59 New Jersey and out-of-state conservation and civic organizations have joined in a letter to President Obama asking him not to allow his administration to allocate more money for the Delaware River deepening project.

The groups see the Army Corps of Engineers project to deepen the river from Delaware Bay to north of Camden as environmentally destructive and economically wasteful. Deepening is currently being done off Delaware.

Written by Janet Tauro, NJEF Board Chair

Congressman Jon Runyan's statement in his Jan. 18 commentary, "Find new use for nuclear plant," that nuclear power must be "a part of a future energy independence strategy" and done in an "environmentally responsible fashion" is an oxymoron, and reflective of a banal history of wishful thinking.

Any technology that emits daily releases of a cocktail of radioactive isotopes and leaves behind a deadly pile of waste that remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years does not fit the definition of "environmentally responsible."

A U.S. District Court ruling that Vermont legislators could not close a local nuclear plant created speculation Friday about whether it could affect an agreement between New Jersey and the owners of the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey to close the plant in 2019.

U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha ruled Thursday that Entergy Corp., which owns the nuclear power plant Vermont Yankee based in Vernon, Vt., could not be closed by the state legislature.

Vermont had a law stating the plant needed legislative approval to operate for another 20 years. Murtha ruled Vermont couldn't close the plant based on a lack of legislative approval for storage of high-level radioactive waste.