http://goo.gl/YNpV3
By Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger (Feb. 13, 2103)
A proposal to raise the Bayonne Bridge has divided the EPA and the Coast Guard over whether the project would have a significant environmental impact.
NEWARK — The Environmental Protection Agency has “fundamental concerns” over a finding by the Coast Guard that raising the Bayonne Bridge would not have a significant environmental impact.
“We believe that an appropriate analysis would likely reveal changes in the distribution pattern of cargo which could reasonably be expected to result in environmental impacts, particularly air quality impacts associated with increased Port activity and associated diesel truck traffic,” the EPA stated in comments submitted to the Coast Guard in December, obtained by The Star-Ledger.Continue reading
66 Percent Favor Raising Minimum Wage
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/0213/0119/
New Jerseyans are overwhelmingly in favor of raising the minimum wage to $8.50 an hour, with 66 percent of registered voters saying they will support a November ballot question raising the rate with automatic annual cost-of-living increases,
Ringwood: Letter from Bob Spiegel to U.S. EPA
To Pat Seppi (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency):
I have just one question for you to forward to Mathy Stanislaus, the EPA Assistant Administrator (AA) from HQ and Judith Enck, the R2 Administrator (RA). Are they coming to just give us more platitudes and lip service or are any of the US EPA going to put their (big-boy or woman) pants on and give the community the truth and real answers for a change. As you know the EPA made a public commitment to fully clean up the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site in Ringwood New Jersey, the first site in US EPA history to have to be relisted due to massive failures at all levels of government, Ford Motor Company and Arcadis their contractors.Continue reading
How Many Slaves Work for You?
N.Y. Times (Dec. 31, 2012)
By Louis P. Masur
New Brunswick, N.J.
The Emancipation Proclamation, signed 150 years ago today, was a revolutionary achievement, and widely recognized as such at the time. Abraham Lincoln himself declared, “If my name goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”
On New Year’s Eve, 1862, “watch-night” services in auditoriums, churches, camps and cabins united thousands, free as well as enslaved, who sang, prayed and counted down to midnight. At a gathering of runaway slaves in Washington, a man named Thornton wept: “Tomorrow my child is to be sold never more.”
The Day of Jubilee, as Jan. 1, 1863 was called, arrived at last and celebrations of deliverance and freedom commenced. “We are all liberated by this proclamation,” Frederick Douglass observed. “The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated.” The Fourth of July “was great,” he proclaimed, “but the First of January, when we consider it in all its relations and bearings, even greater.”Continue reading
New Jersey’s Overlooked Superfund Sites
Long saddled with the dubious distinction of having the most toxic waste sites on the Superfund National Priority list, it actually might have been a lot worse for New Jersey.
At least 27 sites in the state scored high enough on the numerical ranking system used to qualify for federal funding and assistance for cleanups, but were not added to the list by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to agency documents obtained by an interest group under the Freedom of Information Act.