Princeton profs wedge into global warming

In a 2004 article in Science, Princeton University professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala wrote about how they gave students 15 wedges with different colors, each representing a way to achieve a billion tons of carbon savings. Then they asked the students mix and match them to come up with a plausible strategy for keeping the 2050 emissions level equal to today's.

Al Gore picked up the 'wedge model' in his book, An Inconvenient Truth, and the model--and its creators--have played an important role in the global warming discussion ever since.

EQN, the blog of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, tracks some of the professors' recent media appearances, including a July 15 Washington Post article, What It Would Take to Put the Brakes on Global Warming, and an essay in the July 13 issue of Science by New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt, endorsing the scientific validity of Gore's book-turned-movie.

EQN notes that, while Socolow and Pacala’s fan club grows larger by the minute, they have their critics, including 1984 Princeton graduate Warren Meyer, who is writing a book supporting the contrarian's view that climate change change cannot all be pinned on man-made CO2.

Expect to see a lot more references to global-warming wedges as New Jersey begins to explore and debate the difficult--and likely expensive--steps necessary to reduce greenhouse gas production under the state's recent Global Warming Act.

Global warming made Brad leave Jennifer

Recent global warming headlines threaten us with widespread crop loss, resulting famines, the extinction of various species and literal floating crap tables in Atlantic City. How long will it take for the National Enquirer to blame screen hunk Brad Pitt's redirection (from Jennifer Aniston to natural temperature-raiser Angelina Jolie) on anything other than greenhouse gas?

The near-hysterical drumbeat of media coverage of the climate change phenomena, is enough to chase even a relatively rational person like me into the FOX News (it's not science, it's all a hoax) camp.

Then what should hit my monitor but a report from the eminent scientific journal Nature on a new climate-modeling study predicting that rising levels of ozone pollution over the coming century will erode the ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Now, that's scary. Scarier than a Tom Cruise appearance on Oprah.

The full article can be found here, but a paid subscription is required. However, you can read a report on the Nature article, with excerpts, in Carbon sinks threatened by increasing ozone, published today in Grist.

Here's more on BOMA's energy-reduction plan

Yesterday, we reported (More signs of business leaning to green) on a seven-point, energy-reduction plan that the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) is recommending to its 16,500 members.

Today's Bergen Record carries a story which fleshes out the details and also reports on a media tour of the $500M Hearst Tower, left, which bills itself as the first green building constructed in New York City.

Is New Jersey's global warming law just hot air?

In New Jersey, it's sometimes difficult to separate the Democrats from the Republicans. Public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that voters are moderate-to-liberal on virtually all important public issues. Such conformity may engender social comity, but it sure takes a lot of the fun out of public debate.

One public figure, however, who is unflagging in his efforts to shake things up is Steve Lonegan, a maverick, libertarian Republican who also happens to be the Mayor of Bogota, NJ. He's also an unsuccessful candidate for governor and the executive director of Americans for Prosperity - New Jersey, a decidedly right-leaning organization that champions "limited government and free markets."

In an op-ed piece that ran in yesterday's Asbury Park Press, Lonegan challenges the wisdom of the state's recently enacted Global Warming Response Act which sets specific deadlines for the reduction of greenhouse gases. He writes:

"It's the height of folly to think a single state, New Jersey, can. Even if all industry ceased to exist in New Jersey, and the state never emitted another molecule of carbon dioxide, the effect on global climate would be meaningless.

This is all about symbolism, of course, and Corzine and Gore hope to set an example for other states and countries, they say. Unfortunately, that symbolism will cost many New Jersey workers and entrepreneurs their livelihood. New Jersey has lost 8,000 private sector jobs in seven years, and this "politically correct" feel-good nonsense will accelerate that sorry trend.

New Jersey is a major petroleum refining state and is one of the primary suppliers of petroleum products to the Northeast. It's also one reason why gasoline prices are low in our state. This law will cripple that industry, costing the state one of its few remaining engines of growth, and it will serve as a hidden gasoline tax on every motorist in New Jersey."

