Legislation seeks to protect enviro-settlement funds in NJ

Scott Fallon of The Record reports on legislation in New Jersey that seeks to guarantee that money awarded in environmental damage law suits is used for the intended purpose–cleaning up the local problem that caused the suit to be filed.

When the Christie administration announced the first of a series of multi-million-dollar settlements with Passaic River polluters in 2013, local officials and environmentalists were elated that so much money was going to help restore one of the nation’s most contaminated waterways.

The joy was short-lived.

Of the $355.4 million recovered by New Jersey, about $288 million was taken by Gov. Chris Christie to balance the state budget. Likewise, only $50 million from the state’s $225 million settlement with Exxon Mobil last year, for contamination of properties in Linden and Bayonne, is slated for environmental purposes, with the bulk going to the budget.

Now state lawmakers are trying to block Christie and future governors from diverting environmental court settlements.

Legislation is making its way through Trenton to put a statewide referendum question on the 2017 ballot that would ensure the vast majority of money won in court would be used to restore polluted areas. The bills in the Senate and Assembly would bypass the governor’s veto pen by asking voters to amend the state constitution, much as they did two years ago to ensure the state’s open-space program is consistently funded.

The Senate passed a similar bill last year, but no action was taken in the Assembly. That has led some to question whether Assembly leaders, including Speake

Vincent Prieto, would back the current bill. A spokesman for the Assembly Democrats, who have a majority in that house, did not respond to a request for comment.

Although governors from both parties have taken money from environmental programs to plug budget holes, Christie has brought it to a level never seen before. Along with the court settlements, he has taken more than $1 billion from the state’s popular clean-energy program for the general fund since becoming governor in 2010.

“The fact that the money is stolen regularly by every administration, it is critically important we keep it safe and use it appropriately,” Kelly Mooij, vice president of the New Jersey Audubon Society, told a Senate panel recently.

The Christie administration has a long-standing policy of not commenting on pending legislation.

Read the full story here

Related news coverage:
Making sure pollution settlements go to restoring natural resources 

State hopes to establish prices for natural-resource damages

Environment NJ’s Doug O’Malley on enviro-settlement
money use SCR 39  (Video)


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Can the U.S. Become an Energy Superpower in 2017?

Dave Merrill and Christine Buurma report for Bloomberg:
For decades, America depended on the world for energy. Today, it’s becoming a global supplier of oil and natural gas in its own right. This year, for the first time ever, the U.S. started turning gas from prolific shale formations into liquefied natural gas (LNG) and sending it overseas. In 2017, the country may be exporting more of the heating fuel than
it imports for the first year since the 1950s.
Refurbished pipelines and terminals will come online next year to help unleash the U.S. shale gas boom into the world. But risks still loom. It remains costly to ship U.S. gas to major consumers in Europe and Asia, and President-elect Donald Trump’s trade priorities could make U.S. LNG more expensive than supplies from other producers around the world.

Caught off guard by the shale boom

Just a decade ago, gas supplies from conventional wells were drying up. Major energy companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and Chevron Corp. were planning to spend billions on gas import terminals to offset the decline. The technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, changed everything for gas drillers, allowing them to pull the fuel out of layers of shale rock and touching off the U.S. shale revolution.


Creating a modern pipeline system

America’s frackers are pulling 18 billion cubic feet of gas per day from the Marcellus shale formation in the eastern U.S., more than any other domestic shale deposit. But the U.S. pipeline system was designed only to move gas from the Gulf Coast to cities in the Northeast—not the reverse.
In order to get the gas to the Gulf Coast, where export terminals are being built to send the fuel overseas, pipelines are being re-engineered to flow south. Thousands of miles of bidirectional pipelines are slated to be online in 2017.


Opening the spigot

Among other sources, Cheniere Energy Inc. has contracts with several bidirectional pipelines to receive fracked gas from Marcellus. Cheniere won approval from U.S. regulators to export LNG in 2010, years ahead of competitors. Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal is currently the only operational export terminal in the lower 48 states. That’s about to change, though, as four more terminals are forecast to become operational by 2018 and at least a dozen more have been approved or are pending certification.
 
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New York’s nuclear subsidy attracts New Jersey attention

PSEG chairman and CEO Ralph Izzo (AP photo by Mel Evans )

David Giambusso reports for Politico:


New York’s gargantuan nuclear subsidy is attracting the attention of utility leaders and policy advocates across the river in New Jersey.


