Standing in front of her three-level house in Somerville, Lena Sheehan looks down at the construction of a new high school and transportation hub just a block away. “I can’t get over it, I haven’t been here in so long,” she says. “This is the new T — isn’t that brilliant, right beside the house.”…

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A three-story-tall gate creaks open, and reveals a warehouse filled to the brim with brown crystals. It’s a mountain of rock salt. “We filled this shed this past week,” says T.J. Shea, Cambridge’s superintendent of streets. Shea is what some might call a “snow fighter.” It’s his job to keep roads dry all winter using this…

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For Massachusetts to meet its 2050 climate change emission goal, the state is going to have to green the grid, replacing fossil fuel power plants with clean renewable energy sources. To do this, the commonwealth is banking on offshore wind. “Offshore wind is the linchpin of Massachusetts clean energy strategy and critical to our success,”…

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After decades of burning trash, the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) will close its Hartford incinerator by July 2022. That means hundreds of thousands of tons of trash will be destined for out-of-state landfills, a costly reality that has state and municipal officials questioning how to quickly reduce trash volumes. One solution? Recycling leftover…

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This spring, precautions against COVID-19 closed some of the few showers open to people who are homeless and living outdoors, including one in the basement of the Duffy Health Center in Hyannis. Now, with a little ingenuity and some help from the state, showers are back — in a special trailer that meets COVID-19 protocol.…

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A new study of natural gas infrastructure in Connecticut says harmful amounts of methane are leaking from aging underground gas pipes. The findings add to an emerging body of science demonstrating the scale of methane leaks in America. Methane is the main part of natural gas. Like carbon dioxide, it’s a greenhouse gas, trapping heat…

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Paul Knowlton owns 300 acres of land in Grafton, and farms about 50. The farm has been in his family for five generation, ever since Knowlton’s great-great-grandfather settled in the Blackstone Valley in 1872. These days Knowlton grows pumpkins, squash and corn. Up a gravel road, past the family cemetery, corn stalks are still standing…

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The University of Maine’s effort to pioneer floating offshore wind technology took a $100 million leap forward Wednesday with the announcement that two industry heavyweights are going to invest in development of the project near Monhegan Island. A subsidiary of the Mitsubishi company, called Diamond Offshore Wind, is joining with RWE Renewables to invest the…

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At the Bourne Integrated Solid Waste Management Facility, everything has its own smell. “You get the gas smell, old trash smell, new trash smell, recycling smell,” said Dan Barrett, general manager of the facility. “There’s a lot of different smells, and if you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know the difference.” After driving his truck…

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