Mark your calendars for the enchanting Small Town Christmas celebration in Oakland on December 8th, 9th, and 16th, 2023. Downtown Oakland is set to host an array of delightful, family-friendly activities that capture the essence of the holiday season.
The festivities kick off with a mesmerizing Light Up Night on Friday, December 8th, at the Oakland B&O Museum. The highlight of the evening is a charming Walking Holiday Light Parade, led by none other than Santa Claus himself, commencing from the Town Parking Lot at 5:30 PM. Everyone is welcome to join this festive stroll, culminating at the B&O Museum for the official tree lighting. This year, there’s a delightful new addition – Santa Paws! Dress up your furry companions in holiday-themed attire and let them be part of the parade. Indulge in complimentary cookies and cocoa courtesy of the Order of the Eastern Star, and treat yourself to a special surprise from Santa. The merriment extends to free sleigh rides for all attendees.
Continuing the jubilation on Saturday, December 9th, is Soup N’ Santa from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Numerous nonprofits will be serving up heartwarming soups (donations appreciated), providing an opportunity to mingle with Santa, engage in kids’ activities, enjoy live music, take sleigh rides, explore local shops with exclusive discounts, and much more. Once again, your furry friends are invited to join in the festive atmosphere and have a memorable encounter with Santa.
In tandem with Oakland’s Great Small Town Christmas Event, the House of Hope presents the Bucks for Hope Drive on Saturday, December 9th, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 NN. Show your support for this noble cause by making cash donations on Second Street in downtown Oakland. While cash donations are preferred, non-perishable food items are also accepted. Originating in 1978 by Chuck Nolan, this food drive has garnered over $65,000 in donations and more than 80 pickup loads of food.
On Saturday, December 16th, immerse yourself in the sweetness of the Cocoa Crawl from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, featuring delectable treats as you wrap up your holiday shopping at select downtown businesses.
And don’t miss out on the Lucky Elf promotion, running through Monday, December 19th. With every $25 spent at participating stores in Oakland, you stand a chance to win a variety of enticing local gifts.
For a comprehensive list of Christmas activities and further details, check out the Town of Oakland, MD Facebook page or visit www.oaklandmd.com. Join us in creating lasting memories and spreading holiday cheer throughout Oakland!
The Garrett County Diversity and Inclusion Committee is having a meeting on Wednesday November 29, 2023 from 3 PM until 4:30 PM at Garrett College in the Offutt STEM Building in Room 211.
Jason Paugh, of Red House, officially became the fourth Master Angler awarded under the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ FishMaryland program this month. The highest award in the program recognizes the skill and determination required to catch ten trophy-size fish species in Maryland that all meet the minimum award sizes.
Paugh reached this milestone award by catching a largemouth bass (21.25 inches), smallmouth bass (20 inches), crappie (16.75 inches), northern pike (47.25 inches), chain pickerel (25.25 inches), rock bass (10.75 inches), yellow perch (14.25 inches), carp (38 inches), bluegill (11 inches), and wild brook trout (12.25 inches).
“Angler participation in the FishMaryland program has been tremendous since its launch in January 2019,” Maryland DNR Recreational Fishing Outreach Coordinator Erik Zlokovitz said. “FishMaryland showcases the array of freshwater and saltwater species available in Maryland, and we are thrilled for Mr. Paugh to be the fourth angler to receive the program’s highest award. It takes a great deal of talent, drive, and perseverance to earn Master Angler status.”
All but one of these fish were caught in Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, Maryland. Paugh caught the fish on artificial lures. The brook trout was caught in a small tributary of the Savage River system. Paugh is an avid freshwater bass angler, and in 2023, he caught 39 largemouth bass in Deep Creek Lake that met the minimum award size. He fishes primarily with jerkbaits, crankbaits, plastic worms, and small jigs that he designs to use around shoreline structures such as boat docks. The biggest and most surprising catch was the 47.25-inch northern pike, which hit a small jerk bait intended for largemouth bass.
“I am extremely surprised and excited to learn that this is only the fourth Master Angler award granted in Maryland,” Paugh said.
Paugh has coached high school competitive bass fishing for five years, including four years with his son. The team he coached this year, from Northern Garrett County High School, is one of two teams from Maryland competing in the National High School Bass Fishing Finals Tournament next summer. Paugh has worked as a master electrician for a private company the past eight years, and previously was an electrician in Western Maryland’s coal mining industry for 18 years.
