Deep River — The cafeteria at John Winthrop Middle School is a picture of healthy fresh food. On this pasta Wednesday, the special is homemade lasagna with tomato or a vegetable-spiked meat sauce. Gorgeous green salads with precisely cut grape tomatoes and cucumbers are lined up for quick grabbing during blitzing-fast lunch periods. There are […]
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
CT Farm Energy Program faces closure in days
For four years Amanda Fargo-Johnson has steered Connecticut farmers and rural businesses through the thicket of grant applications and financial incentives to help them pay for money-saving energy improvements. But hundreds of inquiries, dozens of grant applications and more than a dozen energy workshops and expos later, Fargo-Johnson’s tiny Connecticut Farm Energy Program is on the verge […]
Posted inNews
State of CT’s environment — not so good
There’s not much to celebrate in the Council on Environmental Quality‘s 40th annual report on the Connecticut environment. Aside from a few small improvements, the overall state of things is status quo at best punctuated by backsliding in key areas. The Council acknowledged in its opening that: “Connecticut’s environment is resistant to improvement,” laying the blame squarely with […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Widespread dissatisfaction with energy bill process and changes to renewable power
Plans to rush major energy legislation through the General Assembly as soon as Wednesday are raising cries of foul from dozens of normally unaligned groups. Their concerns are prompted in part by timing: It’s two months before the draft report most of the legislation is based on finishes its required public review.
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New arts grant system irritates many, pleases few
Barbara Schaffer, the director of development at New Haven-based Elm Shakespeare, hadn’t been too worried last year when the newly reconfigured state Office of the Arts overhauled its grant system. Instead of giving away money mainly for general operating support as it had for decades, much of the grant system was reformulated under the philosophy […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Politics
It’s official – McCarthy nominated to run EPA
It’s official. As has been widely reported (including here) for weeks, President Obama is nominating Connecticut’s former top environmental official – Gina McCarthy – to run the Environmental Protection Agency.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Ash tree beetle bores further into state
The invasive and destructive beetle that attacks ash trees seems to have dug in even more deeply here. The emerald ash borer, which turned up in five New Haven County communities last summer after being held at bay for years across the border in New York, has been found in three more communities.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
UTC Power reaches the edge
While you were still busy clearing snow from the February blizzard, a storied piece of Connecticut’s business and energy history underwent a massive transformation. UTC Power, the fuel cell division of United Technologies was purchased by ClearEdge Power, a West Coast relative newcomer to the world of fuel cells that UTC all but invented.
Posted inNews
Energy auction proposal sparks consumer backlash
It was a little item, stashed in the revenue side of the slide show that accompanied Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget address earlier this month. “Energy auction. Convert about 800,000 electric ratepayers to an electric rate below their current standard offer. Savings to these ratepayers of approximately $65 per year. The state would auction the […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Look Ma, no subsidies
That’s the goal anyway of a new solar program competition by the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority. CEFIA will award a $1 million loan to the plan that uses the money to provide the most residential solar electricity. It has to be a feasible plan – no fantasy projects. But the critical parameter is […]
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Energy strategy focus on gas still needs a way to get it here
Less than five months after it was unveiled in draft form, Connecticut’s first Comprehensive Energy Strategy is final. An ambitious and broad-ranging blueprint of 500 pages including hundreds of public comments, it covers natural gas, energy efficiency, electricity supply and renewable energy, industrial needs and transportation — establishing goals for all far into the future. […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
New name, new leader for fuel oil group
It might seem less than coincidence that as the Malloy administration put forward its comprehensive energy strategy — with its key component a large-scale conversion from heating oil to natural gas — that the oil guys are undergoing a makeover. Actually it IS pretty much coincidence. The Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association early this year announced […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment
State’s farmers feel left out of big clean energy programs
Woodstock — Paul Miller has two words for the watery cow manure being pumped from catch basins under his barns into a large tanker truck — and those words, surprisingly, are not “that stinks!” The words are: “liquid gold.” For the record, the manure does stink, and by all accounts would be even worse if […]
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
Between a rock (salt) and a hard place
The Motor Transport Association of Connecticut has a little problem on its hands. The salt and liquid magnesium chloride mixture the state Department of Transportation uses to treat roads after a snowstorm works well. But they want it banned anyway. “We were pretty happy with it earlier this week,” said Mike Riley, the association’s president. […]
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Blizzard delivers crushing blow to Connecticut agriculture
Patti Popp of Sport Hill Farm in Easton was at least managing to laugh a bit as she described the collapsed hoop house. “It’s mess,” she said. “I went inside praying it didn’t fall on me.” The hoop house at Sport Hill Farm collapsed under the weight of snow. Popp is among Connecticut farmers who […]