(Traverse City Record-Eagle, 9/1/08.)
STATE WON’T HELP LOCAL WIND PROJECT
MANISTEE, Michigan – Gov. jennifer Granholm grabbed center stage at the Democratic national Convention by touting Michigan as a jobs creation leader powered by an emphasis on alternative energy development.
Meanshile, a small group scrambled to secure private financing to manufacute a job-generaging, cutting-edge wind turbine in manistee, a whirlwind effort forced upon them because a state agency quashed their request for a $2 million start-up loan.
The state’s refusal to support the wind turbine project upset local businessmen and officials, many of whom question Michigan’s committment to alternative energy efforts.
“Apparently, we don’t have the political clout that some other parts of Michigan do,” said John Holcomb, operations manager at MasTech Manufacturing Inc. in Manistee, shortly after the Michigan Economic Development Corp. rejected a loan request MasTech sought through the state’s 21st Century Job Fund. “We’re a little distraught by that…it looks like politics as usual in Michigan.”
masTech is working with Mariah Power, a Reno, Nevada, start-up company that devolped a vertical wind axis called a “Windspire.”
The unit stands about 30 feet high and operates with three sets of airfoils that catch wind and rotate aro9und a vertical axis. it turns a 20-foot tall rotor that generates electricity, and an inverter converts electricity from direct current to alternating current for residential or commercial use.
The unit can generate approximately 2,000 kilowatt hours per year with average wind speeds of 12 mph, and sells for around $5,000, plus installation costs.
Mariah sought a U.S. manufacturing company to mass produce the appli9ance, with connected with MasTech through a Detroit-area renewable energy dealer that se4lls the Windspire. Holcomb said about50 Windspires are in operation around the country.
Local support; state rejection
manistee-based Alliance for Economic Success rolled up its sleeves and garnered project support from manistee’s county and city leaders. The group also helped secure a $400,000 federal community development block grant to help pay for equipment upgrade4s at MasTech to manufacture the wind generator.
Alliance executive director Renee Ihlenfeldt said Mariah was impressed with how the community backed the project.
“They’re extremely pleased with what they see talent-wise at MasTech,” Ihlenfeldt said. “They know the product, the marketing and the engineering.”
Holcomb said the Widnspire project would create around 40 new jobs at MasTech’s plant — doubling its current workforce — and add up to 120 positions over the next three years. The company also is looking to expand into a vacant plant next door.
“We were able to convince Mariah that we were the best fit for them,” Holcomb said.
But MEDC dealt the proposal a potentially fatal blow two weeks ago when it rejected a $2 million loan application from the state’s much-touted 21st Century Jobs Fund. The Jobs Fund is a $2 billion, 10-year initiative that makes grant and loan money available for companies that do high-tech research and product development.
Its aim: diversify Michigan’s economy.
The loan would have dunded about half the estimated $4 million start-up costs for the Windspire manufacturing, with the other $2 million coming from Mariah Power.
MDED’s rejection both surprised and perplexed Mariah founder and CEO Mike Hess. he said analysts questioned his business plan as “too aggressive” and challenged the company’s sales projections.
“I have orders in hand for 3,400 units” with estimated sales volumes of more than $14 million, Hess said.
Ohio offer considered.
The state’s rejection led Hess to consider other manufacturing options, including what he said was a $1.8 million zero-interest loan committment from Youngstown, Ohio, officials. But he wants to keep the project in Manistee.
“I really like the community. (It) has impressed me to no end,” he said. “But in the end, I still have to make the best economic choice for the company.”
MEDC won’t discuss individual projects, since proposals are covered by confidentiality agreements to protect applicants’ proprietary information, spokeswoman Bridget Beckman said.
Applicants can review their project ratings from the consultants who review the proposals, Beckman said. She added that MEDC is in “overdrive” trying to line up other state funds for the Mariah proposal.
But those confidentality aagreements concern some lawmakers who supported the 21st Century Jobs Fund proposal. State Rep. David Palsrok, a Manistee Republican, said nonexistent feedback from MEDC on proposal evaluation and approval makes it difficult to assess the agency’s work, as well as the program’s effectiveness.
