How This County Is Helping Hoarders; Confederate Flag Comes Down in Unexpected Place
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Also: Breathing easy in Fresno and Cuomo’s solar celebration in Buffalo.
Here’s some of what we’ve been reading today …
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pennsylvania: Hoarding, which was classified as a mental health disorder in 2013, can be a tricky problem for social service agencies to address, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Hoarders often don’t want help. But sometimes they do. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, a special hoarding task force that consists of three agencies—the county’s human services department, health department and the Area Agency on Aging—has had successes but needs more resources to help residents in need. Hoarding impacts 2 to 5 percent of the general population. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: When it comes to Civil War history, the fairly minor “Skirmish of Albuquerque” between Union and Confederate forces is overshadowed by larger battles in mid-Atlantic and Southern states. But in the Southwest, New Mexico played its role during the epic conflict between North and South. The Confederate flag, the Albuquerque Journal reports, has been a fixture in Old Town Albuquerque for years. But on Monday, it was removed after a meeting between Mayor Richard Berry and African-American leaders. [Albuquerque Journal]
MIDDLETOWN, Delaware: A plan to create a natural gas-fueled power plant that doubles as a data center was approved Monday night by the Middletown Town Council. Why the combination power plant and data center? According to The News Journal, it offers “the promise of near-perfect digital data storage reliability.” While the plan got the thumbs up from local leaders, it must go through other local approvals. [The News Journal]
FRESNO, California: Some of the nation’s worst air quality can be found in California’s San Joaquin Valley. But air quality conditions in July in places like Fresno were surprisingly not terrible, The Fresno Bee reports. In fact, it was the best July on record since 1995:
Weather and air quality are linked, federal scientists say. Meteorologists point to unsettled conditions that cause air to mix throughout the atmosphere, which breaks up ozone. The Valley had thunderstorms and steady breezes in July. Fresno got more than a third of an inch of rain in one storm.
Cloudy weather has also helped. [Fresno Bee]
BUFFALO, New York: Gov. Andrew Cuomo was expected to be on hand on Tuesday at a topping-off ceremony for the much-anticipated SolarCity factory project, which encompasses 1 million square feet and promises to be North America’s largest solar panel manufacturing facility, according to The Buffalo News. The $900 million factory is anticipated to create 2,900 jobs in the region. [The Buffalo News]
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive's Route Fifty.
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