The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued final version of its review today, finding that Broadwater could operate the barge — storing super-cooled liquid nitrogen and converting it back into gas — if it takes 86 measures to lessen its impact and insure safety.

That comes about a month after New York state Department of Environmental Conservation asked for more information and said operating the floating plant could kill lobsters — already a fragile population after massive die offs several years ago — and would kill hundreds of millions of young fish and fish larvae.

With the FERC staff report in, federal commissioners themselves must either approve the project, reject it, or set hearings to explore the scientific facts behind it.

Find the entire 2,220-page report by going to the FERC Web site here and looking at the January 11 entry under “What’s New at FERC.”

So what was up with all those commercial boats in the middle of the Hudson?

Over the past week or so, dozens of fuel barges were lined up between Hastings-on-Hudson and Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx with seemingly no place to go.

The Journal News got calls about it and so did local police and Riverkeeper.

Turns out, they were positioned there because of high-wind alerts, when boats with certain cargoes are prohibited from docking close to shore, said John Lipscomb, who captains Riverkeeper’s patrol boat, the R. Ian Fletcher.

Lipscomb said boats often anchor on the Hudson between Westchester and the 79th Street Boat Basin when they are waiting to unload cargo, but he was struck Sunday by the number of boats. Nearly all of them were gone by Monday afternoon when the wind had died down, he said.

“It’s like a taxi-stand. A mega taxi-stand where they wait before moving off,” Lipscomb said.

He said there was no environmental concern and that the boats kept their lights and engines on to be ready to move to shore whenever they were contacted. Lipscomb was glad people took the time to call Riverkeeper.
“It’s nice. People are looking out for the river. That’s heartening,” he said.

Citizens Campaign for the Environment has released its fifth annual guide to gifts that are easy on the ecology. They stress local products, organic foods and other such items.

It includes many items you’d expect: stationery and journals made from recycled materials, for instance.

And some you may not have thought of, including pens made of recycled materials.

Here’s an example: One suggested stocking stuffer is a tire gauge. It may not be on the top of many gift lists (at least not yet), but CCE points out that properly inflated tires last longer and increase the mileage you get from an increasingly exorbitant gallon of gas.

For the full list, click here.

And for more on the CCE’s thoughts, I’ll copy the group’s press release here:

Shop Green, Think Globally, Buy Locally
ECO-SAVVY HOLIDAY GIFTS IDEAS

Lower Hudson Valley Holiday Gift Ideas Provided on CCE Website
www.citizenscampaign.org/holidaygifts

White Plains, NY— Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE) announces its fifth annual guide of ecologically-friendly holiday gift ideas.  CCE’s holiday gift guide grows every year, reflecting the increasing diversity for environmentally conscious products. The holiday season is an excellent time to be eco-savvy by choosing gifts for your friends and family that also benefit the earth.  Help spread environmental awareness and start the New Year off green by being inspired by CCE’s 2007 Holiday Gift Guide available at www.citizenscampaign/holidaygifts.

“Being an eco-savvy shopper not only allows the public to avoid toxic toys for the holidays but also allows the public to use our spending dollars to protect our planet and our health. Demand for organic and natural products has dramatically increased over the last few years and this has resulted in a wide variety of great gift choices,� said Adrienne Esposito, CCE Executive Director. “CCE has put together this list to help the consumer with some great choices for gifts that acturally protect the health of our planet and the public.

Shop Green, Think Globally, Buy Locally, is the guiding theme of the 2007 CCE Holiday Gift Ideas Guide.  The Holiday Gift Guide emphasizes choosing environmentally beneficial gifts from local stores and supporting local products.  Avoid crowded malls by supporting quaint used book stores, organic restaurants, natural nail salons and beauty stores, as well as arts & crafts stores offering Fair Trade and local artisan’s products.

Inspired by each CCE regional office, the Green Holiday Gift idea is divided by region: Central New York, Western New York, Long Island, White Plains, and Connecticut. CCE staff members have visited each location and used each gift recommended on our list.

