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Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, Superfund strike.

Youth activists and legislators gather in Hoboken and Point Pleasant to demand the passage of the Climate Superfund Act.

Towns like Bradley Beach are going to benefit from this.

And towns everywhere.

You don't have to be a coastal town.

We're probably going to hear about people flooding from upland and inland from rainstorm events like Irene and Ida.

Plus, the HABA saga continues.

The legal battle over the legitimacy of Alina HABA's appointment as U.S. attorney could be settled in a Pennsylvania court tomorrow.

Also, hunger in New Jersey.

A food bank in Passaic County is facing higher demand with an even tighter budget as tariffs take effect.

And meet Joyce, the elephant at the center of an animal rights campaign to free her from Six Flags.

There's five elephants at Six Flags.

One of them is named Joyce.

And the reason that this campaign is focused on Joyce more than the other four is because we know a lot more about Joyce's story.

NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

♪♪♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Brianna Vanozzi.

>> Good evening, and thanks for joining us on this Wednesday night.

I'm Raven Santana in for Brianna Vanozzi.

We begin with a few of today's top stories.

First, climate activists, state lawmakers, and union leaders rallied this morning in support of a bill that seeks to make the fossil fuel industry pay for climate change-related expenses in New Jersey.

The so-called Climate Superfund Act would require oil companies who do business in the Garden State pay into a fund that would go towards climate adaptation and resilience projects.

A climate superfund could raise billions of dollars for New Jersey, something supporters say is badly needed as the state deals with sea-level rise, increasingly severe flooding, and more frequent wildfires.

Business groups have come out against the bill, saying it would deter future investment in the state and could cause some companies to relocate.

Separate rallies this morning in Hoboken and Point Pleasant touted growing support for the bill and demanded its passage when the state legislature returns to Trenton this fall.

If you spill the oil, you clean it up.

If you poison the air and the water, you make it right.

And if you profited from the harm, you will pay for the repair.

That's not radical.

That's justice.

They have a responsibility to step up to the plate and help the people of New Jersey to pay for these impacts.

Sandy, remember Sandy?

Only 60 billion dollars.

One example.

The costs are going to be enormous.

Also tonight, Camden leaders have approved a deal with scrapyard operator EMR months after a massive fire that spurred evacuations and protests in the city.

EMR has agreed to install new fire suppression systems at its sprawling waterfront facility, have its employees take new training for emergency response, and reduce its overall footprint in the city by vacating nearby property.

EMR will also create a fund of more than 3 million dollars dedicated to benefiting the surrounding neighborhood.

A committee of representatives from EMR, city government, and local residents will decide how that money is spent.

The deal is worth more than 6 million dollars in all.

City leaders touted the deal as fair compensation for the impact of EMR's February 4 alarm fire, which filled the area with thick black smoke and forced more than 100 families to evacuate.

The fire was caused by a lithium ion battery that had been mistakenly delivered to the junkyard.

But according to fire department reports, EMR employee actions made the blaze worse before firefighters could respond.

Camden City Council passed an ordinance creating new regulations for lithium ion batteries earlier this year.

Local residents and community activists protested the new deal, saying it leaves the neighborhood at risk and does not do enough to hold EMR accountable.

And the ongoing saga over Alina Haba's appointment to be U.S. attorney for New Jersey continues.

This time before a Pennsylvania district court judge, after a case was filed by Julian Girard Jr., who is under indictment in the state on drugs and weapons charges.

The case was briefly filed by his attorney.

He alleges that President Trump's decision to keep Haba in the job beyond the expiration of her term was unlawful and allowing her appointment sets a precedent for the president to have unlimited authority to choose U.S. attorneys without approval from the Senate or the judiciary.

This all comes on the heels of a busy few weeks in the attorney's office after Haba's initial term came to an end and the state's federal judges appointed first assistant Desiree Grace to succeed her.

The Trump administration fired Grace in response and appointed Haba once again in her place.

Grace has since filed a complaint arguing her firing was completely unjustified.

Now court proceedings remain in flux while attorneys wait to see how the Pennsylvania judge rules.

There's a growing concern over e-bike safety in New Jersey after a string of serious accidents this summer, including the death of a 14 year old from Egg Harbor Township last month.

Lawmakers are now considering new legislation to address the issue, while police are reminding riders, especially teens, that e-bikes must follow the same rules of the road as bicycles and that helmets can save lives.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gaggis has more.

We have children basically on motorcycles and granted they may not be moving at 50, 60 miles per hour, but the damage that can occur at moving 25 to 30 miles per hour can be just as significant and life altering.

If you've been outside at all this summer, you've probably seen e-bikes zipping around the streets or sidewalks more and more.

They're being driven by kids, some as young as 11 or 12 years old.

We had a juvenile riding a bike on one of our streets and crashed into a motor vehicle.