“I’m very frustrated with lack of information from the MEDC regarding this and other projects,” he said. “They may have a very strong case (for rejecting the proposal), but that information should at least be shared with the legislators and the locals.”
Holcomb said his company scrambled to line up $1 million in private financing to close the funding gap. he’s confident the lcoal effort will persuade Mariah to pass on the Ohio offer and set up shop in Manistee.
“Mariah’s ponied up, we ponied up, the county and the city ponied up…everybody’s participated but the state,” Holcomb, said. “I don’t ahve what I need yet, but we have enough to get started.”
Manistee County board Chairman Allan O’Shea, a strong advocate for alternative energy development, estimated that local public and private parties invested $50,00 in planning and infrastructure toward the Windspire project.
he’s alos confident those efforts will seal the deal with Mariah.
But O’Shea also called MEDC’s loan rejection “very frustrating,” and said the state’s actions haven’t matched Lansing rhetoric that boasts of support for alternative energy development.
“The question is, are we about fundamental change, or are we about superficial change?” O’Shea said.
(The Windspire unit is made by a start up company in Reno, Nevada. A Manistee manufacturing company hopes to mass produce the generator.)
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(Petoskey News-Review, 9/1/08.)
CREWS TO SURVEY LOCAL RIVERS, STREAMS TO FIND LAMPREY
The continuing balle against sea lampreys soon will come to locations in the local area.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assessment crews will conduct work in the Platte, Jordan and Carp Lake rivers in Benzie, Charlevoix, and Emmet counties during September 2 – 11 to detect the presence of lampreys in the stream. the information gatherted will be used to determine the need for sea lamprey control.
A first step in the control of sea lampreys is to survey streams tributary to the Great Lakes to determine the presence of laral sea lampreys. Sea lampreys invaded the Great Lakes in the 1920s and have been a permanent, destructive element of the fishery ever since.
Sea lampreys attach to fish with a suction cup mouth, rasp a hole through the fish’s scales and skin, and feed on blood and body fluids. The average sea lamprey will destroy up to 40 pounds of fish during its parasitic phase.
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(AP, 9/1/08.)
THIS AIN’T NO JIVE; PARTICLE PHYSICS RAP IS A HIT
EAST LANSING, Michigan – Who says science doesn’t turn people on? Kate McAlpine is a rising star on YouTube for her rap performance –about hig-energy particle physics.
Her performance has drawn a half-million views so far on YouTube.
The 23-year-old Michigan State University graduate and science writer raps about the large hadron Collider, the groundbreaking particle accelerator that has been built in a 17-mile circular tunnel at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
McAlpine raps that when the collider goes into operatiron on Sept. 10, ”The things that it discovers will rock you in the head.”
The $3.8 billion machine will collide two beams of protons moving at close to the speed of light so scientists can see what aprticles appear in the resulting debris.
“Rap and physics are culturally miles apart,” McAlpine, a science writer at CERN, wrote to the Lansing State Journal in an e-mail last week, “and I find it amusing to try and throw them together.”
Others, including physicists, also find it amusing.
“We love the rap, and the science is spon on,” said CERN spokesman James Gillies.
McAlpine received permission to film herself and friends dancing in the caverns and tunnels where the experiments will take place.
“I have to confess that I was skeptical when Katie said she wanted to do this, but when I saw her privious science rapping and the lyrics, I was convinced,” Gillies said. “I think you’ll find pretty close to unanimity among physicists that it’s great.”
McAlpine honed her physics rapping skills at Michigan State’s national Super conducting Cyclotron Laboratory, where she was part of a student research program two years ago.
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(AP, 9/1/08.)
MAN SAYS HE FOUND DEAD SHARK IN LAKE MICHIGAN
TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan – There’s no telling what might turn up in Lake Michigan.
Rich Fasi of Traverse City says he found a dead 2-foot shark in the water while fishing on West Grand Traverse Bay on Wednesday.
The saltwater fish was a juvenile blacktip shark, said Mark Tonello, a fisheries biologist from the Michigan Department of natural Resources.
Tonello said someone might have caught the shark off the Atlantic Coast and kept it on ice while bringing it to northern Michigan.