More information on the award program and how to submit catches is available on the DNR FishMaryland webpage.
Amazon will source energy from Maryland’s largest solar farm planned at a former coal mine, the company announced Monday, highlighting appetite for developing former industrial lands for clean energy projects.
The tech giant, the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy, signed a power purchase agreement for the output of the CPV Backbone Solar project, a 170-megawatt of direct current project in Garrett County, Md. The project is expected to be fully operational by the second quarter of 2025, according to the Silver Spring, Md.-based developer, Competitive Power Ventures (CPV).
Reclaimed former coal mine lands and brownfield sites are increasingly attractive for developers as they hunt for places that are optimal to connect to the power grid. Federal incentives to develop clean energy on such sites could spur more development.
Competitive Power Ventures sought out the Garrett County site, the company’s third site on former coal lands, said Sean Finnerty, executive vice president of renewable energy for CPV.
While there are challenges building on reclaimed land and sculpting the site for a solar project, an existing transmission line had available capacity for the farm, Finnerty said. Plus, the site’s history of development also made the interconnection and permitting process relatively quick, he said.
“Because a lot of that due diligence work was already done there because of legacy assets, those projects are much more likely” to be completed, Finnerty said. “It presented us with an opportunity on land that really couldn’t be developed for anything.”
More Viable Projects
Developers have access to federal funds to build certain projects on abandoned mine lands under the 2021 infrastructure law. They can also receive a 10% tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act to build in energy communities, defined as brownfields, sites near closed coal plants or mines, or sites in areas with a higher proportion of fossil fuel workers.
It can take many years to build new transmission lines and for power plant projects to be studied by grid operators, which have been overwhelmed by a dramatic increase of grid-connection requests from proposed renewable energy projects.
Some 2,700 power projects are currently being studied by PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest grid operator that coordinates the flow of power through 13 Eastern states and the District of Columbia. The vast majority of those proposed projects never get built, according to Energy Department studies.
Partnering with Amazon made sense because the CPV project was viable in the short-term, Finnerty said.
“We’re seeing a flight to quality, if you will,” Finnerty said. “Those companies are contracting with a smaller group of project developers and project owners who give them a higher level of assurance that projects will get done and get done on time.”
Tremendous Growth
CPV Backbone marks one of Amazon’s first two utility-scale solar farms in Maryland. The company also announced an agreement with a 400-acre solar farm in Kent County, Md., that will use sheep to graze around the panels and help control vegetation, demonstrating the growing interest in projects that allow agriculture and solar energy to coexist on the same site.
Amazon, on track to power its operations with renewable energy by 2025, said it plans to use two farms to match consumption at some of its substantial operations in Maryland, including 11 fulfillment and sortation centers, 16 delivery stations, and an air hub.
Globally, Amazon’s renewables portfolio grew to 479 projects so far in 2023, up 78 projects from its 401 project total in 2022, the company said Monday.
“Our growth rate in this space has been tremendous, and I don’t see that slowing down,” said Nat Sahlstrom, head of energy, water and sustainability for Amazon Web Services.
CPV Backbone will include more than 300,000 solar panels on the site of a former Arch Coal mine. The more than $200 million project is expected to employ more than 200 construction workers. Once operational, the project will help the region avoid more than 133,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking more than 26,000 cars off the road each year, CPV said.
Brownfield Opportunities
Amazon and other big corporate buyers help solve some of the grid constraints by providing steadily growing demand, well-defined climate goals, and a proof of executing agreements with large-scale projects, Sahlstrom said. Big consumers of energy have increasingly beefed up lobbying operations in Washington and at regional transmission organizations (RTOs) to press for a quicker power grid buildout.
“Regulators and RTOs understand that we’re serious,” said Sahlstrom, who joined Amazon 12 years ago to set up its renewable energy procurement business. “We’re not out here just speculatingabout renewable energy investments. We want to go bring predictable loads onto grids, and we want to make them green.”
Brownfield sites with access to transmission are “not just wildcatter ideas,” he said. “They’re well understood. It’s really about bringing an off-taker, like Amazon, financing a developer who’s got the technical expertise to go develop one of these things and make these things happen fast.”
More than 450,000 US brownfields represent an “emerging opportunity for solar projects, as they are often located near power lines and public roads, making it easier to connect to the grid, and present an opportunity to turn unused property into an economic opportunity,” Amazon said in a press release.