“Supporting Hudson Valley businesses and products is a win-win for the environment and the community.  By shopping locally, shoppers not only keep their dollars in the community but they are also actively fighting global warming pollution by reducing their carbon footprint,� said Emmett Pepper, CCE Hudson Valley Program Director.  “With so many environmentally-friendly companies in the area, consumers can use their purchasing power to protect the environment, support the local economy and reduce their carbon footprint,� Pepper continued.

Supporting local businesses and products this holiday season and purchasing gifts that do not degrade our environment is a terrific way to contribute to your community while helping to protect the health of our planet.  By choosing gifts that have traveled the least, individual decisions can reduce global warming pollution—or carbon footprint—by reducing fossil fuel emissions associated with product manufacturing and shipping.  Additionally, local business owners are important local employers and are invested in the community.

“Consumers vote everyday with their dollars. Cast your vote for the environment and local economy by giving locally-produced environmentally sensitive gifts and supporting local retailers this holiday season,� concluded Dereth Glance, CCE Executive Program Director. 

Visit www.citizenscampaign.org/holidaygifts to view the environmentally-friendly gift ideas.  CCE welcomes your own ideas too!  Send them to us at: whiteplains@citizenscampaign.org

Citizens Campaign for the Environment is an 80,000-member, not-for-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization working for the protection of public health and the natural environment.  For more information, please visit www.citizenscampaign.org

U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison put the money in the bill, along with almost $7.5 million for other area projects. If it passes the Senate and Pres. Bush (either by his agreement or veto override, as happened today with the $23 billion water resources bill) it will push the total Lowey has secured for the Davids Island cleanup past $26 million.

New Rochelle owns the island in Long Island Sound.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is using the money to clean up the 78-acre island in Long Island Sound.

Backer is the Soundkeeper, looking out of the estuary the way the Riverkeeper looks out for the Hudson River. He’s also a member of the Connecticut General Assembly. (That’s what they call the legislature over there.)

Backer is an entertaining guy who’s lived his life on the Sound and looks a lot like a sea captain from an old movie.

Well tomorrow (Nov. 6) anyone can hear him speak at the Fairfield Public Library. He’ll be part of a panel discussion: “Blue Water; Love it or Lose it.”

Here’s the text of the press release:

Please come and listen to Terry Backer, your Soundkeeper, speak!
Please join us at the
 
Fairfield Public Library
Rotary Room
1080 Old Post Rd, Fairfield, CT
 
Tuesday, November 6, 2007        
 7:00-9:00 p.m.
 
Blue Water:
Love it or Lose it…
The State of the Watershed, Downstream Consequences,
Individual Responsibility
Panelists:
Terry Backer, Long Island Soundkeeper & CT State Representative
Sally Harold, Project Director Saugatuck River Watershed Partnership
Curt Johnson, Connecticut Fund for the Environment
Rich White, Fairfield Director of Public Works
Moderator: Mike Burke, The Nature Conservancy
Solution consultants:
Organic land care
Rain gardens & buffer plantings
Pervious surface products
 
Refreshments served

Presented by the Fairfield Garden Club.

For an hour we hacked, thrashed and clipped plants like pokeweed, a big plant with thick, reddish-purple, easy-to-chop stalks, and mugwort, which is not something out of Harry Potter, but is a prolific weed that grows thick and abundant.

Hacking at it with a weed cutter, it emits a scent that I always perceive as related to mint in the wild.

I felt lucky. Living in co-op, I never get to do yard work. I’ve even asked a friend to let me know when she’s gardening because I’ll come over and pull weeds. She tells me it’s not so fun when you have to do it all the time.

That’s OK, because I don’t have to do it at all.

But swinging the weed cutter, an implement like a modern, tamer scythe, is a great way to take your mind off things, work off stress, forget recent heartbreaks, and stop yourself from dwelling on useless thoughts, like why Meredith is suddenly pushing away the guy she pined for for so long.

It was great exercise, and I was happy to help out at Marshlands, since it’s one of my favorite spots for viewing Long Island Sound.

We worked along one edge of a spread of asphalt called the Methodist parking lot because it was once owned by a Methodist church. Our goal was the clear the vines and weeds to re-expose the old stone wall alongside the lot.

We got it done more quickly than we’d expected, so we took a longer way back to the park office, strolling along Boston Post Road. We picked up litter, the papers and wrappers people still throw from cars, as if they’d never seen that 1970s commercial with the American Indian who sheds a tear over pollution.

