EnviroPolitics Blog

Barnegat Bay advocate alerts lawmakers to pump plume

Member of the New Jersey Legislature’s Senate and Assembly environmental committees met yesterday in Lavallette to take testimony on other issues, but a local activist captured their attention when she produced a picture of a large brown plume that was discharged into Barnegat Bay earlier in the week from a federal roadway project.

Save Barnegat Bay’s Executive Director Britta Wenzel told the legislators that the discharge came from one of nine pumping stations installed along Route 35 from Bay Head to Seaside Park. They are part of a $200 million federal project designed to upgrade the roadway, damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and to reduce flooding.

Here is our interview with Britta Wenzel

Following the meeting, Mary Ann Spoto reported for NJ.com that DOT spokesman Kevin Israel said the discharge, a silt plume, was “out of the ordinary.” Testing by Ocean County officials determined that the water was safe, he said.

Israel said a DOT investigation determined it was caused by a combination of silt build-up in the system from months of construction an silt from the floor of the bay that was churned up by the force of the water coming from the outfall pipe.

The pump at that station has since been turned off and will be monitored, Israel said. It can be turned on if needed during a storm, he said.

To prevent silt from being churned up in the future, DOT crews will lay a broken stone and concrete matting on the floor of the bay, Israel said.

Crews have also installed a turbidity barrier to prevent silt from being dispersed, he said. They also began cleaning manholes of silt on Friday, he said.

The system is still in its testing phase, which includes making sure the pipes are sealed, Israel said. When that process is completed, the pumps should run less frequently, he said.

“The new underground storm water drainage system is a tremendous enhancement over what existed prior to this project.,” Israel said. “The new system is designed to handle 25-year storms, while the previous drainage could only handle two-year storms.”

Read the full Nj.com story here

Tomorrow we will report on the other main topic considered by the committee–soil compaction standards

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Wind energy: Japan Builds Largest Floating Wind Turbine

This might make a great contribution to New Jersey’s offshore wind energy program. Oops, that’s right. We still don’t have one.

NBC News reports:

Engineers in Japan have installed the world’s largest floating wind turbine, a towering 344-foot structure that is billed as being able to withstand 65-foot waves and even tsunamis.

The 7 megawatt turbine was fastened to the seabed last week by four 20-ton anchors about 12 miles off the Fukushima coast.

Its installation was delayed four times because of consecutive typhoons in the region. But one of its chief engineers, Katsunobu Shimizu, told NBC News that the turbine — which is about the same height as London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral — would be able to withstand even the most extreme conditions.

“These turbines and anchors are designed to withstand 65-foot waves,” Shimizu said during a sea tour of the turbine given from a boat off the coast. “Also, here we can get 32-foot-tall tsunamis. That’s why the chains are deliberately slackened.”

If a large wave were to push the turbine up, down or to the side, the loose chains connecting the structure to the seabed would give it the freedom to move without being damaged, he said.

Full story and video here

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NJ’s top court clarifies ‘blight’ that justifies redevelopment

What level of ‘blight’ authorizes a town to exercise its eminent domain power to redevelop
a rundown property? Not as much as before, according to a March 23 decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Writing in the Gibbons law firm’s Development/Redevelopment Law Alert, attorney Andrew J. Camelotto explains:

“The New Jersey Supreme Court determined that property does not need to have a negative effect on surrounding properties in order to be deemed “blighted.” Prior to the Court’s decision in this case, it was unclear whether a negative effect on surrounding properties was a prerequisite to a finding of blight, or simply one way to establish it. Because the New Jersey constitution allows municipalities to exercise their powers of eminent domain to redevelop blighted property, the Court’s decision could encourage more municipalities to move forward with the condemnation of property for private redevelopment.

Andrew J. Camelotto

In 62-64 Main Street, plaintiffs owned five lots in the City of Hackensack consisting of two dilapidated buildings and several poorly maintained parking lots. In accordance with New Jersey’s Local Redevelopment and Housing Law (LRHL), the City designated a two-block area that included plaintiffs’ property as “in need of redevelopment.” In doing so, the City made findings of fact that the lots met the statutory definition of blight, but did not specifically find a negative effect on surrounding properties.

Plaintiffs challenged the City’s determination, arguing that Gallenthin Realty Development, Inc. v. Borough of Paulsboro, a 2007 Supreme Court decision, established a constitutional prerequisite to any blight determination, namely that the subject property must have a negative effect on surrounding properties. The trial court disagreed, holding that substantial evidence supported the City’s findings of blight. The Appellate Division reversed, finding Gallenthin did indeed establish a heightened constitutional standard requiring such a finding under all subsections of the LRHL, thus precluding compelled condemnation and redevelopment without a negative effect on neighboring properties.