He was going at a high rate of speed.

That e-bike crash in Westfield last Friday resulted in the child being taken to a trauma center.

But in mid-July, a 14 year old in Summers Point died in an e-bike crash.

And this one's hard to watch, but Montvale police released video of an e-bike colliding with a car a few weeks ago to help raise awareness about these types of incidents that have become all too common across the state.

We've seen an increase already this summer as compared to last year.

We're on track to double or triple the number of injuries that we've taken care of as a result of e-bike and e-scooter use.

They're essentially motorcycles.

And then they're riding on the roads and then they're quick zipping onto the sidewalks or cutting cars off or knocking down pedestrians.

Westfield passed an ordinance banning e-bikes from town parks to protect kids and others inside the park.

Towns across New Jersey have passed similar bans, but maybe an unintended consequence, it is pushing the bikes out into the street.

What we're seeing now is that kids are riding these bikes on main roads, on busy roads, and they don't realize that they're treated as a motor vehicle.

And unfortunately, because many of these kids don't have licenses yet, they're not able to drive a motor vehicle, but they're riding these motorized bikes that are classified as motor vehicles.

It's kind of this double-edged sword.

Plus, Westfield Rescue Squad President Callie Campbell says they've seen cases where the kids alter their e-bikes to hit speeds closer to 40 miles an hour.

After learning about the teen's death in his district, Republican Senator Vince Palastina proposed legislation to require all e-bike riders take a safety course before operating a Class 1 or Class 2 e-bike, especially because most of them have never even learned the rules of the road.

All the basics, you know, starting, stopping, understanding how to view hazards, similar to what you go through with driver's training, you know, where are the hazards, how do you comply with stop signs, how does your interaction with vehicular traffic go in crosswalks.

I mean, all of that has to be part of what goes into this.

And of course, all the safety measures that you should be, have on your body, including a helmet.

Do you think that there should be a consideration for an age requirement to be on an e-bike?

I think that's definitely something that we need to look at.

Certainly younger people should not be on these vehicles.

They go way too fast and they're just not able to fully embrace how important it is to operate them in a safe manner.

We're really putting too much pressure on children to make these safe decisions when mentally they're just not developed enough yet to be making those decisions.

Dr. Kelly Willman has seen way too many life-altering severe brain injuries because young people were riding without helmets.

But she has a word of caution for parents who think they can just hand their kid a helmet and send them out the door.

That's really just protecting the head and the brain.

We still see cervical spine injuries, broken necks that can result in significant paralysis or even quadriparesis where all four extremities are involved.

A lot of these patients also suffer from blunt injury to their chest and to their abdomen.

So we can see injuries to the spleen, injuries to the liver.

These can result in life-threatening bleeding intra-abdominally.

Campbell would like to see the law require every e-bike to be registered with the state, no different than a motorcycle.

This would allow police to track who's breaking the rules and require more accountability for parents before they send their kids out onto the road.

In Westfield, I'm Joanna Gagas, NJ Spotlight News.

In our Spotlight on Business report tonight, Passaic County's largest food bank says it's in crisis.

CUMAC just received $25,000 in the state budget, but it's still facing a shortfall as the demand for its services reaches record highs.

And as Ted Goldberg reports, with tariffs in flux, grocery prices increasing, staff benefits shrinking, food costs remain a major stressor for more than half of Americans, and CUMAC leaders are scrambling to figure out how to survive.

The food pantry CUMAC has never been busier.

It's something that keeps us up at night, but our organization, we've been here for 40 years, we're ready to serve, and we will meet the moment like we always have.

Jessica Padilla-Gonzalez and her coworkers in Patterson handle around 200 appointments per day for people to come in and grab some food.

About 60% of them are coming 1-5 times per year.

About 40% are coming 6-12 times per year.

So it makes a really interesting pattern for us.

We're not only providing foods that we're rescuing or that we're getting donated, we actually go out and purchase foods because we want to make sure that all of our families have access to a complete meal.

So we're buying meats, we're buying pastas, we're buying rice, we're buying canned goods for them to be able to prepare a complete meal.

Most of the food they hand out is donated, or gleaned from stores that have excess.

Just don't call it free.

With the donations, there is a whole crew of drivers that go out and drive, so it's not free.

We have personnel, we have trucks.

Every dollar counts.

Kumac is staring down a $250,000 deficit for the next fiscal year, even with $250,000 coming from state funds.

We're happy that we actually made it.

We're honored that we were in the budget, but the amount that we received versus the need that we're seeing, that's going to be a big obstacle for us.

Gonzalez and her co-workers are concerned about tariffs and the rising costs of groceries.

According to the Consumer Price Index, grocery costs dipped 0.1 percent last month, but are 2 percent higher than a year ago.

It's making it more expensive for our consumers who are already probably living on limited budgets.