While the Maryland project, conceived in 2020, predated those incentives, the company is excited about further development, Finnerty said.
“We do think that bringing investment to brownfield sites like this is a good thing the IRA certainly helped,” Finnerty said.
The project provides “an array of economic and environmental benefits to the region and we are excited to learn that Amazon is supporting this project,” said Jennifer Walsh, executive director of The Greater Cumberland Committee, an economic development organization, in a statement. “TGCC looks forward to working with CPV over the coming year as the construction ramps up.”
Sometimes you just need to get away from work. It doesn’t matter if you are a leader of industry or someone who works for such a leader. In 1914, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs discovered they got along well together and enjoyed each other’s company. They started making plans for summer vacations where they would travel around the country in cars built by Ford on tires manufactured by Firestone.
They called themselves the Vagabonds.
Over the following years, they got together to travel along the East Coast and into the Midwest. These included New England, West Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia, Massachusetts and Maryland. They seemed to favor mountain setting like the Catskills and Adirondacks.
They weren’t roughing it on these trips by any stretch of the imagination.
According to The Henry Ford Foundation, “The 1919 trip involved fifty vehicles, including two designed by Ford: a kitchen camping car with a gasoline stove and built-in icebox presided over by a cook and a heavy touring car mounted on a truck chassis with compartments for tents, cots, chairs, electric lights, etc. On later trips, there was a huge, folding round table equipped with a lazy susan that seated twenty.” for full story The Vagabonds prepare for a camping trip | Local News | times-news.com
Brookfield Renewable U.S., as a cooperating and valued partner in the Arrowhead Cove dredging project, will begin lowering the water levels of Deep Creek Lake. The water will be released beginning later this week with a goal of reaching an elevation of 2456.5’ by November 17.
“Note this lake level is lower than the typical level but will not impact remaining activities in Deep Creek Lake,” said Watershed Coordinator Bruce Michael.
The water level of 2456.5’ is still within the permit requirements of the upper (2458’) and lower (2455’) rule band limits at the end of November. The water levels will be at this elevation until no later than December 15 when Brookfield will more than likely raise the water levels to the upper rule band of 2458’.
As previously announced, Arrowhead Cove, at Deep Creek Lake, is selected as a priority area for a pilot dredging project to remove accumulated sediment from the lakebed.
Site preparation is underway, and the public is likely seeing activity around the Arrowhead Cove area.
Brookfield Renewable U.S. has a permit to release water from Deep Creek Lake through the hydroelectric dam. Lowering the lake level at this time will help facilitate the dewatering of Arrowhead Cove and the installation of the cofferdam.
Byco Enterprises, Inc., the contractor, anticipates cofferdam installation will begin the week of November 20. Complete dewatering of Arrowhead Cove will take place through the last week of November.
For more information about the dredging project at Arrowhead Cove, including project updates and community engagement opportunities, please visit ArrowheadCove.GarrettCounty.org.
Please contact Bruce Michael, Garrett County Watershed Coordinator, at bmichael@garrettcounty.org or 410-570-4554 for questions or more information.
Santa’s elves are hard at work again, preparing for the return of Garrett County’s holiday kick-off event, the Festival of Trees.
The event will be held Nov. 24, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Nov. 25, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Fairgrounds Exhibit Hall along U.S.. 219 in McHenry. General admission is $5 per person.
Celebrating its 16th year, this joyful family event has become a tradition for hundreds of locals and visitors to the county. Benefitting the Dove Center, Garrett County’s domestic violence and sexual assault services program, the Festival of Trees was developed by its board and staff to serve as the organization’s major fundraiser.
Since its inception, it has raised well over $200,000, helping the agency to leverage additional state and federal grant funds by acting as a match. The community’s love for the event prompted rapid growth, and soon necessitated a change in venue from the Armory to the Fairgrounds Exhibit Hall, where it has been held since.
A Maryland woman shot a 643-pound black bear on the opening day of the state’s short bear hunting season, and officials at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) say it is the heaviest hunter-harvested bear on record.
The hunter, identified only by her first name, Melissa, shot the bear on October 23 near her home in Garrett County, according to an MDNR tweet posted October 25. “This Garrett Co. male bear is the largest bear ever harvested during Maryland black bear season and is a new state record,” MDNR reported. The previous record was a 615-pound Garrett County bear tagged in 2007.
The pipes in the photo will pump the remaining water from the cove and the water from the stream around the cofferdam that will be installed soon.
