Update: UD's Karl Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Awarded To Alferov - just sayin'.
Zhores I. Alferov, Nobel Laureate, professor and president of the St. Petersburg Academic University of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Viacheslav M. Andreev, professor and head of the laboratory of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, will receive the 2013 Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit during a ceremony to be held at 3 p.m., Friday, Sept. 20, at the University of Delaware’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory (ISE Lab) in Newark
No Newark Power Plant blog asks a great question ~ UD is a national leader in solar energy, so why build a fossil fuel power plant?
There was a full house at the Newark City Council meeting last night. Most of the audience were No Power Plant proponents. A few spoke. I said that they now own Max Walton's opinion which hinges on legislative intent to allow a power plant by virtue of having approved the special UD STAR Campus zoning.
Jen Wallace told Council that they must do something and it was in their power. Amy Roe told them that even though the PSC has no authority, the Council has a duty to act as the oversight authority over the utility. John Kowalko announced tonight's 6:30PM Town Hall at Newark High School.
Also, Rick Jensen doesn't have his interview with Jack Markell yesterday up in a podcast on the WDEL. I sent him an email asking if was going to make it available.
Meanwhile from Amy Roe -
Governor Markell just said on the radio that the Data centers power plannt "is not a done deal" and that it would need to meet the requirements of the city of Newark.
Governor Markell just said on the radio that the Data centers power plannt "is not a done deal" and that it would need to meet the requirements of the city of Newark.
He also said "it would be a big win".
He and Rick Jensen (the radio show host) were talking about our football banner at Saturday's game.
Rep. Kowalko is on now setting Gov. Markell straight and asking him to come to the town hall meeting. Gov Markell said he can't make it.
Markell is now trying to make this into a jobs only issue.
Update: The comments below by Ted Pulhamus are in response to comments by Martin Willis, a union boilermaker.
And speaking directly to the jobs problem ~ The STAR campus is a brownfield because no one thought ahead
My statement was written in response to someone claiming to be a union member welcoming the TDC project to the state (you can see the statement on the Delaware Way blog-NNPP editor) . They claimed that it was a better and more environmental use of a brownfield site and those who opposed the project were personally responsible for finding and/or funding a replacement project. The gist of the argument justifying these positions was that since the wages would generate an influx of cash to the state, the only thing that mattered was the jobs the project would create. Not necessarily union jobs, though I guess that might be why the person claimed union membership, or even good jobs. Just jobs.
My reply:
I believe in unions and I believe in union jobs. I’ve been in them and I’ve had them. Because I have, because I do, because thanks to unions I enjoy a forty-hour workweek, an eight-hour day, sick pay, holidays, a pension, a healthy and safe work place and more things than I can repeat or remember, I also don’t believe that any job is necessarily a good job. If you just want a job, you don’t need a union. This project is nothing more than a job that will keep some people employed for a few years and then they’ll be back on the street again. You want a good job, you need a union and to recognize there is more at stake than just a paycheck.
Getting a good job means going after a government that isn’t concerned to maintain or improve infrastructure and public facilities. It means going after the big business’ enjoying record profits who don’t give any of it back to the people that make it for them or invest in the communities where they live, who ship jobs overseas to people forced to work for little pay in conditions worse than any our ancestor’s faced. It means going after the University who are going to buy steam from this thing and probably need a lot fewer unionized boiler mechanics as a result.
This thing isn’t going to bring lots of jobs to the area. The whole point of cloud computing, and this is a data center meant for the cloud, is that physical location doesn’t matter. Why build here when you can access what this thing has to offer from wherever you are right at the moment? Computers that can be monitored and run from somewhere else do the work and all they need people for is the digital equivalent of fetch and carry. And it doesn’t take many to do that.
Ask the people down in Maiden, NC who were promised 250 jobs with Apple’s new facility and got 50. This Washington Post article about Maiden sums it up: “the overall benefits [data centers offer] for communities … are fleeting”.
Unions use to recognize that making work better built a better world. Samuel Gompers said strong unions help protect the rights of the people. I live less than half a mile away from this place. I work hard to keep my house in good shape. Where’s the value of my labor if my house becomes worth a lot less just because this thing goes up? I work hard at my job. Where’s my rest and recreation when I can’t sit in my yard and enjoy a beer at the end of the day without having this thing whining and grinding in the background? My wife has chronic asthma. What’s fair about telling her or my eight-year-old daughter they have to stay inside because this thing has caused a lot of smog? Who’s fighting for their rights? Who’s fighting for me?
The STAR campus is a brownfield because no one thought ahead about what they built and did there would do to the area.
Or even really cared much either. Now people are trying to stop something that will spread a lot of pollution over a much larger area (to say nothing of the hazards of the ammonia and natural gas they’ll have to store on-site and right next to an active switch yard no less) and you want to hold that against them?
No, I don’t have the money to develop this patch of brownfield. And I have no easy answers or quick fixes about how to.
But why do we need this particular thing to be built on the STAR campus in the middle of 30,000 people?
Because it’s here and now, a quick fix of cash?
Look around. Why is the STAR campus a brownfield? All easy answers or quick fixes get you is a mess down the road because they’re all about where you are now, not where you’re going to be later. Isn’t that exactly what made the problem? We all need better jobs. We all need a better world. There’s no easy way to get them. Yet unions are proof solidarity can get you both, to some extent.
We’d all do better holding one another up.
It might be your neighborhood next or you on the picket line looking for someone to help put more pressure on the boss. After all, any job is not always a good one, for you or for anyone else.
-Tom Pulhamus
Newark, DE
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