It’s enough to make you want to go back and thrash at more weeds.

If you’re interested in Westchester parks events, you can find their calender here.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell is “pleased with the bill,” but still has to look it over before deciding whether to sign it, one of her spokespeople, Rich Harris, told me this morning.

Here, in part, is the press release from Save the Sound, a project of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment:

“Connecticut is beginning to rebuild its clean water legacy,� said Leah Schmalz, director of legislative and legal affairs for Save the Sound, a program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment. “Our leaders are to be congratulated for working to resuscitate the state’s clean water investments. This $90 million general obligation bond allotment keeps alive a vision of clean rivers, safe waters and a healthy Long Island Sound.�

The federal government and the state of Connecticut set two critical goals when it promised the state’s citizens clean and healthy water. The agreement was to stop raw sewage overflows into rivers and Long Island Sound by 2020 and to restore the low-oxygen Dead Zone in Long Island Sound by 2014. To meet these goals our municipalities need a fully functioning Clean Water Fund – the primary mechanism for funding wastewater treatment and sewer projects in Connecticut.

“While $90 million in general obligation bonds over the next year is not enough to complete all of the state’s clean water projects, it is a significant influx that should put Connecticut’s goal to restore Long Island Sound’s “Dead Zoneâ€? back on track,â€? said Schmalz. “Due to the lack of state investment in recent years, we must invest even more in coming years to fully stop the annual release of 2 billion gallons of sewage overflow. We look forward to working with our elected officials and individual towns to ensure that Clean Water Fund financing is adequate to meet these basic clean water and human health objectives.â€?

“This $90 million investment is the highest general obligation funding level to date; it is not only an investment in the water quality of Long Island Sound, it is an investment in our future,� Schmalz said.

On the way, you’d hug the rim of Manhattan (on either side), pass natural areas and ride by the Washington Monument as you pedal along the National Mall in Washington.

Or you could shoot north through New England to the Maine-New Brunswick border.

If the East Coast Greenway gets its way, you’ll be able to do that mostly on trails through parks and along rivers, hardly touching roadways meant for cars and trucks.

That’s the dream, and the challenge, of the Greenway organizers. They want to link major cities, like Charleston, St. Augustine, Fla., and Bangor, Me., but keep the path off the roads as much as possible.

In Westchester, it looks like the shoulder of I-287 and the trails along the Bronx River will be the main route of the Greenway. You can read about that in my story on it in The Journal News today. Find it here.

In many areas, it’s difficult, and the East Coast Greenway organization, based in Rhode Island, has given up the idea of creating the 3,000 mile path entirely off of vehicle roads. Their goal now is 80 percent off-road. So far, they’ve got almost a quarter of it done, Michael Oliva, the Mid-Atlantic region liaison to the project told me at the conference in the Bronx on Thursday.

Some other things to come out of the meeting:

Manhattan already has pathways good for cycling along its west side and a good portion of the east side. One problem is near the United Nations building.

New Jersey organizers of the trail are coming out with a guide to the route through that state. Oliva expects a similar guide for New York sometime next year.

For now, New York City’s portion of the route is mostly in the Bronx and Manhattan, but it’s expected to eventually include off-shoots in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

Jon Orcutt, senior policy advisor for the New York City Department of Transportation, told the group Thursday that the Big Apple will be a major stop along the route.

“There’ll be side trips that can keep you hear for days,” he said.

The Norwalk, Conn.-based group tested the oxygen level throughout the summer and found that it wavered on either side of the Connecticut state minimum water quality standard for oxygen. (That’s 6 parts per million of oxygen, for those keeping count.) That’s better than in the past, Backer notes, reporting “the fish breathed easier” over the summer.

Fish, lobsters and other creatures need oxygen to survive, just like we mammals do.

Once over the summer, when oxygen can become a problem, the level dipped to 4 ppm in the harbor, but never did they find that it hit 3 ppm, a condition called hypoxia, when “everything in the Sound is in deep trouble,” as Backer reports in his latest newsletter.

