It looks like power is back on for the thousands of South Milwaukee and Oak Creek residents who were in the dark this evening.
Around 5 p.m., more than 6,300 customers in Oak Creek and South Milwaukee lost power, according to the We Energies outage map.
A downed branch apparently caused the outage, according to WISN.
Filed under South Milwaukee
Check out these South Shore headlines …
Filed under Cudahy, Headlines, Oak Creek, South Milwaukee
Check out these headlines from around the South Shore:
From the WTMJ piece on speeding along Milwaukee Avenue:
Diana Gresser invited Speedbusters down to check out the speeders. It was easy pickings for the Speedbuster gun.
“It’s pretty much bad all the time. Especially in the morning when everyone is rushing and again about 4 or 5 o’clock,” said Gresser
Speedbusters visited Gresser’s street during lunch hour — and clocked the average driver at ten miles over the limit.
Also, the Occupy movement came to South Milwaukee (and Caterpillar) Tuesday. About 20 peaceful protesters showed up. Check out the press release about the protest over “the undue influence they feel the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) exercises over state legislation throughout the country.”
And state Sen. Chris Larson has published a new Larson Report. The headline: “Playing Games With Our Most Vulnerable.”
The pictures and videos that have emerged following Monday’s bluff collapse at the We Energies plant in Oak Creek are nothing short of stunning.
Here is Journal Sentinel coverage, and here is a story and video from WISN 12. From the Oak Creek Patch story:
The collapse happened after an embankment gave away about 11:15 a.m., causing a mudslide and sending a pickup truck and two other vehicles into the lake.
No one was injured. In fact, very few people were working in the area and saw the collapse, Manthey said. Most of the workers will be back tomorrow.
“We’re incredibly fortunate there were no injuries,” Manthey said at a press conference Monday afternoon.
The accident was at a construction site where an air-quality control system was being implemented and did not cause any disruption to the plant’s operations.
Thank God no one was hurt … and hopefully there are no long-lasting environmental impacts.
Filed under Oak Creek
Just when I was beginning to question the whole “energy you can depend on” tagline, the power came back on at my South Milwaukee home around 4:30 p.m., or three hours after we lost it this afternoon.
The outage affected 3,688 customers in all, the man on the We Energies telephone recording told me. And the cause is still under investigation.
Check out the cool We Energies online outage map here, which shows the outage was confined to the South Shore.
Oak Creek Patch also has coverage.
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A $16 million settlement has been reached in the lawsuit stemming from the explosion at the We Energies Oak Creek power plant in February of 2009.
Read the Journal Sentinel story here. From it:
On Feb. 3, 2009, an explosion and fire occurred in a dust collector at the power plant in Oak Creek. Eight ThyssenKrupp Safway employees who were building scaffolding inside the dust collector were injured, Trecek said.
The Safway employees had been hired by United States Fire Protection to build the scaffolding.
After an investigation, federal safety regulators cited the Waukesha scaffolding company and We Energies. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration alleged “willful and serious” safety violations by We Energies and contractor ThyssenKrupp Safway Inc. in the explosion.
There were several strong South Milwaukee connections to this incident. Our fire department was among the first on the scene, and one of the workers, Alex Trevino, the most seriously injured, lives in South Milwaukee.
Read more about Trevino’s harrowing, and inspiring, story in this Daily Reporter blog posting.
And check out these other headlines of local interest:
Filed under Headlines
So, the Oak Creek power plant is finally complete.
Read the full Journal Sentinel story here. From it:
The biggest unknown: the project’s final cost. We Energies will file reports detailing the final cost this year when it seeks to adjust rates for 2012 and 2013, Kuester said.
Regulators approved a $2.15 billion price tag for the project, and set a cap allowing overruns of up to 5% to be passed along to utility customers.
“We hope customers won’t have to pay for any cost overruns associated with the construction of the power plants,” Charlie Higley, executive director of the coustomer group Wisconsin Citizens’ Utility Board. “We’re also hopeful that the plants continue to run well, and that We Energies doesn’t charge customers for any costs associated with uneven performance” of the first coal plant last year.
And check out these other local headlines of note:
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Headlines of interest from the past week include this interesting and thought-provoking article from Milwaukee Magazine on Bucyrus International.
King Coal: Most of the world’s strip-mining is done with Milwaukee-made machines. Few metro-area economies are more dependent on coal.
Also, check out this story from The Daily Reporter on the location of stations for the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) commuter rail extension — a project that I strongly support as a way to grow our city and lift our downtown. I’ll explain my thoughts more in an upcoming posting.
And check out these two stories from the Journal Sentinel:
And this one from The Business Journal about the South Milwaukee Blockbuster at Grant Park Plaza closing. That’s disappointing news.
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