Check out the entire piece here. Then click on the "comments" line below and let us know what you think. Is the new law just political posturing or is it a responsible reaction to an undeniable environmental crisis?

More signs of business leaning to green

The environment is increasingly on the minds of businesses these days. In New Jersey, the state's largest utility, PSEG broke with precedent (and some of its business colleagues) in endorsing the state's recently adopted global-warming law that sets firm deadlines for reductions in greenhouse gases.

In New York, officials of the Building Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA) announced a new energy plan for the commercial real estate sector which it admits "accounts for 18% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and $24 billion a year in energy costs. "

The voluntary plan encourages members of the 16,500-member organization to reduce their use of resources through a seven-step program. It targets a decrease in energy consumption by 30 percent by 2012. Read more in The Daily Green.

Meanwhile, in Oakland California, organizers have announced the formation of a national Green Chamber, a new organization that aims to bring environmentally friendly businesses together for networking, resource-sharing, lobbying and to advance common goals.

As reported in GreenBiz.com, the Green Chamber starts out with 16 regional directors, who will be responsible for certifying new members from their region, as well as coordinating the activities within each region. The directors also are charged with reviewing each membership application to screen out potential "greenwashers" (those who advertises positive environmental practices while acting in the opposite way).

New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island businesses fall under the organization's NYC Metro region. It's director is Joanna Black who can be reached at: joanna.b@thegreenchamber.org or 646.912.2681. The Baltimore/Pennsylvania region's director is Sherri Loomis - SheriL@thegreenchamber.org - 301.722.3232.
More at: The Green Chamber.

My power source by the Bay?

An extremely powerful current runs below the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco Bay to the Pacific. The city is studying the possibility of using it to generate electricity but some fear it could involve environmental risks. Judy Campbell filed this audio report for National Public Radio reports from member station KQED in San Francisco.

Gentlemen, start your hybrids!

In case you think that hybrid autos are fine for puttering around town but not yet ready for prime time driving, check this out.

Toyota made history last weekend by winning the Tokashi 24-Hour Race with its Supra HV-R hybrid race car. It is the first time ever that a Hybrid race car has won a competition.

Autoblog reports that the car did so in convincing fashion.

"As the only GT-class car in the field, the Denso SARD Supra HV-R maintained a steady lead of several laps throughout the course of the race, and in the later hours, it essentially dialed things up a notch and ran away from the rest of the field. "

Fill 'er up...with citrus peels?

Can that corn. Make your ethanol with grapefruit and orange peels.

That's the plan in Florida, where Citrus Energy, LLC plans to build a 4 million gallons per year ethanol bio-refinery, using the state's plentiful, low-cost supply of citrus waste as the feedstock. The company calls citrus waste "the most economically attractive and technically feasible of the potential cellulosic feedstocks" and claims the process is less costly than using corn.

The company's website lays out the economics behind the idea:

"Florida has 100 million citrus trees on 800,000 acres which provide 250 million boxes of citrus (80% of U.S. production) and 90 % goes to Florida’s 20 citrus processing plants, producing over 5 million tons of citrus waste annually. Most of the citrus processing waste is dried into what is commonly referred to as citrus pulp pellets (CPP) and fed to cattle. The production of CPP requires a large capital investment by the processor with little if any return on investment. During recent years, processors have been unable to sell CPP for a price high enough to pay for processing costs, let alone their capital investment. The CPP losses are borne by the main product from citrus, orange or grapefruit juice. Due to the high capital cost, many small citrus juice processors are unable to install feed mills to produce CPP, leaving them with tons of citrus waste for disposal. This has contributed to several small processors closing in recent years, reducing the demand for citrus fruit and depressing fruit prices paid to growers.

Florida, like some other areas of the country does not have suitable climate for corn production and requires alternate ethanol feedstock development. Citrus processing waste, a pectin, cellulose and soluble sugar rich mixture of peel, segment membranes and seeds is available on a large scale and at A VERY LOW COST. "

Does all this sound more ideal that real? Perhaps not. Today, FPL Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of FPL Group, which is the $16-billion parent of one of the nation's largest electric utilities, Florida Power and Light, announced it had signed a letter of agreement with Citrus Energy to develop the first ever commercial scale citrus peel to ethanol plant.

