EnviroPolitics Blog

In Pittsburgh, steel mill of past becomes today’s solar array

The largest solar array of its kind in the U.S. now sits atop a former Pittsburgh steel mill

By Kiley Koscinski/WESA

A 133,000-square-foot solar array is now functional at Hazelwood Green’s Mill 19. It’s a project that marries the story of Pittsburgh’s past with its future: bridge workers applied 4,784 solar panels to the frame of a former steel mill now home to robotics nonprofits and one of the several autonomous vehicle developers which call the city home.

Tim Sippey, the site foreman, used to pick his father up from a late shift at Mill 19 when he was growing up.

“I remember what the inside of that mill looked like when I was a little kid,” he said. Sippey’s father worked at the former LTV Coke Works site for 32 years.

He said the memories came flooding back when arrived for his first day at the job site.

“There’s a certain smell to the mill,” he said. “Even when they were digging down there, the dirt still smelled that way.” Sippey said he wore his father’s hard hat to work when crews began fitting and clamping panels into place in September.

Solar array in Illinois becomes a place honeybees can call home

The $5 million project was completed by Scalo Solar Solutions, which is also installing solar panels in the parking lots at Hazelwood Green. Mike Carnahan, the company’s vice president and general manager, said panels were preassembled and tested on the ground before a crane lifted them 85 feet in the air to the frame of the old mill.

Crew members then clamped the panels onto the frame of the 1943 building while standing on netting between the beams. Carnahan said the site looked like a giant jungle gym.

The roof is sloped at 20 degrees to capture as much sunlight as possible.

“It’s providing shade for the building and it’s producing all the energy that this facility is going to need,” said Carnahan.

Crews placed the final section of panels at the end of July. Wiring and testing have been completed, making the solar array fully functional. It’s the largest single sloped solar array in the United States.

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From the L.A. Times: Fighting Fire With Networking

Feeling abandoned by the state and federal government during an unparalleled conflagration of fires, volunteer firefighting units in two Santa Cruz Mountains towns have been forced to tap an alternative: unofficial help from an elite network of the nation’s finest emergency response units — who quickly provided needed equipment and support.

Over the weekend, crews from an elite FEMA Urban Search and Rescue unit in Menlo Park delivered spare water tenders, firefighting rigs, cots, sleeping bags, radios and communications equipment, food and water to struggling units in Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond. There, veteran and decorated first responders established makeshift command and operations centers to battle the CZU Lightning Complex fire raging in the mountains above Silicon Valley.

The unit is called California Task Force 3, and it is one of 28 such forces in the United States. The team of roughly 200 has responded to some of the nation’s most notorious and deadly disasters, including the 2018 Camp fire, the 2010 San Bruno gas line explosion, and notorious hurricanes such as Katrina, Irma and Harvey.

The death toll from the historic firestorms hitting Northern California rose to seven as officials used a small break in the weather to make progress against a series of lightning-sparked blazes that have been burning for a week.

Live Fire Updates from the New York Times

‘Megafires’ Could Burn for Weeks
There are 625 blazes burning across the state, and they have scorched an area larger than the state of Delaware.

Firefighters reported an increase in containment of the two largest groups of fires, the L.N.U. Lightning Complex and the S.C.U. Lightning Complex.

Here’s what you need to know:

Damage from the L.N.U. Lightning Complex fire in Vacaville, Calif., on Monday.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

Firefighters make progress, but warn that ‘this is going to be a marathon.’

Strained by hundreds of fires that have burned through more than 1.4 million acres, California fire officials are warning that the state is now living through a “megafire era” in which blazes burn for weeks across vast expanses of land.

There are currently 625 blazes burning across the state, and they have scorched an area larger than the state of Delaware. Seven deaths have been linked to the fires and more than 1,000 homes and other buildings have gone up in flames, many of which were consumed by two groups of fires in Northern California — the S.C.U. Lightning Complex and the L.N.U. Lightning Complex — that are the second-largest and third-largest ever in the state.

“We are essentially living in a megafire era,” said Chief Jake Hess of the Santa Clara Unit of CalFire, California’s fire agency. “We have folks who have been working for CalFire for the last five years and that’s all they understand — megafires — since they started.”