Another possibility is that the dead shark was dumped by someone who had kept it as a pet, Tonello said.
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(AP, 9/2/08.)
MICHIGAN BALLOONIST SURVIVES CRASH AT SC EVENT
ANDERSON, South Carolina – Officials say a Michigan man survived a hot air balloon crash in South Carolina when the balloon’s backet got caught in a tree about 10 feet above the ground.
Officials say pilot Chuck Walz, of Munith, Michigan, broke his leg and pelvis Sunday morning in a crash at a balloon festival in northwest South Carolina.
Anderson Fire Chief jack Abraham says Walz’s balloon may have been 9,000 feet in the air when it deflated. The fire chief says the balloons’ basket was skewered by a tree branch 10 feet from the ground and stopped the fall.
Walz fell from the basket to the ground. He was conscious when rescuers arrived.
Federal aviation officials are investigating.
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(AP, 9/3/08.)
GOVERNOR’S HEARING TO REMOVE DEROIT MAYOR BEGINS
DETROIT – Gov. Jennifer Granholm opened an extraordinary hearing Wednesday to determine whether Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick committed misconduct and should be removed from office in a scandal over steamy text messages and a mulimillion-dollar legal settlement.
Granholm gave brief opening remarks after Kilpatrick’s lawyers failed the day before to persuade courts to stop the hearing, which drew members of the public as early as sunrise to a state office building.
Granholm will hear evidence over allegations by the Detroit City council that Kilpatrick mislead it when it approved an $8.4 million settlement with fired police officers. Council members say they didn’t knowthe deal also covered up steamy text mesages between Kilpatrick and his top aide, Christine Beatty, on city-issued pagers.
Michigan governors have a constitutional authority to remove elected officials for misconduct, but the target never has been the leader of the state’s largest city. The hearing is expected to last several days.
“The burden of proof is sufficient evidence satisfactory to the governor,” Granholm said in her remarks. “This is not a criminal trial. This is not a civil trial.”
Kilpatrick skipped the hearing. His attorney, Sharon McPhail, attacked council members who asked for the removal hearing, saying they are Kilpatrick’s political rivals. She said it was city lawyers who settled the case with former police officers, not the mayor.
“It’s too stupid to be plausible” that Kilpatrick had a secret pact to cover up embarrassing text messages, McPhail said.
She warned the governor that removing the mayor would have a chilling effect on officials statewide. The last time a Michigan governor considered the removal of an elected official was in 1982. In that case, Gov. William Millikin found a township official guilty of official misconduct but let him stay in office if he stopped drinking.
Besides the removal hearing, Kilpatrick faces 10 felonies in two criminal cases.
Granholm, a fellow Democrat, has pared the case to two issues: Did Kilpatrick settle the lawsuits for personal gain because he feared release of the text messages, and did he conceal information from the City Council?
Kilpatrick’s legal team has criticized Granholm, claiming her opinion on the mayor’s future is clouded by her role in trying to broker a settlement in his criminal case in May. Resignation apparently was on the table.
“I listed the positions of the parties on a blackboard and suggested a path that was a compromise,” Granholm said in an affidavit. “I made it clear that this suggestion was intended solely as a device to begin their discussion.”
The Michigan Court of Appeals found nothing sinister Tuesday.
The removal hearing is just one of three legal minefields for Kilpatrick. he also faces 1 felonies in two criminal cases in Wayne County Circuit Court.
After the Detroit Free Press published the text messages earlier this year, Kilpatrick and Beatty were charged with perjury, conspiracy, misconduct and obstruction of justice.
They are accused of lying during the 2007 whistle-blowers’ trial about having an extramarital affair and their roles in the firing of a deputy police chief.
Two assault charges against the mayor stem from a confrontation in July. A Sheriff’s detective says Kilpatrick shoved him into another investigator as they were attempting to serve a subpoena to the mayor’s friend in the perjury case.
Despite his courtroom losses Tuesday, the mayor did get a small victory: A judge said he could stop wearing an electronic tether that keeps track of his whereabouts. Travel restrictions that keep Kilpatrick in the metro Detroit area won’t change.
