The Capital-Star's Week in Review

By Tim Lambert | Editor

By Peter Hall

The electricity grid operator for a broad swath of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest warned this week that warm weather and maintenance outages could push the system close to its limits.

PJM Interconnection alerted power plant owners and electric utilities Monday of the need to take steps to avoid rolling blackouts as the demand for power approaches the grid’s current maximum capacity. It called on them to suspend maintenance and keep generators online where possible to ensure the grid remains stable through Wednesday. 

Also earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued an emergency order at PJM’s request allowing it to order power plants to operate as needed, including exceeding limits on air pollution. Additionally, it allows PJM to direct data centers and other large users to switch to on-site back up generators before it is forced to institute rolling blackouts and  curtail electricity exports outside of the PJM coverage area.

By Audrey Carleton of Capital & Main

When the lingering sun of late May inches along to peer down on the Tioga River — its water glistening — it does so as birds chirp overhead, as a chipmunk darts through rustling riverbed brush, and as yellow butterflies dance into the gorge.

This river doesn’t roar; it trudges along steadily. Water laps over rocks and flushes back to create a current that freshwater kayakers might consider a Class 2. As it does, it leaves behind deposits of minerals dredged up from mines that coal barons dug nearby more than two centuries ago.

Standing above the river on a bridge in Blossburg, a north central Pennsylvania town of 1,500 that straddles the Tioga, it’s not immediately apparent that there’s anything wrong with the red-rocked river. Except, while life teems along its banks, there is virtually nothing beneath the water’s surface.

In this stretch of the Tioga, there are no fish. There are no bugs — save for a small number of macroinvertebrates. And there haven’t been for decades. Five coal mines that line its tributaries, left unsealed at the end of their productive lives, have long leaked highly acidic water rich in metals like iron and aluminum that chokes out aquatic life.

COMMENTARY

By Andrea Hagan

While hanging out in the social media universe the other day, I grazed over a clip with a short shelf life. It spread through X posts and outlets like Jezebel. I happened to see it on Instagram, and the feed moved on.

The logic behind the post should not.

When a Pennsylvania lawmaker said he would choose a mid-40s man over an equally qualified woman to avoid possible menopause accommodations, he revealed more than just hiring bias.

He exposed a social bargain: Women may enter the workforce, excel and build expertise, but their bodies can be used to strip them of economic independence.

By Ian Karbal

A 39-year old woman has reportedly died in Franklin County after being diagnosed with measles, according to the local coroner’s office.

If confirmed, it would mark the sixth measles-associated death in Pennsylvania this year. That’s the most in a single year since 1991, when there was an outbreak in Philadelphia.

According to the Franklin County coroner, Jordan F. Conner, the woman was unvaccinated and had multiple underlying conditions, though her primary cause of death was “a probable acute cardiac event due to possible complications of the measles.”

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