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NY, NJ hesitant on offshore grid planning amid federal uncertainty

By SAMANTHA MALDONADO and MARIE J. FRENCH, Politico

ALBANY — New York and New Jersey may have their offshore wind goals nailed down, but how to bring the power to land remains very much in the air.

Transporting electricity produced by wind turbines off the coasts of New York and New Jersey to shore requires a decision: should states guide a planned grid offshore or let each project developer go it alone?

So far the two states have opted to let offshore wind developers plot their own path for transmission lines to connect to their grids. That may ultimately result in higher costs, missed opportunities and an inability to advance future offshore developments.

Both states are examining the issue of transmitting offshore wind to shore and plugging it into some of the oldest electric infrastructure in the country.

“If we’re going to have a complete revolution of where we get our power from, it only makes sense that you’re going to plan out how to get that power to shore,” said Janice Fuller, president of New Jersey OceanGrid, a division of transmission developer Anbaric. “It can’t be left to this one-at-a-time, we’ll figure it out as we go [process]. … We only have one opportunity to do this right.”

With each new award to an offshore wind developer who picks the least-cost and best-located point to hook into the grid, the number of places to interconnect decreases and potential upgrade costs increase. That may raise the bids submitted by wind developers to states seeking thousands of megawatts to support their climate goals.

A major barrier to policymakers moving ahead with detailed plans for an offshore grid is the lack of clarity on where new wind projects might be sited. The federal government is slow-walking new leases off the area’s coastline, making any planning nebulous.

“It is harder to make material progress on transmission issues on the wet side when you don’t know where the lease areas will be located,” said Doreen Harris, interim president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

As it stands, there may not be enough capacity in the leased areas to meet the two state’s goals: a combined 16.5 gigawatts by 2035.

Setting up an offshore grid to collect electricity generated from multiple wind projects and making proactive onshore upgrades to the grid could ensure lower overall costs for electricity customers, and prevent major additional work on land. Fewer cables could minimize impacts on traditional maritime interests, including shipping and fishing.

“From Anbaric’s perspective, there’s risk mitigation through planning transmission. If you’re making decisions about transmission ahead of time or in parallel with your construction of generation, you can help to de-risk some of this,” Fuller said.

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Jerry Falwell Jr. agrees to resign from Liberty University

By Susan Svrluga, Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post, August 24, 2020 at 5:05 p.m.

Jerry Falwell Jr. has agreed to resign as president of Liberty University on Monday, according to a school official. The move came after a series of personal scandals rocked the evangelical university he has led since 2007.

Opposition to his presidency had been growing but came to a dramatic head after two new reports about a young man Falwell and his wife befriended at a Florida pool, went into business with and who allegedly was sexually connected to the couple. One report painted Falwell as the victim of an obsessive affair; the other as an eager participant manipulating a naive young man.

Falwell had been placed on paid leave Aug. 7 after he posted a provocative picture of himself and his wife’s assistant on social media. Both had their zippers partially down and Falwell was holding a dark beverage he joked was nonalcoholic and “just a prop.” Drinking or being around alcohol as well as sexual promiscuity are banned for students under Liberty’s personal code of conduct. Liberty board members had said in a statement Friday that they were investigating.

Monday was the first day of classes for Liberty students this fall.

Liberty University was founded in 1971 to “train champions for Christ,” and many at the school revere the memory of his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., the prominent evangelist who was one of the school’s founders.

For many years, Falwell was best known for lifting the university his father helped found out of debt, shoring up its finances, improving its physical campus and leading a dramatic growth in enrollment.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of conservative Liberty University, praised Donald Trump’s conservative credentials at the Republican National Convention in 2016. (The Washington Post)

He made national headlines when he endorsed President Trump in 2016, one of the first prominent evangelicals to do so.

He also garnered criticism for that: A former chairman of Liberty’s executive committee, Mark DeMoss, resigned over the endorsement, saying Trump’s campaign was a rejection of the values the university promotes.

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California Fires Live Updates: Lightning Storms Spare Fire Zone

Live Updates From The New York Times
Updated Aug. 24, 2020, 4:06 p.m. ET

The wildfires have now burned through more than a million acres, but there was some relief for firefighters overnight. “Mother Nature has helped us quite a bit,” one fire commander said.

