Guilford — Ten days before the one-year anniversary of storm Sandy’s sweep through the coastal flanks of this shoreline community, town planner George Kral surveys an area that took one of the storm’s hardest hits -– Seaside Avenue. “The road was totally inundated,” he recounted. “All of the houses had water in their basements for […]
Jan Ellen Spiegel
Jan Ellen is CT Mirror's regular freelance Environment and Energy Reporter. As a freelance reporter, her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yale Climate Connections, and elsewhere. She is a former editor at The Hartford Courant, where she handled national politics including coverage of the controversial 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. She was an editor at the Gazette in Colorado Springs and spent more than 20 years as a TV and radio producer at CBS News and CNN in New York and in the Boston broadcast market. In 2013 she was the recipient of a Knight Journalism Fellowship at MIT on energy and climate. She graduated from the University of Michigan and attended Boston University’s graduate film program.
Posted inNews
Mosquito chief takes over at Agricultural Experiment Station
Theodore Andreadis –- the man Connecticut residents have come to know over the last decade-and-a-half for his reports on mosquito activity in the state -– is the new director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He replaces Louis Magnarelli who died in July. No official announcement has been made yet, though Andreadis in fact began […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Who pays on the Connecticut shoreline: More and more it’s property owners
Charlie Dill’s dose of reality about living on the Connecticut shoreline hit right in the bank account this past summer. That’s when he discovered his 1920s-era home, four houses off the water on the peninsula in Stamford known as Shippan Point, had been reclassified into a flood zone. It meant even though the house went through both Tropical Storm Irene and storm Sandy without taking on a drop of water, his mortgage lender would now require flood insurance.
Posted inNews
Climate change report blames humans — a conversation with Gary Yohe
Friday’s release of the latest international assessment of climate change has more firmly than ever placed its cause at the feet of humans. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment stated: “Human influence on the climate system is clear. “Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Web tool assists with landscaping for shoreline protection
Madison – Heather Crawford was incredulous. “Look at that, they’re irrigating,” she said as sprinklers soaked a perfect green grass lawn on top of a beachside seawall. Water dripped down the side leaving a large and expanding stain on the wall, which had been rebuilt after Tropical Storm Irene destroyed the previous one.
Posted inNews
Despite storms, few coastal homeowners are open to buyouts
West Haven – The humor displayed by the crowd gathered in the basement of City Hall was clearly of the black variety. “I had fish in my yard,” said one homeowner, describing what flooding from Storm Sandy did to her home a year earlier. “Shrimp, fish; we had a party,” another half-joked. They and more […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Many out-of-state companies win in state’s commercial renewable energy program
The long-awaited list of energy companies that applied for and won clean energy projects through the state’s revamped commercial renewable energy incentive program shows a hefty chunk of the work could send a lot of the money out-of-state. (The lists are here: CL&P ZREC-LREC applicant.pdf, and here: UI ZREC-LREC applicants.xls.)
Posted inMoney
State’s energy efficiency plan comes with higher customer fees
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s release of the state’s first long-term energy efficiency strategy is receiving widespread praise from environmental groups. And that’s even with proposed increases to ratepayer fees to fund it.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Connecticut’s trouble with seawalls
New Haven – Rob Smuts, New Haven’s chief of emergency management, is walking down the beach at Morris Cove on an on-and-off-drizzly summer morning, his dress shoes utterly out of sync with the moment. He is talking with beachside neighbors David Kronberg and Tony Sacco about the same thing they’ve talked about for years -– seawalls.
Posted inNews
Gridlock caution on anniversary of worst U.S. blackout
On one hand, it makes perfect sense that the Obama administration would use the week of the 10th anniversary of the worst blackout in the U.S. to release a report on electric grid resiliency. On the other hand, the fact that its focus is that “severe weather is the leading cause of power outages in […]
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A sparrow’s story: Project looks at signs of climate change in Long Island Sound
Stonington – Chris Elphick squishes his way across the slick and sometimes muddy bottom of the salt marsh at Barn Island. “Oh there’s a sparrow. Oops, just gone,” he says suddenly, interrupting himself. “It hopped up and it flew back down again. Sorry. That’s the way it is.” The sparrow – which for the record, […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Canadian fires cause close call for New England power supply
It now appears that the unprecedented forest fires that scorched Canada beginning in June came perilously close to having a devastating impact on the Northeast U.S. power grid. In the last week, officials at the independent system operator that runs the New England grid have revealed that on July 3, four transmission lines from Hydro-Quebec shut down because of raging fires near James Bay in northern Quebec.
Posted inNews
Shellfish bed closures raise climate change questions
In the wake of five reported illnesses, the state agriculture department has shut 22 shellfish beds in Norwalk and Westport and instituted a so far voluntary recall of oysters and clams harvested since July 3. The culprit is Vibrio parahaemolyticus, naturally occurring bacteria that is generally seen more on the west coast. It does, however, […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Nine Connecticut microgrid projects approved
The state’s first microgrid projects have been announced. Nine projects in eight communities have been approved as part of a microgrid pilot project – the first in the nation – conceived after Tropical Storm Irene and the October snowstorm in 2011 left large swaths of the state without power for more than a week. State officials were particularly concerned that services such as food providers, gas stations and pharmacies could not operate and part of the goal had been projects to help communities keep essential services running during future power outages. Another part of the goal was systems that use cleaner energy sources.
Posted inNews
Power demand sets weekend record
The heat wave seems to have toppled at least one power demand record. A spokeswoman for the Independent System Operator that runs the New England grid – ISO New England – said preliminary results for Saturday showed a peak demand in the region of 24,653 megawatts. If that holds, it will set a new record for weekend power demand. […]
