CHRIS MORELLI cmorelli@lockhaven.com
BELLEFONTE A Bellefonte resident brought her concerns about a local funeral home to borough council earlier this week.
During public comment on Monday night, Elizabeth Hay spoke at length about the Wetzler Funeral Service and Victorian Crematory Inc., located at 206 N. Spring St.
According to Hay, there is a “strong odor” coming from the funeral home.
“With some regularity, we will smell charred bodies,” Hay said. “We will get that smell. It’s very disconcerting. It’s very upsetting. I know there’s been some issues with that even before I moved in here.”
Hay said she has lived a few doors down from the funeral home for four years.
BELLEFONTE Bellefonte Borough Council has an open seat.
At Monday night’s borough council meeting, council accepted the resignation of member Gina Thompson. Thompson, who represented the south ward, recently accepted a part-time position in the borough as HARB’s Zoning and Planning administrator.
Borough manager Ralph Stewart explained Thompson’s resignation letter.
“Gina is taking a position in the borough,” Stewart said. “We did advertise, just like we do with all of our positions that go to the outside. We had one applicant and it turned out to be Gina … she has some very good experience.”
Because the position with HARB represents a conflict of interest, Thompson was forced to give up her seat on council.
A new study led by a statewide environmental nonprofit organization found microplastics in each of 53 Pennsylvania waterways sampled, including four in Centre County.
The report “Microplastics in Pennsylvania,” released Wednesday by PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center found that samples taken from Spring Creek, Slab Cabin Run, Buffalo Run and Cedar Run all contained microplastics tiny pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters in length.
More than 300 samples were collected from bodies of water in every corner of the state for the study, which used a citizen-science protocol developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that has been implemented across the country to identify microplastic contamination.
CHRIS MORELLI cmorelli@lockhaven.com
BELLEFONTE The vandalism that took place on the second weekend of 2021 at Jake’s Cards and Games in Bellefonte continues to send shock waves through the community.
The mural was vandalized on Jan. 8 with messages of hate from the same white supremacist group that left stickers throughout downtown State College recently.
The vandalism occurred in the wake of the Capitol riot that occurred in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. Someone used stencils and spray paint to deface Bellefonte’s Pride wall mural with the website of the white supremacist group Patriot Front in numerous places as well as an image of the United States with one of the group’s slogans, “Not stolen, conquered.”
WHYY
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Kara Holsopple, The Allegheny FrontDecember 31, 2020
The coke plant along the Monongahela River, viewed from Monessen’s downtown. (Kara Holsopple/Allegheny Front)
This article originally appeared on StateImpact Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have climate plans to cut carbon emissions and prepare for the impacts of global warming. But what about the smaller cities and towns in-between? A free state program, in its second year, is helping to bridge the gap.
Monessen, a small city of about 7,000 in Westmoreland County, is one of the participants in this year’s cohort. Most of Monessen is on a hill, sloping towards the Monongahela River, but the downtown is flat a floodplain.