The Oakland Zoo is among the institutions that have closed because of concerns about poor air quality in the Bay Area.

Here’s what you need to know:

Flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires leap above a road in Northern California on Sunday. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

More than a million acres have burned, but fresh lightning strikes are few.

Clusters of devastating wildfires continued to rage in Northern California on Monday, though there was some relief for firefighters: A turn in the weather did not deliver a feared barrage of new lightning strikes overnight.

More than 14,000 firefighters have been scrambling to protect communities from two dozen major blazes, which have left at least seven people dead and dozens injured, and have forced more than 100,000 people from their homes.

Roughly 1.2 million acres have burned since Aug. 15, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency. Almost 700,000 acres of that have been in the groups of fires known as the L.N.U. Lightning Complex and the S.C.U. Lightning Complex, which have become the second- and third-largest fires in state history.California Fires Map TrackerMaps showing the extents of the major fires in Northern California.

On Monday morning, the largest, the L.N.U. complex, which stretches across Napa and surrounding counties, was 22 percent contained. Shana Jones, the chief for Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit, said at a news conference Monday that firefighters were “making good progress” on the complex. But she added that given the size and complexity, “it’s going to take time to put this fire out.”

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New York AG wants to depose Eric Trump in investigation into Trump organization’s finances

The Trump Organization has stalled a state inquiry into the financing of four properties for months, Attorney General Letitia James said in court papers.

Eric Trump abruptly canceled an interview under oath with the New York attorney general’s office last month about the financing of several Trump projects.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

By William K. Rashbaum and Danny Hakim, The New York Times
Aug. 24, 2020 Updated 3:15 p.m. ET

The New York State attorney general’s office has stepped up its inquiry into whether President Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud by overstating assets to get bank loans, asking a judge to order Eric Trump to answer questions under oath and the company to hand over documents, court papers show.

Mr. Trump, who is President Trump’s son and an executive vice president of the company, abruptly canceled an interview with the attorney general’s office last month, and last week the Trump Organization told the office that the company and its lawyers would not comply with seven subpoenas related to the investigation.

The filings were made last week in State Supreme Court in Manhattan by the attorney general, Letitia James, and became public on Monday. They come as President Trump faces legal actions on other fronts. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has suggested in court filings that it is investigating possible bank and insurance fraud by the president and the Trump Organization.

The attorney general’s office started the civil inquiry in March 2019 after President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, told Congress that the president had inflated his assets in financial statements to banks when he was seeking loans and had understated them to reduce his real estate taxes.

The office initially subpoenaed records from two of the Trump Organization’s lenders, Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank, seeking loan records for four of the company’s big projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the N.F.L. in 2014.

The Trump Organization at first provided some information and sought to forestall the attorney general from seeking a similar court order eight months ago, after the company failed to turn over information on a particular property.

But more recently, the attorney general’s office said, the Trump Organization had stalled and stonewalled, according to the filings, some of which were sealed.

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By Sonia Moghe and Kara Scannell, CNN
Updated 1 hour ago Aug 24, 2020

(CNN) – The New York state attorney general is asking for a court to compel Eric Trump to be deposed in an investigation of the Trump Organization.

In court filings Monday, Letitia James’ office said Eric Trump initially agreed to sit for a deposition on July 22, only to refuse, “balking less than two days before he was scheduled by agreement to give testimony.”
James’ office outlined the scope of the investigation into whether the Trump Organization “improperly inflated the value of Mr. Trump’s assets on financial statements in order to secure loans and obtain economic and tax benefits.”

The attorney general’s office has been investigating President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization since 2019, when Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen testified before Congress that Trump’s annual financial statements inflated the values of his assets in order to secure favorable loans and insurance coverage, but deflated the value of other assets in order to reduce real estate taxes.

In the filing, James’ office states Eric Trump’s attorney sent a letter to the attorney general saying he would invoke “those rights afforded to every individual under the Constitution” as justification not to testify.
CNN has reached out to an attorney for Eric Trump for comment.

Alan Garten, chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, downplayed the development.
“There has been no lawsuit filed by the NY Attorney General,” Garten said. “This is simply a discovery dispute over documents and the like. As the motion papers clearly state, the NY AG has made no determination that anything was improper or that any action is forthcoming. We will respond to this motion as appropriate.”

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