In a 3-2 decision, the Supreme Court reversed the Appellate Division, holding that property does not necessarily need to have a negative effect on surrounding properties in order to be deemed blighted.

Read the entire post here

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Environment and Energy bills in NJ committees – August 10

Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge

The Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee will meet for their annual joint summer session at 10 a.m., August 10, at the Lavallette First Aid Building, 1207 Bay Boulevard, Lavallette, NJ.

The committees will testimony on the cleanup of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge after Superstorm Sandy.

The panels will also hear testimony on the need for soil restoration standards.

Back in Trenton on Monday, the Senate Economic Development Committee will meet at 10:30 a.m. in Room 1 (First Floor) take up a number of animal protection bills.

In addition, the committee will consider S-848 (Whelan),the “Governmental Energy Reliability and
41 Savings Public-Private Partnership Act,” which would permit private entities to propose to governmental entities a broad spectrum of energy-related projects at governmental facilities through a public-private partnership (P3) agreement.

Current law does not authorize these types of P3 agreements. Under the bill, private entities would be responsible for designing, building, financing, operating, or maintaining energy-related projects for governmental entity facilities in a manner similar to the approach authorized by the “Economic Stimulus Act
3 of 2009,” which, in part, authorized State colleges and universities to offer certain financial and other incentives to prospective private sector developers.

The bill creates an “Energy P3 Unit” situated within the Board of
7 Public Utilities (BPU) that is responsible for the formulation and execution of a comprehensive Statewide policy for P3 agreements that will facilitate the development of energy-related projects and
1or the development, promotion, coordination, oversight, and approval of P3 agreements.

In doing so, the Energy P3 Unit is to consult and coordinate with representatives of other State departments, agencies, boards, and authorities, including, but not limited to, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Department of Community Affairs, to accomplish the goals of the bill and facilitate P3 agreements.

The bill authorizes the Energy P3 Unit to retain professional advisers as needed and to charge certain fees to fund positions in the Energy P3 unit and its retained professional advisers.

A full copy of S-848 is available here

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An illuminating Empire State salute to endangered animals

Tonight, using 40 stacked, 20,000-lumen projectors on the roof of a building on West 31st Street, digital projection mapper Travis Threlkel and film director Louie Psihoyos "will be illuminating the night from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. with a looping reel showing what Mr. Psihoyos calls a “Noah’s ark” of animals. A snow leopard, a golden lion tamarin and manta rays, along with snakes, birds and various mammals and sea creatures will be projected onto a space 375 feet tall and 186 feet wide covering 33 floors of the southern face of the Empire State Building — and beyond, thanks to cellphones and Internet connections."

Tom Roston of the New York Times writes:

For years the landmark Empire State Building has been drawing the city’s attention with changes to the lighting scheme on its spire, and the displays have been growing more adventurous. In 2014, in honor of the retiring Yankee Derek Jeter, the building put his number, 2, up in lights at the base of the antenna. And this spring, to note the Whitney Museum of American Art’s move downtown, it interpreted famous paintings, like Warhol’s “Flowers,” with a light show running from the 72nd floor up. But actual moving images have never been displayed on the building and never with the clarity of 5K resolution.

Four years ago, Mr. Psihoyos’s Oceanic Preservation Society hired Mr. Threlkel’s San Francisco company, Obscura Digital, to put on elaborate light shows to help draw attention to the alarming rate at which species are dying out in what Mr. Psihoyos contends is Earth’s sixth mass extinction. The men began discussing “the most dramatic thing we could do to get the world to know about what we’re losing,” Mr. Psihoyos said. They wanted to use the photography of Mr. Psihoyos’s colleagues at National Geographic, incorporate a musical element and project the images on a newsworthy facade.

The project is coming to fruition at the end of a week when wild animals have been prominent in the news, among them endangered elephants, whose plight was emphasized in a speech President Obama gave in Kenya announcing restrictions on the sale of African elephant ivory, and Cecil the lion, a tagged animal lured from a wildlife preserve in Zimbabwe, shot by an American hunter with a crossbow, then tracked and ultimately killed.

The Empire State Building was an obvious choice for the project, not only because of its high-profile global status but also because, after a refurbishing in 2009, it became known as one of the most sustainable buildings in New York.

Read the full story here