Enviros trying again to stop NJ's Exxon Mobil settlement


A coalition of New Jersey environmental groups that is challenging the $225 million pollution settlement between Gov. Chris Christie’s administration and Exxon Mobil will be back in court today in Mount Holly.

Lawyers for the coalition will appear before retired Superior Court Judge Michael Hogan, who has been handling the case while acting on recall and who denied the groups’ original motion to intervene.


The New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Environment New Jersey will be represented by Susan Kraham and Edward Lloyd of the Environmental Law Clinic at Columbia University.

NJ State Senator Ray Lesniak
NJ State Senator Ray Lesniak also is appealing Judge Hogan’s rejection of his challenge which was filed separately from the environmental organizations but is in line with their goals.

Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel explains his organization’s position in the video above.

Senator Lesniak discusses his reasons for challenging the settlement in an interview that you can listen to here.

 

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Is SUNY Polytechnic chief on the fed prosecutor's radar?

SUNY Polytechnic Institute is responding to reports that the institute is being subpoenaed as part of an investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s Buffalo Billion project, Megan Rogers  writes today for the Albany Business Review.
The institute released a " statement of facts" this afternoon, which says its economic innovation model is open and transparent.
"As a public SUNY institution, all funding and contracts to SUNY Poly and its expenditures are subject to the same approvals, rules, regulations, and oversight as any other New York government agency," the statement read.
The statement also said Alain Kaloyeros, who leads the college and is a state employee, is "in compliance with all state rules and oversight."
NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, talks with Alain Kaloyeros
The New York Daily News first reported last week that SUNY Poly records were being subpoenaed by Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as part of an investigation into the Buffalo Billion project. That project is a major economic development project in western New York that has been held up as a model for upstate revitalization.
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SUNY Polytechnic Institute head may be on radar of federal prosecutors 
Officials subpoena records from SUNY Poly

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NJ slipping behind other states in energy efficiency

EnviroPolitics Editor Frank Brill interviewed three of the experts who participated in a panel discussion Friday on the status of energy efficiency programs in New Jersey. Held at the Wyndham Gardens Hotel in Trenton, the event was hosted and sponsored by NJ Spotlight.

 

New Jersey needs to do more to reduce energy use and is falling behind what other states are doing to curb the consumption of gas and electricity, according to a panel of experts at a NJ Spotlight roundtable held on Friday in Trenton.

While there was wide agreement about promoting energy efficiency, there was not as much consensus on how to go about achieving that goal and what type of regulatory changes, if any, may be necessary to spur new initiatives, writes NJ Spotlight’s Tom Johnson, who also served as moderator for the discussion.


 "By virtually all accounts, reducing energy use by homes and businesses is the most cost effective way to lower gas and electric bills. It also helps to cut pollution from power plants and emissions that contribute to global warming.

 

“It’s literally the cheapest fuel source there is and it brings everyone’s prices down,’’ said Rate Counsel Stefanie Brand. “I don’t understand anyone who can be against doing more energy efficiency. That said, as a general proposition, we could do better.’

"New Jersey ranks 26th in the nation in the effectiveness of its energy-savings programs, according to a ranking by a nonprofit organization that promotes such efforts, Brand noted. “This is New Jersey. We’re not going to settle for 26th,’’ she said.

 

 


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Stockton: The Boardwalk university that never was

Former Showboat Casino on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk (AP)

Painful lessons are taught at Stockton University’s once-planned, casino-turned-college on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk.

Philadelphia Inquirer staff writers Jonathan Lai and Amy S. Rosenberg report that:
 
Stockton University’s $22 million sale of the former Showboat casino in Atlantic City to developer Bart Blatstein will not make the university financially whole, its president said Friday.

Legal issues continue to trouble the property, and the sale proceeds will not cover the university’s Showboat-linked costs, which will total millions more. Stockton paid $18 million to buy the property from Caesars Entertainment in December; a $26 million deal to resell it fell through.


School and local officials praised Friday’s announcement, calling it a big step toward ending a months-long roller-coaster ride for the school.

"One of the things we absolutely wanted to do, in addition to recapturing as much of the cost as we could, was have a buyer who has a demonstrated committed to developing in Atlantic City, and Bart Blatstein meets that criterion," Harvey Kesselman, interim president of Stockton, said in an interview.

Blatstein’s Tower Investments is scheduled to close on the property on Nov. 9. The university said earlier this week it had a buyer, but held off announcing Blatstein’s name and details of the deal until Friday, after a due diligence period ended.

Reached by phone, Blatstein would not comment on his plans for the Showboat, but he called struggling Atlantic City "a sure bet."

Kesselman said he expected Blatstein to play a major role in the city’s revitalization. Stockton, too, will play a role, he said, citing visions of building a residential campus elsewhere in the Shore town.

Stockton will first have to resolve ongoing legal battles, which Kesselman suggested could result in the university’s recouping some of its money.

Since buying the property, Stockton has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on operations, maintenance, security, and other costs.

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New round of debate over Salem nuke’s water intake


A regional environmental group set the stage Friday for a new round in the decades long battle over Salem nuclear plant cooling-water demands, submitting the most-detailed critique yet of the site’s 3-billion-gallon-per-day draw from the Delaware River.
Jeff Montgomery reports for the The News Journal:

Delaware Riverkeeper, a multi-state environmental and conservation group, said New Jersey’s renewal of a federally required permit for the twin reactors’ intakes would be “irresponsible,” based on newly submitted and past economic and ecological studies.

The comments came at the end of a public response period that New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection recently extended after opponents accused the agency of providing inadequate time to assess the massive permit.
Salem’s regular authority to draw from or discharge into the Delaware River expired in 2006, but the plant has been operating under the previous approval, pending a decision on the “best available technology” to reduce fish losses, heating of the river and other environmental burdens.
Billions of fish, fry, eggs and other aquatic organisms are caught and killed, or impinged, on the plant’s intake guards while even larger numbers die when sucked into plant systems. Estimates of economic losses in the Riverkeeper group’s latest filings were more than 70 times higher than company supported estimates from the past.
“Salem is surpassed in its impingement and entrainment impacts on fish by only one other facility in the nation,” a power plant in Florida, Maya van Rossum, the Riverkeeper’s director, said on Friday. “Salem is the largest predator in the Delaware Estuary and Bay, and has been for over 40 years.”
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Director of former Meadowlands Commission steps down

Marcia Karrow leads a tour on a pontoon boat in June 2013.

Marcia Karrow, who served as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, will be officially leaving roughly eight months after the agency was absorbed by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.
Linda Moss reports in The Record:

It was widely assumed that Karrow, who had served as executive director of the Meadowlands Commission since January 2011, would exit after the Sports Authority took control of the wetlands body in February. But on Thursday, the Sports Authority’s president and chief executive officer, Wayne Hasenbalg, confirmed her departure for the first time.

Karrow’s position is being eliminated effective Oct. 16, and she is currently “using time she is entitled to,” Hasenbalg said. He declined to elaborate, saying it was a personnel matter. Karrow’s annual salary was $148,000, according to Brian Aberback, a Sports Authority spokesman.

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