A lot of them are working, they're employed, they're on fixed incomes, but then it's also for us when we start doing our rescue.

So if stores start buying less because of the tariffs, we may have less food to rescue.

If we have less that we're able to glean because stores are buying less because of tariffs or inflation or whatever may occur, we're going to have less to bring into our space.

We're going to have less to therefore provide to the community.

Tom Prusa is a professor of economics at Rutgers.

He's concerned that rising food costs could lead to shortages at local food banks.

It's been a chronic problem for quite a while now.

It would be a policy issue that seriously should be addressed for a variety of reasons, one being the tariffs.

And again, the tariffs have a nuanced effect because how they impact different food products is going to vary across.

It'll have a different effect on corn than it will on products that are handpicked, for instance.

Prusa also thinks that reductions in federal benefits could drive more people to those very food banks that could have a lower supply.

If they've cut other parts of the social safety net, including SNAP payments, in effect it's going to create more demand.

So without more resources, we're going to have even greater relative shortages in the food banks because there's going to be more and more people needing to access their food via food banks.

Wallart at CUMAC says ending hunger has nothing to do with giving people food, which is why they also provide job training and mental health counseling on site.

CUMAC is on pace to serve 80,000 people this year, all navigating an uncertain future ahead.

In Patterson, I'm Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.

Support for The Business Report is provided by the Newark Alliance Presents the 2025 Halsey Fest, featuring the vibrancy of Newark's Arts and Education District and Halsey Street.

Halsey, a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey Fest schedule is available at halseynwk.com.

A new push is taking aim at Six Flags Great Adventures Elephant Exhibit.

The animal rights group World Animal Protection U.S. has launched a PR campaign urging the park to move its herd of five African elephants from its safari attraction to a sanctuary, raising concerns about the small enclosure that elephants are kept in at the amusement park.

The group says the move would be a major step toward ending elephant captivity in entertainment.

The campaign focuses on one of the elephants, Joyce, whose life journey was the focus of a 2019 investigation.

Our producer, Michael Sol Warren, led that reporting before coming to work for us and sat down with me to discuss more about that campaign and its impact.

Michael, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Raven.

So what is at the heart of this campaign targeting Six Flags Elephant Exhibit?

Sure.

So there's this group, World Animal Protection.

They're an international group.

This is their U.S. chapter.

They've launched this free Joyce campaign that takes a look at the elephant exhibit that is part of Six Flags Wild Safari.

That's the ride that you can take trucks through.

They've got hundreds of different animals, ostriches, different deer, bison, things like that.

They are taking issues specifically with the elephant part of that.

Six Flags has five elephants at the amusement park.

They are kept in what this group feels is a relatively small enclosure.

They estimate it's about four acres large, which is, you know, a tiny fraction of what an elephant might get in a sanctuary or in their native range.

We talked about this off camera.

I've been to that safari with my kids.

I probably have seen Joyce there.

Why are they focusing on her?

What did this investigation find?

Yeah, the reason, so obviously there's five elephants at Six Flags.

One of them is named Joyce.

And the reason that this campaign is focused on Joyce more than the other four is because we know a lot more about Joyce's story.

And it's pretty compelling.

Joyce was born in the wild in Zimbabwe in the early '80s.

And as a young elephant, maybe a year old, they think, was one of dozens that this eccentric millionaire in Florida decided he wanted to rescue.

He wanted to save the elephants, and he decided to fly his private jet out with the crew, take these babies, and bring them back to Florida.

And that was supposed to be the end of it.

It was supposed to be happy ever after living there.

Eventually, he kind of ran out of money.

He had some financial hardships, and he couldn't afford to take care of dozens of elephants anymore.

So Joyce and the rest were sold off to zoos and circuses around the country.

Joyce herself traveled between a couple different circuses and zoos.

This is actually the second Six Flags that she's been at for a period of time.

She lived at one in California.

But she did end up at Six Flags Great Adventure here in Jersey in 2010, and she's been here ever since.

This is actually kind of the longest home she's had.

Well, it seems like she's been at this Six Flags longer than she's been in the wild.

So I guess what I'm wondering is how has Six Flags responded to this when we think about moving her back into the wild and maybe out of this attraction?

Yeah, I mean Six Flags has been clear with me since I first started asking them about Joyce in 2018 that they have no intention of moving her or the other elephants out.

And when I asked them for a response to this campaign yesterday, they reiterated that.

And their point is simple.

They're like, you know, we've had this elephant and we're trying to give her a stable life, which is something she has not had in the early parts of her life.

And they argue that it's in Joyce's best interest to live the rest of her days in a place she's familiar with, surrounded by elephants and people she's familiar with.

The animal rights group, World Animal Protection, would disagree with that.

They argue that, yes, it's good for an elephant to have stability in their surroundings.

