The fishing’s hot outside nuclear plant in Lacey, NJ

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Snow was falling, temps were near freezing and winter still held New Jersey
in its icy grip earlier this month, but none of that mattered to me.

Brian Donohue reports for the Associated Press:
Because I was headed to the one place in the Garden State where summer lasts forever: Oyster Creek, where the toasty outflow from the nearby nuclear power plant keeps the water temperatures warm enough to keep the fish biting year round.
As the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant, the Oyster Creek Generating Station, sucks in 1.4 billion gallons of water a day from the Forked River to cool its reactor, then pumps the water back out into neighboring Oyster Creek at higher temperatures, NJ.com reported. Come late winter and early spring, the creek becomes — literally and figuratively — the state’s hottest fishing hole.
Species including striped bass, bluefish and flounder that largely migrate to warmer waters or go dormant in winter instead remain in the warm waters of the creek and keep biting through the hardest freezes.
So follow the fishermen like Newman Kessler, who drove two hours in a snowstorm from his home in Ossining, New York.
Donning plaid earmuffs and ski gloves, Kessler cast from the bank with the hope of landing his first striper of 2016.
While the snow kept the number of fishermen to a handful on the Friday I visited — the first since the March 1 opening of the season for striped bass fishing in New Jersey rivers and bays — Kessler said he is used to jockeying with more than 20 anglers for a spot along the banks.
“And more often than not, you’ll see them pulling fish out,” he said.
Before the plant opened in 1969, Oyster Creek was like any one of scores of brackish creeks that empty in the bays — a great spot to catch fish, but generally not until water temperatures begin to rise in late March or April.
It wasn’t long before locals realized the nuclear plant allowed them to get an early start. A well-kept secret among locals for years, the spot has become more popular — and crowded — as word has spread online. On my visit, fishermen were of few words, reluctant to attract any more competition.
 


 
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Court: Demolition of Doris Duke mansion can resume

In this Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015 file photo, a portion of the sprawling main mansion of the Duke Farms estate that tobacco heiress Doris Duke once called home is seen in Hillsborough, NJ.
 

Demolition work will now be allowed to resume at a historic New Jersey mansion once owned by tobacco heiress and socialite
Doris Duke.

Associated Press reporter Bruce Shipkowski writes:

A state appellate court on Friday removed an emergency stay that was issued March 6 at the request of a community group that’s been fighting for months to stop the work. The panel said the group failed to show “a reasonable probability of ultimate success” with their case against The Duke Farms Foundation.


It wasn’t clear Saturday when the demolition work would resume. A large portion of the Hillsborough Township mansion had been torn down the day before the emergency stay was issued earlier this month.


“We are grateful that the courts agreed with us,” Michael Catania, the foundation’s executive director, said Saturday. “We are hoping to get started again (on the demolition) in the near future, but we haven’t set a schedule yet.”

The 67,000-square-foot mansion has been empty since Duke’s death in 1993. Foundation officials say it is in disrepair and would take at least $10 million to fix.

David Brook, a lawyer and a leader of the community group Demolition of Residence is Senseless, or DORIS, said the group has the option to take its case for an emergent motion to the New Jersey Supreme Court. However, he said that was not likely to happen.

“This is a sad day for us, for Hillsborough, for everyone involved,” in this matter, Brook said Saturday.

 

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Marcellus gas royalties bill back in the spotlight in Pa.

                                                                                                                 MariE CUSICK/ STATEIMPACT PA
“The Guaranteed Minimum Royalty Act of 1979 was enacted to avoid some of these predatory practices,” says Bradford County businessman and royalty owner Dave DeCristo. “Obviously people were getting ripped off.”
Royalty advocates were back in Harrisburg Tuesday urging lawmakers to pass legislation to prevent drillers from cheating landowners out of money.
Marie Cusick of State Impact reports:
“The legislature should clearly define ‘royalty’ to prevent the theft of our resources through creative accounting,” says Jackie Root, who heads the state chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners.
Shortly after the Marcellus boom took off, people began complaining some drillers were shortchanging them. Most of the complaints have focused on Chesapeake Energy, which has been sued over the issue around the country. The issue is complicated, and it often revolves around who pays for post-production costs, which the expenses of moving gas from the well to the market and include things like compression, dehydration, and pipeline transport.
In 2013 Rep. Garth Everett (R- Lycoming) introduced a bill to attempt to address the problem. Although the measure was approved by a House committee, it never made it to the floor for a vote. He later blamed the House GOP leadership for blocking it.
Last summer Everett revived the effort. The new bill has 37 co-sponsors from both parties. On Tuesday the House Environmental Resources and Energy committee held an informational hearing and heard testimony from landowners who say they’ve been cheated, as well as representatives from the Game Commission and Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which have also had trouble get paid properly.