Cooling buildings with ice? That's nice

Most Americans are too young to remember the icebox. It was the forerunner of the modern refrigerator, though much smaller, made of wood, lined with tin or zinc and insulated with cork, sawdust, straw or seaweed. It contained a block of ice (delivered to your home by the 'ice man') and it kept a family's fruit, meat, milk and butter cold as long as the ice held out.

Today, a number of corporations are applying this great-grandfather technology to cool their giant office buildings and reduce their giant-sized air conditioning bills. Credit Suisse, for example, is cooling 1.9 million square feet of office space at the Met Life tower, a historic building that was New York's tallest in the days before the Empire State Building. The system took about four months to construct and company engineers say it is extremely efficient.

Colleen Long of the Associated Press, reports on The Discovery Channel that:

"Because electricity is needed to make the ice, water is frozen in large silver tanks at night when power demands are low. The cool air emanating from the ice blocks is then piped throughout the building more or less like traditional air conditioning. At night the water is frozen again and the cycle repeats.

"The concept is the same, but when you make something mechanical, it can break, but a big block of ice four floors below grade level isn't going to do anything but melt," said Todd Coulard of Trane Energy Services. The company built the Credit Suisse system and is one of several that work with ice storage."

Ice storage at Credit Suisse lowers the facility's peak energy use by 900 kilowatts, and reduces overall electric usage by 2.15 million kilowatt-hours annually — enough to power about 200 homes.

In case you're thinking about converting your home AC system over the weekend and giving the ice man a call, please note that the Credit Suisse project cost $3 million, although incentives were provided by New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority.

Read this while swigging your next Evian

The July issue of Fast Company magazine contains an article called "Message in a Bottle" that was an eye-opener for me, and just might be for you, too.

Here are two paragraphs to give you an idea of what I mean:

"Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.

Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes. "

Four times the cost of gasoline? The price we're always grumbling about? For stuff we can get for pennies from our water faucets? Yes! In fact, as the article points out:

"If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000."

You can check out the entire article here.

Raise a mug to wind power!

Finally, an alternative energy offer I can get behind.

“Sign up for clean energy and drink free beer.” That was the offer made to eco-festival-goers in Manhattan over the weekend.

The New York Times reports:

Those who signed up for electricity from Community Energy, which owns three wind farms in New York and Pennsylvania, received tickets for four pints of Brooklyn Lager at the third annual Citysol festival in Stuyvesant Cove Park, at the end of 23rd Street. (Brooklyn Brewery is powered by Community Energy windmills.)

Spread the word, folks. Maybe the PR guys and gals at River Horse will work up a similar enticement for energy-switchers in New Jersey. Yo, Yuengling! How about beer-for-wind in Pennsy?

Supply problems rock NJ/NY biodiesel producer

Shares in Renewable Power and Light (RPL), a two-year-old, independent power producer with plants in Manassa, NY and Elmwood Park, NJ took a 70 percent hit on Friday after it announced expected losses because of a contract dispute with a supplier of palm oil--a feedstock for the company's biofuel operations.

The stock price tumbled after RPL resumed trading on the AIM after suspending trading on July 5. RPL announced six days later that it was suing Safari Group Inc. for failing to supply palm oil at an agreed fixed price. Safari has cited a substantial increase in the price of palm oil as the reason for its inability to perform under the terms of its contract.

The Financial Times reports that:

A surge in global demand for biofuels has worked to the advantage of some suppliers such as Anglo Eastern Plantations. Shares in the oil palm plantation owner have risen more than 30 per cent in the past six months.

But that surge has hurt companies that depend on the oil, including Biofuels Corp, which runs the largest biodiesel plant in the UK. Biofuels recently announced drastic restructuring plans to stave off bankruptcy.

Although RPL says it expects a financial loss in the currrent year due to the supply disruption, it adds that its balance sheet "remains robust with almost $50 million in cash and Net Assets of approximately $84 million."

The company said it has identified and tested alternative supplies and that "palm oil, jatropha and soy oil offer the best potential to meet RPL's requirements."

