The Wisconsin Department of Justice has settled with the former owners of a Juneau County mobile home park over dirty drinking water in their facilities.
See more here:
State settles with Juneau County trailer park owners over dirty water
Launched on January 25, 2012, Carport Depot, a new ecommerce website selling carports, offers an extensive selection of portable garages and shelters for temporary and long-term storage.Orange, CT (PRWEB) January 30, 2012 Vehicles, from cars to RVs, all need protection from the weather. What appears harmless – some sun or a bit of rain – can eventually damage the surface of a car, boat …
More:
Carport Depot, a New Carports Site, Launches with a Comprehensive Selection of Portable Shelters
Technicians work on the drive train for an electric work
truck Wednesday at Boulder Electric Vehicle. (Joe Amon,
The Denver Post)
As President Barack Obama blitzed last week for
clean-technology manufacturing jobs, two men oblivious to the
speeches were staking their futures on a Colorado factory that
produces battery-powered delivery vans.
Precision Plumbing and Heating president Tom Robichaud is
investing $1.4 million to buy 20 of these humming 7,000-pound
vans to convert his current diesel fleet. Diesel costs have
gone up to $3.75 a gallon. Plumbers today will roll out in the
first van, which can go up to 70 mph, covering 100 miles before
an eight-hour recharge is required (using solar panels on the
company roof).
“The sooner I flip the fleet, the more money I save,” Robichaud
said.
Meanwhile, Boulder Electric Vehicle chief executive
112 cells weighing about 1,300 pounds will provide power to
a motor. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)
Carter Brown was supervising assembly lines in Lafayette,
where 30 employees work to fill the orders from Robichaud and 30
more rigs for Morning Fresh Dairy in Bellvue and municipal
customers nationwide.
But both men lament that Colorado's electric-vehicle sector is
“taking a long time to take off” and warn that Chinese
competitors appear poised to dominate the industry. Brown
points to the example of solar panels, which were developed
substantially at research labs in Colorado but now are made
mostly in China and exported around the world.
When he recently was procuring 30 high-tech battery packs — the
crucial 1,300-pound lithium units that sit under electric-van
frames — he had to buy from suppliers in China for lack of
local capacity.
“We are absolutely at risk, if we don't get on the idea that
we're going to be driving electric vehicles,” Brown said.
“Build them here. If we don't start doing that, within 30
years, we'll all be driving Chinese electric vehicles.”
Nationwide, there are signs that, with the cost of operating
gas and diesel vehicles on the rise, more fleet operators are
considering electric, hybrid and other alternatives. Electric-
van factories have emerged in Stockton,
Tom Robichaud, president of Precision Plumbing and Heating,
checks out a new electric work truck. (Joe Amon, The Denver
Post)
Calif., and Kansas City, Mo., as the likes of UPS,
Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Staples and the U.S. Army test new
vehicles to reduce their overhead costs. Ford Motor Co. last year
introduced a smaller hybrid delivery van.
Today on Colorado roads, the number of electric and hybrid
vehicles is increasing, reaching 36,817 last year, state
Department of Revenue data show. About 1,127 of those were
purely electric.
It's unclear how many were made in the U.S.
Obama administration officials have trumpeted clean-energy and
clean-tech manufacturing as key parts of the plan for a U.S.
economy that is “built to last.” They have proposed temporary
tax credits aimed at stimulating nearly $20 billion in domestic
clean-energy
An electric truck's dash screen displays information for
amps, volts, range and power. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)
manufacturing.
About 100 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are integrated into
federal government fleets. Obama last year signed a directive
that, by 2015, all new vehicles that federal agencies buy or
lease must run on alternative fuels.
Obama officials “will continue to support smart investments and
programs that will create jobs by ensuring the world's most
advanced technologies are made in the USA,” said Nancy Sutley,
chief of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, in a
statement Friday.
Yet Boulder Electric's factory is operating without state or
federal support, and the future depends on getting more
customers quickly.
The Department of Energy has given grants to a rival — Smith
Electric
A 90-kilowatt motor is packed in the center of about 1,300
pounds of battery underneath Precision Plumbing Heating's
first electric work truck made by Boulder Electric Vehicle.
View original post here:
Charge and deliver: Boulder company that makes electric vans hopes sector will spark
Recreation vehicle resort planned for DeWitt Township
A local developer is promising to work with area residents on
its plan to build a seasonal recreational vehicle resort on a
53-acre tract at Wood and Clark Roads. 'We would be a good
neighbor there,
A link to this page will be included in your message
More:
Recreation vehicle resort planned for DeWitt Township
A trailer was destroyed and another badly damaged Sunday morning, when a huge oak tree fell over in an RV park just north of Myrtle Creek.
Here is the original post:
Huge oak tree crushes two homes in Myrtle Creek
Connie and Jessie Chesson of Crestwood Community are in search of housing. They are among forty families being displaced due to closure of their mobile home park February 9th.
More:
Crestwood Community couple in search for new home
Fire destroyed two mobile homes in Fayette County on Sunday,
leaving 11 people homeless, according to Bullskin fire Chief
Joe Liska.
Faulty wiring sparked the blaze at 7:30 a.m. in one of the
homes on Polecat Hollow Road, Liska said. The fire then quickly
spread to a mobile home next door.