 
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At legislative showdown, NJDEP pulls controversial rules

Moving closer to completing a two-year process to invalidate rules proposed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the state Legislature hit the pause button
on Monday, March 7, when the DEP announced at a hearing that it would withdraw its controversial changes and make significant modifications to them.

Ray Cantor, chief assistant to DEP Commissioner Bob Martin, told the Senate Environment and Energy Committee in Trenton “You never get something right
the first time you do it.’’

Cantor said that the department continues to work its way through thousands of pages of public comments submitted on its proposed floodwater and storm hazard rules and expects to reissue a revised set sometime in May.

Listen here to Cantor’s summary of the DEP process and areas where they anticipate changes to be made.

After hearing the department’s commitment to redo the rules, as well as testimony, pro and con, from business and environmental advocates, Chairman Bob Smith said the committee would hold off on voting on the resolution (SCR-66) until the panel has a chance to review DEP’s revised proposal.

Following the hearing, EnviroPolitics, interviewed three of the participants.

Senator Bob Smith, Chairman, NJ Senate Environment and Energy Committee


Dennis Toft, environmental attorney, Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi


Jeff Tittel, New Jersey Sierra Club

Related news story:

State DEP withdraws rule changes, avoids clash with lawmakers


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Feds claim ‘lies and deceit’ on part of NJ Bridgegate pair

Kelly and Baroni.jpg - Amy Newmak and Kevin R. Wexker Record photographers
Bridget Anne Kelly, Bill Baroni- Amy Newman & Kevin R. Wexler photos

Two former top aides to Governor Christie knew they were engaged in wrongdoing when they closed access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish a political rival because they lied about it, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed Friday night.

Abbott Koloff reports in The Record today:
 


An in-depth look at the scandal over the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge and related aftershocks. Click here to launch.
Former Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to the governor, created a massive traffic jam to punish Fort Lee Democratic Mayor Mark Sokolich and engaged in “lies and deceit” by creating a cover story that the lane reductions were part of a traffic study, the prosecutors said.
The filing by U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman and his office was in response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss federal charges against them, which include the alleged misuse of Port Authority resources.
The defendants argued that the charges should be thrown out because, among other things, they are based on vague federal laws that have been twisted to fit the facts of the case. They also said that they did not have “fair warning” that a federal statute applied to their actions, according to court papers.
Baroni and Kelly were indicted on multiple counts related to the lane closures last year while another former top Port Authority executive, David Wildstein, pleaded guilty to his part in the alleged scheme. Authorities say they orchestrated the closure of two of three access lanes to the bridge for four days beginning on Sept. 9, 2013 with the intention of punishing Sokolich for not endorsing Christie’s bid for reelection as governor.
 
Christie has not been implicated by federal prosecutors and has denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme until long afterward.
 
Prosecutors said in Friday’s filing that the attempt by Baroni and Kelly to conceal the true purpose of their actions “negates their contention that they lacked fair warning that their conduct was wrong.” They said the use of a “sham” story about a traffic study to explain the closures was a “lie” that demonstrated “conscious wrongdoing.”
 

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No rail strike in NJ; massive commuting mess averted

Did you hear that collective sigh of relief resounding across northern New Jersey?

Yes, the threatened rail strike that would have resulted in car-choked traffic lanes on New Jersey to New York bridges and tunnels is no longer a worry for thousands of commuters.

 NJ Transit officials and its rail unions have reached a tentative agreement on their long-simmering contract dispute, a day before a planned strike that threatened to paralyze the region.  

Steve Burkert, spokesman for the transit workers union coalition, announces that an agreement has been made averting a possible strike by 11 rail unions working for NJ Transit. Friday March 11, 2016. Newark, NJ, USA (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)


Larry Higgs reports for NJ.com:

No immediate details on the settlement were announced Friday night, or when union members might vote on the proposed accord, but for now commuters can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Gov. Chris Christie added there would be no immediate fare hike.
Union spokesman Stephen Burkert first announced the settlement Friday night.
“Thankfully for the commuters of NJ Transit, the crisis is averted,” Burkert said. “We’re going home to our families.”
Speaking at press conference immediately afterward, Christie also would not get into details of the proposed settlement until union officials had a chance to review its points with membership.
“That’s the appropriate thing to do,” he told reporters.
Christie, who had been in Newark most of the day, said he had been confident there would be a settlement and called “all the hysteria” of the recent days “ginned up”  by the media.
“These things,” he said, “always come down to the end.”
A strike would have affected 105,000 daily riders to New York who would have had limited options to get to work Monday, and would have cost businesses millions. The last NJ Transit strike was in March 1983. It lasted 34 days.


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