Backer had more good, if unsavory, news: His pumpout crew removed vacuumed a total of just about 62,000 gallons of sewage from boats in the area. The pumpout service is free; boat owners can sign up on line and don’t have to be there when the crew comes to pump the sewage tank.

That sewage then gets sent to the sewage treatment plants on land.

In one sense, it’s a matter of convenience. In Connecticut waters, boat owners are not allowed to dump their waste, even treated by onboard systems, which are not as thorough as municipal treatment plants. Boaters can dump treated waste in most of New York’s side of Long Island Sound.

Dumping untreated waste is a no-no anywhere anywhere in the Sound or within 3 miles of the nation’s coast.

Keep an eye out for more news from Soundkeeper, particularly in our area. Backer’s newsletter promises the group will do more work on restoring wetlands and treating polluted stormwater runoff around the Bronx River and Hutchinson river.

We’ll be watching for it.

The cyclists and planning people trying to piece together the East Coast Greenway will tackle that question Thursday, Oct. 18, at Lehman College in the Bronx.

An organizer, Mike Oliva, tells me that all interested people — that means members of the public — are “strongly encouraged to attend.

The Rhode Island-based organization will host a four-hour summit sarting at 3 p.m., and the route through Westchester is one of the major topics on the agenda.

They have been looking at two general routes. One would follow the Boston Post Road corridor, coming through the communities along Long Island Sound. The other would travel along the service road to Interstate 287 and then would run down along the Bronx River.

What’s at stake?

Well, there are the bragging rights that come with being part of something this large, billed as an urban counterpart to the Appalachian Trail. What’s more, local delis, bike shops and other businesses would benefit from having distance cyclers directed through their areas.

As one solution, Greenway organizers have talked about designated both routes through Westchester as part of the trail. Either way, Thursday’s meeting should take them closer to resolving the question.

Find directions to Lehman College here.

The agenda to the meeting is below:

Planned Summit Schedule: Thursday October 18, 2007 3:00PM to 7:00 PM at Lehman College

Dart Plays MC ;

3:00-3:10, Opening remarks and welcome, Jack Keene – ECGA National Office

3:10-3:15, East Coast Greenway mid-Atlantic Regional Overview, Mike Oliva

3:15-3:30, Keynote speaker, Jon Orcutt (possibly Janette Sadik-Kahn) – NYCDOT

3:30-4:00, East Coast Greenway Proposed New York Route – Mike and Jackson

Mike and Jackson describe the proposed route, identify progress to date and discuss critical areas in need of focused attention.

4:00-5:15, Simultaneous Panel Discussions – Westchester and New York City
Representatives of City and State agencies and not-for-profit groups associated with the ECG speak about what their agencies have done, are doing or will be doing, to advance implementation of specific segments of the proposed route, in response to targeted questions form the moderators and public.

New York City Meeting Moderated by Jackson
•NYSDOT Region 11 – Roger Weld and/or Richard Eagan
•NYCDPR – Joshua Laird or representative(s)
•NYCDOT – Josh Benson and/or Ryan Russo
•NYC EDC – Representative
•Randalls Island Sports Foundation (RISF) – Representative
•Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) – Deborah Kustka (or representative)
•Bronx River Alliance – Maggie???
•Bronx River Conservancy – Representative
•Transportation Alternatives – Noah Budnick or Paul Steely White
•Sustainable South Bronx – Representative

Westchester Meeting Moderated by Mike Oliva
•Westchester County Department of Planning – Lukas Herbert
•Westchester County Dept. Parks & Rec. – Dave Delucia
•Westchester County Department of Transportation – Naomi Klein
•NYSDOT Region 8 – Laura Lemier and/or Jim Rapoli and/or Russel Robbins
•Bronx River Alliance – Maggie???
•Bronx River Conservancy – Representative

5:15-5:30 – Refreshments

5:30-5:45 – Groups reconvene and moderators present highlights of the two prior panel discussions

5:45-6:30 – combined Moderated Panel Discussion (moderators – Mike and Jackson or Dart?)

All of the above participate in a combined moderated panel discussion focused on how to bridge the gap between Westchester and the Bronx with a special focus on inter-agency coordination. Anticipated topics of discussion include:
•Hutch Corridor
•Bronx River Corridor
•Putnam Corridor

6:30 – Until…Networking and mingling