In addition to its two power plants, RPL plans to build a refining facility in up-state New York to convert raw palm oil into B100 Bio-diesel fuel.

For more information on RPL, click here.

W. R. Grace seeks to duck Jersey claim

The specialty chemical manufacturer, W. R. Grace, is seeking to block a $30 million damages claim filed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on grounds that the DEP filed the claim too late.

Bankruptcy 360 (full story viewable with free trial subscription)reports that the dispute dates back to June 2005 when the DEP fileld an $800 million fraud law suit against the company, nearly four years after Grace had filed for bankruptcy protection. DEP argues that it did not discover, until after the deadline for filing bankruptcy claims had expired, that a former Grace manufacturing plant site in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, contained 40 percent asbestos. New Jersey contends that Grace lied about the extent of the contamination, an allegation that Grace denies.

Meanwhile, The Baltimore Sun reports that Grace might owe victims of its asbestos products as much as $6.2 billion, according to a legal scholar hired by attorneys suing the chemical maker. Mark A. Peterson, a research scientist at the Rand Corp., estimated that Columbia-based Grace may need to spend from $4.7 billion to $6.2 billion to resolve hundreds of thousands of asbestos cases over several decades.

Grace filed for bankruptcy in 2001 to protect itself from 135,000 asbestos claims. Early next year, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Judith K. Fitzgerald is to hold a trial to set a value on the claims, a major step in resolving the company's six-year-old reorganization effort.

Top environmental/political news - July 11, 2007

NJ Politics

• Corzine questioned on use of campaign e-mail accounts The chairman of the state Republican Party demands that Gov. Jon Corzine explain why he and a top aide have been using campaign e-mail accounts to conduct state business, and whether the public record is being properly preserved Star-Ledger

NJ Environment

• EnCap blows key deadline EnCap Golf Holdings failed Tuesday to meet a deadline to supply $16M in additional security to ensure full cleanup of Meadowlands landfills, a New Jersey Meadowlands Commission spokesman says Bergen Record
  
• State OKs DuPont pollution monitoring plan The DEP approves a DuPont Co. plan for continuing an investigation into contamination from chemicals used in stick- and stain-resistant products at its sprawling Chamber Works News Journal

PA Environment

• Successes and 'maybes' for Governor’s energy package Rendell and Republicans agreed on solar power, but other decisions were put off until September Inquirer
  
• Energy program still source of debate Parts of the governor’s energy program are included in the budget compromise but other parts face a future fight Patriot News

PA Politics

• Politicians explain budget impact So what did PA taxpayers gain by enduring a partial state government shutdown on Monday? Herald Standard Lancasteronline
  

New York/Nation/World

• Compromise eyed on congestion pricing NY Sun
• Golf course lands in Yorktown’s hands Journal News
• LI gets federal funds for green spending NY Newsday
• Compromise measure on global warming NYT Bloomberg

These are just a few of the stories that appeared in yesterday's EnviroPolitics.
For a free, 30-day trial subscription, send a blank email to: eptrialsub@aweber.com

Living in a McMansion, leading a McLife?

The following book review caught our attention today:

"In her groundbreaking bestseller The Not So Big House, architect Sarah Susanka showed us a new way to inhabit our houses by creating homes that were better — not bigger, Now, in The Not So Big Life, Susanka takes her revolutionary philosophy to another dimension by showing us a new way to inhabit our lives.

"Most of us have lives that are as cluttered with unwanted obligations as our attics are cluttered with things. The bigger-is-better idea that triggered the explosion of McMansions has spilled over to give us McLives. For many of us, our ability to find the time to do what we want to do has come to a grinding alt. Now we barely have time to take a breath before making the next call on our cell phone, while at the same time messaging someone else on our Blackberry. Our schedules are chaotic and overcommitted, leaving us so stressed that we are numb, yet we wonder why we cannot fall asleep at night.