One of the occupants, William Leighty III, told WPXI that the
fire started in a wall when he flipped a switch in a breaker
box for a dryer. He said he tried unsuccessfully to put out the
flames.
No injuries were reported. The American Red Cross was helping
the homes' occupants find places to stay, Liska said.
See original here:
Bullskin Township blaze destroys 2 mobile homes
When Samuel Rybski drove into Greene
County to work on a natural gas pipeline for the Marcellus
shale industry, he couldn't find a spot to park his
recreational vehicle.
“Every place you looked was full,”
said Rybski, 23, of Spencer, Wis.
For a time, he and fiancee Danielle
Ertl, 24, and her son, Elliot, 3, lived in their RV at a mobile
home park in Washington, a one-hour commute to his job.
When his employer, Precision Pipeline,
found RV space at the Greene County Fairgrounds, Rybski jumped
at the chance to live in a quieter, safer site that is closer
to work. He pays $500 a month — $200 less than a co-worker pays
for a small apartment in Waynesburg.
“It's way cheaper than rent,” Ertl
said.
The shale gas industry's growth is
bringing the sting of high rents and housing shortages —
previously felt in northern counties — into Greene and
Washington counties, experts say. In some areas, pickups line
parking lots of hotels and motels, which have no vacancies.
Enterprising property owners in Greene County set up makeshift
RV parks for workers.
“It was so unplanned, and now you're
trying to back-plan,” said Karen Bennett, Greene County's human
services administrator. “You wake up, and overnight Main
Street's full of trucks, and restaurants and motels are full of
industry people.”
Rents doubled and even tripled in
northern counties as shale workers moved in, said Bonita Kolb,
an associate professor of business at Lycoming College and
co-author of a study on the Marcellus shale's impact on
housing, commissioned by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance
Agency.
“You're seeing that same type of
pressure happening in your area; it's just you've had
developers down there. We didn't have that here,” she said.
“It's just taking time, because you had some available housing
to respond.”
Westmoreland and Washington counties
had the advantage of having housing, Kolb said, but “other
areas … when you get away from the Pittsburgh area, have much
less housing.”
Greene County reactivated its dormant
redevelopment authority.
“We have very old housing stock, and
with the population of roughly 40,000, we don't have an
overabundance of housing, and we are really challenged on all
levels,” said Pam Snyder, county commission chairwoman.
A hotel is under construction along
Route 21 near Waynesburg; another hotel plans to expand. A
64-room Microtel Inn and Suites opened in Franklin Township two
years ago to accommodate gas industry workers, office manager
Marcia Gregan said.
“It's nearly impossible, especially
during the week, to get a room here,” Gregan said. “We turn
people away all the time, so it doesn't seem to be slowing
down.”
About a year ago, property owners in
Franklin started applying to build RV parks, township
Supervisor Corbly Orndorff said.
Nine are approved — including one on
the county-owned fairgrounds — and the township is rewriting
its RV ordinance to strengthen regulations, particularly
mandating access for emergency vehicles. Officials tried to
keep the parks on commercial or agricultural land.
The county rented 14 RV hookups at the
fairgrounds for workers after Precision Pipeline couldn't find
space elsewhere, Snyder said. The six-month lease generates
$7,000 a month for the county. Orndorff said the RV parks help
businesses and might bring in tax money.
Randy Rohanna, owner of Rohanna's
Restaurant and Golf Course in Franklin, welcomed gas workers
with campers to a former mobile home park he owns across the
road. The site had utilities, so it made sense to open the 30
spaces.
“The influx of these people in the
county has helped everything,” said Rohanna, who said his
tenants work long hours and cause no problems. “And it should
be getting better every day.”
Mary Lou Hagman of Keller Williams
Real Estate Professionals in McMurray, the president of the
Washington-Greene County Association of Realtors, said because
of the gas boom “the rental market is full.” The demand for
rentals “has just driven the price of a rental double or triple
what it should be,” she said — and that worries people working
with social service agencies.
In some areas, low-income permanent
residents no longer can afford rents.
“Our caseworkers have to really
stretch to find places for folks to go,” said Jeff Fondelier,
vice president of operations for Community Action Southwest,
which provides rental and utility assistance in Washington and
Greene counties.
Housing idea
The housing shortage brought about by
the influx of workers in the Marcellus shale gas industry might
have a solution within the industry itself, said Liz Hersh,
executive director of the Housing Alliance of
Pennsylvania.
Gas well impact fees that state
lawmakers are negotiating could provide $5 million a year —
which would cover the payment for $70 million in bonds — to
build houses, rehabilitate old housing and provide rental
assistance for people who can't afford rising rents in
Marcellus regions, Hersh said.
“Being able to do some immediate
intervention to aid the supply of homes that are affordable
would be really helpful,” Hersh said.
Follow this link:
Greene, Washington counties scramble to find shale employees places to call home
MANATEE — More snowbirds are rolling down to Southwest Florida in a winter house-on-wheels this year, providing a boost to area RV resorts and campgrounds idled by the recession.
More:
Park it right now | RV spots for winter season going fast
Fire sweeps through two mobile homes in Fayette County, chasing 10 people out into the cold, authorities say.
More:
Fire Sweeps Through 2 Mobile Homes