NCPR News Staff: David Sommerstein
News Reporter and Producer

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NCPR News A check-in with Maple Ridge wind farm 08/29/08
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Iberdrola is one of the owners of the Maple Ridge wind farm on the Tug Hill Plateau. With 195 turbines spanning miles of ridgeline, it's the largest wind farm in the East. Bill Moore is an energy consultant for Iberdrola. Starting in the late 1990s, Moore was the man who went door-to-door to persuade local residents to welcome wind power. Today the project has been producing electricity for almost three years. David Sommerstein asked Bill Moore how it's been going. They talk about megawatts, bird and bat mortality, and the vicious debate over wind power in the North Country.

Since their conversation, the New York Times reported that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down sometimes because regional electric lines have been too congested to send the power downstate. Moore wouldn't talk about the article on tape. But he did confirm that Maple Ridge has had to shut down its turbines "about half a dozen times a year." Moore said that happens during the spring and fall, when electricity demand is lowest. He said as more wind farms come online in Clinton and Jefferson Counties, the problem could get worse. He agreed with the basic premise of the Times story, that wind energy is hampered by "insufficient grid capacity" to deliver electricity from where the wind blows to where the most people are.
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NCPR News Life beneath the Tug Hill wind turbines 08/28/08
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The northern chunk of the North Country is deep in the trenches of America’s debate over wind power. Global energy firms want to erect several hundred new giant windmills from Cape Vincent in the West to Clinton County in the East. The promise of renewable energy and a whole lot of money has crashed into worries about views, noise, birds, bats, property values – you name it. We’ve reported extensively on the pros- and cons- of wind power. You can listen to our ongoing coverage on our website, ncpr.org. Today we look at the life on – or maybe under - an industrial-size wind farm. The Maple Ridge wind farm’s 195 turbines have been spinning out power on the Tug Hill Plateau for almost three years now. David Sommerstein knocked on doors of the wind farm’s human neighbors.
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NCPR News Colleges call for reconsideration of the drinking age 08/26/08
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Neighboring North Country colleges have joined a growing movement calling for reconsideration of the 21-year-old drinking age. Clarkson University, in Potsdam, and St. Lawrence University, in Canton, join more than 100 colleges in what’s called the Amethyst Initiative. They want to bring alcohol issues out in the open. St. Lawrence Pres. Dan Sullivan says St. Lawrence tackles drinking head-on. Every incoming student has to take an alcohol education class. But Sullivan told Martha Foley he's afraid that's not working.
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NCPR News Heard Up North: Changing the gas price 08/25/08
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The price of a regular gallon of gasoline has dipped below $3.90 in many parts of the North Country. That means gas station employees are scrambling out with a pole and suction cup to change the prices every day. David Sommerstein has this Heard Up North from the Sunoco station in Lowville.
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NCPR News Ogdensburg acquires kosher cheese plant 08/22/08
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The city of Ogdensburg has taken over ownership of a troubled kosher cheese plant. St. Lawrence Food Corporation, owned by Brooklyn-based Moshe Banayan, was $90,000 delinquent on its tax bill to the city. It also owes the St. Lawrence County IDA more than $300,000. Banayan filed for bankruptcy in April. The plant is still making kosher swiss, provolone, and other cheeses. 50 people are still working there. Ogdensburg manager Art Sciorra told David Sommerstein the city took over the facility to prevent Banayan from selling off the equipment.
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NCPR News Pros and cons persist as Walmart opens in Potsdam 08/14/08
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The Potsdam Walmart parking lot was jam-packed. The 188,000 sq. ft. Supercenter just outside Potsdam on the main road to Canton opened its doors yesterday. The grand opening ended a decade-long quest to locate in the community. There was a site change, public hearings with volatile exchanges between Walmart foes and friends. There was a court challenge that lasted more than a year, and a dust-up between the village and the retail giant over extending a sewer line to the store. David Sommerstein hit the streets of downtown Potsdam for reaction yesterday. He spoke with Martha Foley.
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NCPR News Frozen River: St. Lawrence smuggling thriller early hit 08/13/08
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A film about smuggling illegal immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River is drawing rave reviews in its first run of screenings. Frozen River tells the story of two women, one a Mohawk from Akwesasne, who are driven by poverty and dire circumstances to smuggle a Pakistani woman and her baby across the US-Canada border. David Edelstein, who writes reviews for NPR’s Fresh Air, calls the film "gripping stuff." Kenneth Turan said on Morning Edition, "Frozen River will restore your faith in American independent film." The movie won the Grand Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. David Sommerstein caught up with Courtney Hunt by phone earlier this week. She says she knows the North Country because her husband is from Malone. She says it was women smugglers who really attracted her to the subject matter of Frozen River.
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NCPR News Grass pellets: growing the North Country's own energy 08/12/08
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Tom Lee surveys the switchgrass plots he planted this spring.
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Lee's second year switchgrass is looking good.
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The price of oil has been going down lately, but people are still worried about heating their homes this winter. The skyrocketing prices of oil and natural gas are fueling a run on pellet stoves. A winter’s heat from pellet stoves can cost half of that from an oil furnace. Dealers across the North Country report they can’t keep up with demand. The pellets themselves are made from wood scraps at factories across North America. But alternative energy and agricultural leaders believe high prices are hastening the day when pellets are made from grass. And they hope that grass will be grown right here in the North Country. David Sommerstein reports.
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NCPR News Study: Seaway closure not needed to fight invasives 08/08/08
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The ballast tanks of foreign Seaway ships are the number one vector of invasive species in the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes. Invaders like the zebra mussel and round goby cost the region hundreds of million dollars a year. Some environmentalists and scientists have called for the Seaway to turn away foreign freighters until they install sophisticated treatment systems to clean the ballast tanks. A new report by the National Academy of Sciences says that’s not necessary. The 4-year study by 13 scientists says rules adopted this year requiring all foreign ships to flush their ballast tanks with salt water before entering the Great Lakes are sufficient. U.S. Seaway Adminstrator Terry Johnson praised the committee’s findings. He said closing the Seaway to foreign traffic would be “legally unfeasible, politically unrealistic, and economically disastrous” for the U.S. and Canada. Hugh MacIsaac was a member of the study team. He researches invasive species at the University of Windsor in Ontario. MacIsaac told David Sommerstein that salt-water flushing of ballast tanks, known as “swish and spit,” is the best existing way to stop invasives. And it lacks the political controversy closing the Seaway to foreign ships would have.
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NCPR News Ins and outs of proposed burn ban 08/04/08
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Tomorrow night is the last public comment session in the North Country about the state’s proposed ban on burn barrels and other forms of opening burning. It’ll be held from 4 to 8 at SUNY Canton. There’s widespread agreement that burning garbage outside is very bad for public health and the environment. But there are concerns about unintended economic consequences. As David Sommerstein reports, the devil’s in the details.
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David Sommerstein, NCPR's roving St. Lawrence Valley/Fort Drum/Tug Hill reporter, began his career in radio, strangely enough, as a high school Spanish teacher in Buffalo. While drilling verb conjugations and teaching a love for Latino culture during the day, he sat in as a late night jazz and Latin DJ at Buffalo's NPR affiliate, WBFO. The radio bug bit, and David found his way to southern Colorado/northern New Mexico (the Taos/Santa Fe area) where he was Program Director, Music Director, Volunteer Coordinator, and "Just About Anything Else You Can Think Of" Director at NPR affiliate KRZA. Since joining NCPR's news department, David has reported from the chilly deck of a St. Lawrence icebreaker, the power-chord filled stage of the High School Rock Band Festival, and the tense Albanian street market of post-war Kosovo with soldiers from Fort Drum. David also gets to fulfill his passion for music of all kinds when he spins world dance and groove music on editions of The Beat Authority. E-mail