"In The Not So Big Life, Susanka shows us that it is possible to take our finger off the fast-forward button, and to our surprise we find how effortless and rewarding this change can be. We do not have to lead a monastic life or give up the things we love. In fact, the real joy of leading a not so big life is discovering that the life we love has been there the entire time. Through simple exercises and inspiring stories, Susanka shows us that all we need to do is make small shifts in our day — subtle movements that open our minds as if we were finally opening the windows to let in fresh air.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? I think I'll order a copy, right after I publish this blog entry, finish today's EnviroPolitics e-newsletter, update my website and attack the hundreds of emails and cellphone messages that have piled up in the last 24 hours.... Gotta get that book!

Grass is good - Yes or No?

"The LEED standards for sustainable construction discourage lawns because they require not only watering but also mowing — and gas-powered lawn mowers are a significant source of air pollution. "

So reports the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Buildings & Grounds blog. But the post goes on to report that "as colleges begin thinking in terms of reducing their carbon footprints, grass doesn’t look so bad after all."

"Grass — like trees — does a great job of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to landscape architects who took part in a session on open space at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning...In hot weather, they added, grass helps keep an area significantly cooler. "

Read the entire article here

Aloha, Welcome to the Tour de Trash

Governing.com's Idea Center profiles the city and county of Honolulu's Tour de Trash, an award-winning program that offers free, full-day tours of different recycling sites in an effort to facilitate educated public discussions and decision-making on recycling and waste management initiatives.

Apparently, the program has lots to show, as Honolulu recycles more than 600,000 tons of waste each year, and has one of the nation's highest recycling rates at 35 percent.

The City Department of Environmental Services staff conducts six tours a year of recycling processes at various workplaces including hotels and restaurants; a wastewater treatment facility; waste-to-energy plants; construction and demolition landfills; and facilities that recycle rubber, aluminum, glass and plastic. The tours sell out every year and have earned the program a 2007 Outstanding Achievement Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

For more information on Tour de Trash, click here.

Who built the first green building on Capitol Hill?

The Senate? The House of Representatives? The EPA?
The Sierra Club?

No, no, no and no. It's the Quakers.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (the Quakers national lobbying arm) has transformed two Civil-War era buildings across the street from the Senate into a green building that has cut their energy consumption in half.

Considering that buildings account for 50% of U.S. energy consumption and 40% of CO2 emissions, that's quite an accomplishment--one that others, including government, might well emulate. Click here for a virtual building tour.

Great timing for New Jersey's global warming law

Supporters will tell you that New Jersey's new law pushing the
state toward a greater use of non-fossil energy production, like
solar and wind, is just-in-time legislation, considering the heel-
dragging in corporate-owned Washington. But the signing of the
"Global Warming Act" was also a brilliant example of public relations timing.

Governor Jon Corzine's PR team arranged to have the bill signed at a news conference in the Meadowlands where reporters from across the country were converging on Giant's Stadium to cover Live Earth, a series of worldwide concerts promoted by former Vice President Al Gore to spread word of "climate crisis."

Lest anyone fail to link the two events, the Corzine team invited Gore to attend the public signing. The resulting coverage gained New Jersey (and Corzine) international attention.

Here are just a few of the stories the event produced: Forbes, ABC News, Gannett, Reuters, Associated Press, Star-Ledger, The (Bergen) Record .

The new law calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020--a 17 to 20 percent reduction, followed by a further reduction of emissions to 80 percent below 2006 levels by 2050. New Jersey is only the third state in the nation make greenhouse gas reduction goals law.

While the state's environmental-activist community worked hard to get the bill through the Legislataure, one group was issuing a post-enactmenet warning. Bill Wolfe, executive director of the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, noted that state lawmakers last month removed mention of a program that would have required cuts at power plants and jettisoned plans for a fee on industry that would have paid for the state to monitor emissions.

"The goals are well and good, but there is no implementation, there is no regulatory program to meet the goals and there's no funding in place," Wolfe said.

Fries with your fuel, Mac?

The Associated Press reports that McDonald's will be scouring its fry pits for leftover oil and recycling it into biodiesel to power its fleet of British delivery vehicles.

The Oak Brook, Illinois-based, fast-food giant says it expects the move to save about 1,700 tons of carbon annually, which is the equivalent of removing about 2,400 cars from the road each year.