Ralph Izzo, the chairman and CEO of PSEG, New Jersey’s largest utility which owns much of the nuclear generation in the state, laid out his vision in June for zero emission credits for nuclear power to keep it competitive with natural gas while also crediting it for not emitting greenhouse gases. Shortly after, New York announced it would give upstate reactors $1 billion in ZEC’s over two years to keep struggling upstate plants afloat.


In an interview with POLITICO New Jersey, former New Jersey governor and administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Christine Todd Whitman said New Jersey should consider doing the same.


“Our Board of Public Utilities is looking very closely at the New York model and the potential for adopting it,” said Whitman, who now works for the pro nuclear group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. “When you think about the outsize role that nuclear plays in clean air … it’s a huge part of it.”


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Lost in Fla. 3 years ago, pet dog found in Paterson, NJ


Katie Sobko reports this heartwarmer for NorthJersey.com.

“Bill Gerstein let his Maltese Pomeranian mix out that day near his law office in Florida as he did most days. He turned his back to answer a phone call, and when he remembered to go out and check on Bella, she was gone.

“Nearly three years later, they were reunited more than 1,200 miles from home at the Paterson Animal Shelter. The dog wound up back in her owner’s arms Tuesday thanks to a microchip.”

To read the full story (and who could resist?) click here


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The man who wants to send Gov. Chris Christie to jail

William Brennan who has filed a criminal complaint against Gov. Christie 


Mike Kelly, columnist for The Record, writes:

Bill Brennan was a man on a self-professed mission on that Tuesday this past September when he drove from his home in Wayne to the federal courthouse in Newark.

Inside a fifth-floor courtroom, David Wildstein, the alleged mastermind of the Bridgegate scandal was on the witness stand telling a jury that Governor Christie, who insisted he knew nothing about the gridlock that clogged Fort Lee’s streets near the George Washington Bridge during a five-day stretch in September 2013, actually was informed about the traffic jams as they were taking place.
Brennan, 50, a former Teaneck firefighter with a history of filing lawsuits and other court actions against government officials, had heard enough.
He left the courthouse and drove straight to Fort Lee, where he signed a criminal complaint charging Christie with official misconduct for not taking action to alleviate what officials in the crowded borough insist was a serious emergency. 

What seemed at the time to be little more than a quirky, Quixotic legal stunt by a man long-regarded as one of North Jersey’s most nettlesome gadflies, has now taken on a life of its own

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Late changes to 5-year EPA fracking study downplay risks

Ray Kemble holds two samples of well water from his neighborhood in Dimock, PA.
He says the water was contaminated after fracking. – 

Top officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year made critical changes at the eleventh hour to a highly anticipated, five-year scientific study of hydraulic fracturing’s effect on the nation’s drinking water. The changes, later criticized by scientists for lacking evidence, played down the risk of pollution that can result from the well-drilling technique known as fracking.
Scott Tong and Tom Scheck report for Marketplace:
Documents obtained by APM Reports and Marketplace show that in the six weeks before the study’s public release, officials inserted a key phrase into the executive summary that said researchers did not find evidence of “widespread systemic impacts” of fracking by the oil and gas industry on the nation’s drinking water.
Earlier draft versions emphasized more directly that fracking has contaminated drinking water in some places.
The documents also show that the news release accompanying the scientific study was changed on June 3, 2015, the day before it was made public. A draft displayed a conclusion that the EPA had identified “potential vulnerabilities” to drinking water. But the final release dated June 4, concluded: “Assessment shows hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources and identifies important vulnerabilities to drinking water resources.”
In a conference call with reporters about the study on the day it was released, the EPA’s deputy administrator, Tom Burke, highlighted the lack of “widespread, systemic impacts” as the agency’s top finding.

In fact, scientists had found evidence in some places that fracking activity had polluted drinking water supplies.
In all, the agency identified more than two dozen instances in which hydraulic fracturing had an impact on water resources. The agency also identified hundreds of other spills, many of which reached soil and water.
It’s not clear precisely who inserted or ordered the new phrasing. But emails acquired via the Freedom of Information Act show EPA officials, including press officers, met with key advisers to President Obama to discuss marketing strategy a month before the study’s release. The emails also show EPA public relations people exchanging a flurry of messages between 4 and 11 p.m. on the eve of the study’s release.

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