But if one more move means bringing her from an enclosure that's less than five acres to a sanctuary where she has hundreds of acres to roam, then that move would be worth it.

That's the argument that they're making.

Well, do you see this campaign as part of a larger conversation about animal captivity?

I do.

I think that it's really interesting to think about how our feelings as humans towards captive animals has evolved over the decades.

I mean, you know, the fact that circuses for generations had elephants and tigers and lions doing tricks up to today in some places they still do.

And that used to be an attraction people loved.

They've really fallen out of favor and public views and opinions towards how exotic animals should be kept, if they should be kept at all, have really changed.

And groups like World Animal Protection are kind of looking around and saying, you know, we're not on the fringes here anymore.

Most of public opinion agrees that these animals, particularly elephants, need to be in wide open spaces.

And they think that the public will support them on this.

That's right.

Michael, thank you for joining me.

And to see more of that story and of Michael's reporting, you can go to NJSpotlightNews.org.

For teens adjusting to life after spinal cord injuries, finding structure, confidence and a sense of community can feel impossible.

But at True Grit Camp, teens are discovering just how much they can achieve from mastering new skills to building lasting connections.

I got a firsthand look at how True Grit Camp is showing young people that their future is full of possibilities.

For most teens, summer means sleep away camps, dorm room chats and the freedom of independence.

But for young people living with spinal cord injuries, that sense of freedom can feel impossibly far off until now.

I'm diagnosed to C4, C5 quadriplegic, and I'm really just working on daily activities, like putting my shirt on, getting dressed in the morning, brushing my teeth, which a lot of people take for granted.

But it's the little things that really make a big difference in my life, that even if it's just putting my shirt on or like washing my hair this week or whatever it is, just those little accomplishments being the biggest things to us.

20-year-old Micah McLondon from Chapel Hill, Tennessee, is one of nine participants in True Grit Camp, a unique sleep away program in partnership with Rutgers University's School of Health Professions.

Set on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, True Grit is more than a camp.

It's rewriting the story of what life after injury can look like.

Now we're able to accept up to 12 participants and the age range is between 16 and 21.

And the kids are coming from all over the country because, like I mentioned, there's not really anything for them at this point besides us.

So the cost is we charge a $50 registration fee and there's no additional cost beyond that.

The program's founder, Cassandra Boyd, says the camp offers far more than just dorm keys and schedules.

It offers a roadmap for life.

We interview everybody before they come.

We do an evaluation and we really learn what's meaningful to them.

And that's how we schedule camp and that's how we make our program.

So if we have a kid who wants to try lacrosse again, we put lacrosse on our schedule.

We do some things every day all together, like going to breakfast in the dining hall.

And then we give them opportunities just to hang out and be on a college campus together and go to Starbucks.

Then we do things like yoga.

We do things like swimming.

We give them opportunities to try new things.

To be able to see these teens just light up again is everything to me.

Rutgers lecturer and program co-leader Kira McNair says what participants find here isn't just therapy.

It's team support, a purpose and a path forward.

They also really appreciated structure.

A lot of them have a hard time refinding that structure post-injury.

And a lot of things just look like, well, I go to therapy or I go to school and that's kind of it.

Whereas one of our participants, he used to be a football player and he said, like, I felt like I was back on the team.

Right.

I'm getting up in the morning.

I have something to do.

I have somewhere to be all day long.

And I got my team with me.

And that was really meaningful.

So that was something that we wanted to bottle and keep.

For 18-year-old Anthony Presto of Upstate New York and Isaac Lima of Roselle Park, the camp delivered far more than just activities.

It delivered hope.

So I used to be a cheerleader.

And so while I was at cheer practice, I was doing some stunts and I fell and unfortunately suffered a spinal cord injury.

So being here, it gave me like that push to say, oh, I can do it.

I can go to a college.

I can go to the classrooms.

I was diving through a pool tube and I ended up missing it and breaking my neck.

I've only been injured for a year and like three months ago, I wouldn't even go to the grocery store by myself.

So this was like a really big step for me to be in contact people and talk to people.

Sounds like you got some eggs to load up.

TruGrid's powerhouse team includes nurses, therapists and peer mentors, some of whom have traveled this road themselves, like camp mentor, Jashar Banks.

I just put on a different pair of shoes, you know, to go running.

We need $5,000 at least equipment to go and bike.

We need equipment to do anything really.

So a camp like TruGrid is awesome because we have those resources and we share that with others to borrow and use for the time being.

Whether it's learning a new sport, cooking with adaptive tools or simply bonding over shared experiences, Boyd says TruGrid camp is determined to grow, empowering more young people to build strength, confidence and the unshakable belief that their future is still full of possibility.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

But a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

I'm Raven Santana for the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for being with us.

Have a great evening and we'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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