PA enviro groups sue over TCE emissions

Penn Future and the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit today in federal appeals court, claiming the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is failing to protect citizens against harmful health effects of the industrial uses of such solvents as perc (perchloroethylene) and TCE (trichloroethylene).

The groups are being represented by the public interest law firm, EarthJustice, which is based in Oakland, CA.

In a news release, the groups linked two industrial firms--Superior Tube and Accellent--to higher than normal levels of TCE in the Collegeville, PA area and blamed the EPA for backtracking on a previous decision to regulate the use of the solvent.

The PA-DEP has confirmed the TCE findings and is negotiating with Superior Tube over voluntary reductions. The company has proposed two projects that DEP said "should produce a 30-percent decrease in TCE emissions this year." A public hearing on the company's air permit is scheduled for August 8.

The environmentalists apparently are not impressed by the state's response.

“Hundreds of our 10,000 area members are put at risk by these emissions,” said Dennis Winters, Conservation Chair of the Sierra Club’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Group. “We are not surprised that the EPA has not acted to protect Montgomery County residents living around these facilities, but we expect more from our own Department of Environmental Protection.”

That criticism, however, appears harsh, considering the fact that the state DEP, on May 17, beat the enviros to federal court, with a petition challenging the controversial EPA rule that exempted the two local companies, and other narrow tube manufacturers, from new EPA standards requiring reductions in TCE emissions in many other industries.

NJ sues 120 for natural resource damages

New Jersey expects to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental resource damages from companies named in some 120 separate lawsuits filed on Friday, one day short of a legislative deadline.

Known as Natural Resource Damage (NRD) claims, the lawsuits seek compensation above and beyond fines and cleanup costs that already might have been paid by the companies.

One of the lawsuits specifically targets scores of designers and manufacturers of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether as well as major-brand refiners and marketers of gasoline that used MTBE, including Amerada Hess, Atlantic Richfield Co., BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Getty, Shell, Texaco and Valero Energy. New Jersey is now the third state to seek NRD damages for the recovery of all past and future costs to investigate, remediate and restore natural resources damaged by the discharge of MTBE.

Other companies facing NRD claims are: Ciba Geigy Specialty Chemicals in Dover, Ocean County; the Bayway refinery in Linden, Union County; Gloucester City Titanium in Gloucester City, Camden County; Landfill & Development Co. in Lumberton, Mount Holly and Eastampton, Burlington County; as well as Dow/Union Carbide in Middlesex Borough and Piscataway Township, Middlesex County.

[See Asbury Park Press story on the Ciba Geigy suit and Bergen Record and NJ-DEP news release on the general filing]

DEP says its lawsuits also focus on polluters that have damaged river resources. Included in this category are ISP Environmental Services and G-I Holdings Inc., located in Linden along Piles Creek near the Arthur Kill; Mallinckrodt Baker, along the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, Warren County; Genstar Gypsum, located along the Delaware River in Camden, Camden County; and Rhone Poulenc along the Raritan River in Middlesex Borough.

Click here for a list of the companies and electronic copies of the individual suits.

Since 1994, the state has recovered more than $51 million and preserved approximately 6,000 acres of open space as wildlife habitat and ground water recharge areas as compensation for pollution resulting from 1,500 contaminated sites and oil spills.

Under DEP's technical rules, all parties responsible for polluting a site must conduct an analysis to determine the nature and extent of pollution. Once this remedial investigation is completed, DEP has 5 ½ years to file a lawsuit to recover damages to natural resources if the responsible party does not restore the injured resource before then.

Recognizing that remedial investigations were completed at some sites many years ago without the filing of natural resource damage lawsuits, the state Legislature required the state to file of lawsuits within 5 ½ years of Jan. 1, 2002. The filing of the 120 lawsuits on Friday came on the last day prior to the Legislature's July 1, 2007 deadline.

Related information: Drinking water supply contaminated in Ringwood, NJ; EPA document: MTBE (methyl-t-butyl ether)in Drinking Water ; Feb 23 2007 AP story: GAO: Cleaning up gas-station leaks will cost $12 billion