Security guard steals $500,000 of steel pipe
A woman in Schuykill County, Pennsylvania has been charged with the theft of a half-million dollars worth of stainless steel pipe, which she allegedly stole from the coal company at which she worked as a security guard.
Jennifer Cougle, 27, is charged with lying to the police and stealing equipment valued at $500,000. Police are currently looking for others who may have been involved in the theft.
Investigators say that Cougle, who had keys to the building, and another man went to great lengths to remove several 500-pound stainless steel pipe shafts from the Lehigh Coal Navigation building and used her pick -up truck to make off with the stolen steel.
"Even with a pick-up truck you're not going to carry many at one time. You're going to make several trips over a long period of time and that's what happened here," said John Fowler of Lehigh Coal.
The steel was then taken to a New Jersey scrap company and sold for only $20,000. The police say that the only purchase that Ms. Cougle was able to make before being caught was a new paint job for her car.
Old steel mill site sees new life as wind farm
The former Bethlehem Steel mill site in Lackawanna, New York, designated as a toxic waste site for many years, has started a new life as "Steel Winds," the largest ever wind farm to be built in a city.
That's right, the decaying mill has been replaced by eight windmills with 153-foot blades, able to produce a total of 56,000 megawatt-hours of electricity a year. The turbines, owned jointly by BQ Energy of Pawling, NY and UPC Wind of Newton, Mass, plan to sell the energy to individual customers or utilities.
This "green" project should do a lot to revamp the image of the city, once known only for steel and pollution. Once upon a time, in Bethlehem Steel's heyday during WWII, the whole town was coated with a layer of red ore dust from the blast furnaces, and rail cars would dump their loads of slag into Lake Erie several times a day, creating a molten flow visible from miles away.
Steel Winds certainly won't generate as much business for the city as the steel mill once did, but the city is proud of its new technology.
Lackawanna mayor and former Bethlehem steelworker Norman L. Polanski Jr. told press, "It's changing the image of the city of Lackawanna. We were the old Rust Belt, with all the negatives. Right now, we are progressive and we are leading the way on the waterfront."
Click here to see a picture of the turbines.
Scientists unable to frighten lost whales back to sea
In the latest effort to try to help two wandering humpback whales who refuse to go past a steel bridge across the Sacramento River to get back to the ocean, 19 boats banged steel pipes for four hours to try to herd the mother and baby whale past the bridge.
Unfortunately, this plan failed, as did the sounds of killer whales feeding on gray whales and man-made shrieks played from a synthesizer.
As of Thursday, scientists have temporarily halted efforts to get the whales to move, and planned to observe the whales and inspect their wounds, which they likely got from a boat propeller, before deciding what, if anything, they should do on Friday if the pair still hasn't moved.
The humpbacks apparently took a wrong turn during their annual migration to feeding grounds in the northern Pacific, traveling 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around. They were making progress Monday until they reached the Rio Vista Bridge and began swimming in circles.
Steel welder gets lost wallet back after 37 years
A former steel welder who lost his wallet in 1970 finally got it back, 37 years later, with everything still inside.
Workers renovating the Musical Arts Building on Indiana University's campus found the wallet stuck between two cinder block walls three weeks ago. An employee, amazingly enough, recognized the wallet's owner, John Mitchell, from the pictures inside and gave Mr. Mitchell a call.
Mitchell told press, "I was in bed asleep, and he said, 'They found your wallet.' Well, that just blew my mind 'cause I didn't remember losing one."
Mitchell, who was employed as a welder during the building's construction, said the wallet must have fallen out of his pocket while he was working on some steel beams. The building was completed in 1971.
Even more surprisingly, nothing seems to have been missing from the wallet. Among other items contained in Mr. Mitchell's long-lost wallet were his driver's license, two credit cards, a Moose membership card and a layaway ticket for a $6 belt.
"There was a bunch of stuff in there," Mr. Mitchell told press. "It was just plump, full of trash."