end of a six-week trial in Newark, were unexpectedly delayed Thursday morning when U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton sent the jury home citing “legal issues.”
              

NJTV NEWS correspondent Michael Aron’s trial update above

 
Prosecutors and defense lawyers declined to explain the reason for the delay. But the trial, which has run smoothly and with few delays, appears to be headed towards a bumpy denouement.

During a closed-door conference on Tuesday, where lawyers hammered out language for the judge’s instructions to the jury, defense lawyers strongly objected when Wigenton decided that prosecutors do not need to prove that Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni closed the bridge access lanes with the intention of punishing the mayor of Fort Lee.

Instead, Wigenton said that prosecutors must prove only that the pair deliberately misused the bridge, which is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Defense lawyers argued that such an instruction fundamentally changed the nature of the charges against their clients.

The punitive nature of the closures was a central theme of the government’s indictment of Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, and of Baroni, the governor’s former top executive appointee at the Port Authority.

Although the trial elicited plenty of evidence and testimony that Christie’s allies bullied or punished perceived enemies, prosecutors provided little evidence that Christie’s staff saw Fort Lee’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, as someone who deserved such treatment.

“I thought I was defending a charge that at its core, beginning to end, was an allegation that Bridget Kelly and Mr. Baroni entered into activity to intentionally punish Mayor Sokolich for not endorsing,” Kelly’s lawyer, Michael Critchley, told Wigenton, according to a transcript of the conference.

 
“I thought that’s what we were doing for the last six weeks,” Critchley added. “Now, I don’t know what I’m defending.”
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Critchley and Jennifer Mara, an attorney for Baroni, repeated that objection, as well as others, on Wednesday after the judge read the instructions to the jury.
 

Such objections could be used as the basis for an appeal, should one or both of the defendants be found guilty.

One veteran criminal defense lawyer contacted by The Record on Thursday, Joseph Hayden, of Hackensack, agreed with the defense.

“I think it’s a substantial legal issue,” Hayden said. “There is a body of law that prosecutors need not prove the motive of a defendant, but here it is the spine of all the charges.”

In essence, Hayden said, prosecutors have amended the indictment to redraw what they have to prove to the jury.

But five other defense attorneys and former prosecutors said Wigenton was correct to remove the motive for the lane closures from the jury instructions.

“It goes against everything we all see on TV, which is that motive is all people talk about,” said Dan Wenner, a partner at Day Pitney in Connecticut. “But in most cases, motive is not an element of the offense.”

The lawyers explained that the reason why someone broke the law is not central to the jury’s duty, which is to decide whether someone broke the law.
 

But they also agreed that the motive for the alleged crime is likely to be a central issue for prosecution and defense during closing arguments.

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Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf courses are under fire

Nothing named Trump can escape the reputation of the Republican presidential candidate, Sam Newhouse writes for Metro:
For Donald Trump’s Trump National Golf Courses in New Jersey, they’re facing a double whammy.
At Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia, located in Pine Hill in South Jersey, a gay employee is suing, claiming he was pelted with golf balls and rocks by coworkers, and supervisors did nothing to help him.
Eleazar Andres, of Lindenwold, filed a lawsuit against the Trump National Golf Course in May 2015 saying he called a f—-t in May 2014, NJ.com reported.
Andres alleged that fellow employees threw rocks and golf balls at him, even though he had to seek medical treatment. He claims supervisors didn’t take action, and after he filed a police report because he no longer felt safe going to work, he was fired. 
The lawsuit became an issue on the campaign trail after Democrat Hillary Clinton brought it up.
“It is deeply disturbing that instead of stepping in to stop the tormentors, Trump’s golf club turned on the victim for coming forward,” Clinton said during a speech Tuesday in Manchester, New Hampshire. “If that’s how Donald Trump runs his business, what does that say about how he would run our country?”
Secondly, Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in Central Jersey is facing criticism from Democratic senators who say the U.S. Women’s Open needs to find a new golf course because of Trump’s various comments about women.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey (who is facing federal bribery and corruption charges) joined fellow Democratic senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Edward Markey of Massachusetts in a call for the U.S. Women’s Open to move from Trump National Golf Club Bedminster to a new venue.
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