KNBA News for Friday, November 6 2015
Appeal
By the Associated Press
The state is appealing the dismissal of a case challenging the U.S. Interior Department's refusal to allow for a road through a wildlife refuge to ease medical evacuations.
The state's appealing with the city of King Cove, Alaska Native interests and others.
According to court records, Congress, in 2009, passed legislation authorizing a land swap for a road between King Cove and Cold Bay that primarily would be used for health and safety purposes. The Interior secretary was required to comply with a federal environmental law as part of the determination on whether to carry out the exchange.
U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland found no violation of the environmental law and said the 2009 legislation didn't include a public health and safety component in the environmental review process.
Bethel fire investigation
By Anna Mae MacArthur, KYUK
Fire marshals are on the scene in Bethel investigating the Kilbuck campus fire. They’re photographing the site, talking with the fire department, and interviewing witnesses, trying to assess the damage and cause of the destruction.
“We’re not ruling out anything at this point. But we don’t have anything to offer as far as what caused the fire. So everything you’ve heard so far is rumor and/or speculation,” said Howell.
Bill Howell is Chief of Bethel’s Fire Department.
“Basically the process is reconstructing— trying to find where the fire started, what might have started it. The areas of greatest damage often lead us to the area where the fire started,” said Howell.
The marshals arrived Wednesday. Rain on Tuesday night helped a bit, Howell said. The rain helped prevent recognition, but with a large structure, it’s common for deep-seated flames to continue burning.
The fire department contained the fire around 6 p.m. yesterday after approximately 14 hours of crews working non-stop to suppress the inferno.
“In the 22 years I’ve been here, this is a significant fire. This is one of the biggest structure fires we’ve ever fought,” said Howell.
About 20 fire fighters, most of them volunteers, helped fight the flames as police monitored the perimeter and the city’s Public Works Department hauled truck after of water to the scene.
Fire crews responded to the scene around 3:45 Tuesday morning. Howell says within a few hours low visibility and extreme heat within the structure forced responders to evacuate and recalibrate.
“So we made a calculated decision to start opening up the building to create fire breaks,” said Howell.
Which meant ripping away sections of the building with excavators to isolate the burning.
“We felt it would be better to save something rather than nothing,” said Howell.
The Yup’ik immersion school is in smoking rubble.
The Kuskokwim Learning Academy, dorms, and gymnasium are standing, but the extent of damage is unknown.
The City of Bethel is working with the Dept. of Homeland Security to draft a disaster declaration, asking the governor to declare a state of emergency and allocate recovery resources to the city.
CIRI
By Ellen Lockyer, KSKA
Cook Inlet Region, Inc has invested 40 million dollars in a large natural gas-fired, combined cycle power plant in Ohio.
The plant will serve the largest wholesale power market in the world, known as the Pennsylvania-New Jersey- Maryland Interconnection. The PJM Interconnection actually encompasses 13 states in the upper Midwest.
Through its wholly-owned subsidiary, CIRI Energy, CIRI joins Capital Dynamics and Guggenheim Partners as an equity sponsor in the Middletown Energy Center. The plant, in Middletown, Ohio, is expected to cost around $500 million to build, with q completion date of 2018.
Nearly 40 percent of the PJM Interconnection’s electricity-generating capacity comes from coal-fired power plants. Low natural gas prices and stricter emissions standards are making these coal-fired plants uncompetitive and forcing many of them to shut down.
"The Middletown project will be one of the most competitive plants in the region and will produce the kind of clean, efficient power that the Interconnection will need in the coming decades,” said Stig Colberg, Chief Financial Officer at CIRI.
CIRI’s equity stake in the project is $40 million and will help diversify CIRI’s energy portfolio, Colberg says.
The Middletown project will earn revenues from the sale of power generation.