Recent David Sommerstein stories carried by NPR:

David Sommerstein for NPR
August 6, 2008 | NPR· With heating oil prices projected to soar, homeowners in the Northeast are bracing for a budget-stretching winter. So are the people who deliver the oil. They are caught in the middle between global oil traders and anxious customers.
 
August 5, 2008 | NPR· It's still hot outside, but Northeasterners are already bracing for the cold. Heating oil prices have almost doubled over last year. Kerosene and natural gas are up, too. Local officials are preparing for what they fear could be a drawn-out crisis this winter.
 
June 29, 2008 | NPR· Sports blogs give fans more information about their favorite teams than ever before. Readers of a popular blog about the New York Yankees are now meeting in real life to watch a ball game.
 
March 21, 2008 | NPR· With drunken-driving offenses spiraling dangerously out-of-control at Fort Drum as soldiers return from Iraq, the base commander orders the post newspaper to publish the names and pictures of the arrested soldiers in what he calls an effort to shame troops into changing their dangerous habits.
 
March 16, 2008 | NPR· Sick and tired of bake sales to raise money for school projects? Try donkey basketball. Schools around the country are inviting the braying animals to put on a show in the school gymnasium. But not everyone thinks the donkeys are having as good a time as the fans.
 
December 6, 2007 | NPR· A political backlash killed a plan in New York to give illegal immigrants drivers licenses. But that hasn't taken immigrants off the roads. Life without a drivers license has pros and cons for farm workers in rural upstate New York.
 
November 4, 2007 | NPR· The Army's most battle-tested brigade is returning to Fort Drum in New York. Some members of the 10th Mountain Division's Second Brigade have done three tours in Iraq.
 
September 28, 2007 | NPR· The value of the Canadian dollar is now about equal to the U.S. dollar, a change that has touched off a bit of a shopping spree along the international border. Reporter David Sommerstein checks in from a mall in Massena, N.Y., near the St. Lawrence River.
 
May 15, 2007 | NPR· U.S. troops continue to search for three American soldiers believed captured by an al-Qaida-affiliated group during an ambush Saturday south of Baghdad. Four soldiers were killed in the attack. Army officials confirm that all seven men were members of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum.
 
May 7, 2007 | NPR· Each spring, nature deals parts of the rural North a cruel fate: the arrival of black flies. But Andrea Malik, a resident of northern New York, bushwhacks into the deepest woods to fight back with a pesticide that kills only black flies and mosquitoes.