Kobie Orande Gary, a son of prominent Stuart attorney Willie Gary, is one of three men indicted Thursday on federal charges of maintaining a grow house where authorities say they found 213 marijuana plants.

The U.S. District Court grand jury in Fort Pierce indicted Kobie Gary, 30, of Jensen Beach; Stephen Shepherd, 33, a tenant at the $125,030 home in the 7200 block of Mulberry Drive in Hobe Sound that was the alleged grow house; and Scott Daniel Gibson of Stuart. (more…)

Workers build pieces of FPL's new solar plant near Indiantown.

These frames will eventually hold mirrors to collect the sun's energy.

With the first mirrors set to arrive this week, that promise is starting to take shape.

“We want to harness all that free energy,” said John Gnecco, FPL’s director of project development.

The idea of solar-thermal energy sounds easy enough, and it is. Kind of.

In the most basic terms, the process works like this: The sun’s light strikes a mirror and is beamed into a pipe, which “catches” the energy and moves it, via molten liquid, into a power plant where it boils water into steam. The steam is used for power.

Jose Suarez, a spokesman for FPL, explains it this way: “When the sun comes up every day, you’re able to take your foot off the gas and let the sun generate steam.”

What seems simple on paper, though, is far more complex on the ground. (more…)

INDIANTOWN — Beyond the taqueria and past the cattle ranches here, more than 700 workers are busy building the largest solar-power plant in Florida.

They’re assembling giant aluminum frames that stretch 40 feet long and weigh 2,800 pounds apiece.

When the frames are finished, they will fit them with 192,000 mirrors.

And, eventually, they will attach steel pipes to hold liquid that the sun will heat to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

To see the scene at Florida Power & Light Co.’s solar-thermal plant in western Martin County is to think that a new era of clean energy has finally dawned in the Sunshine State.

But not so fast.

Despite lots of talk about the need to be green, state lawmakers dragged their feet on proposed legislation this year. They never managed to pass a renewable-energy bill.

FPL says it has more solar projects ready to go — but it can’t build them until the state approves a law allowing it to recover the costs of construction. (more…)

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — FPL halted the start-up of a nuclear generator at its nuclear plant in St. Lucie County, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report released Tuesday.

FPL spokesman Mark Bubriski said the unit had been temporarily shut down to fix a pump motor and was getting ready to be rebooted Monday. “As part of our normal start-up procedures, operators were conducting inspections of plant systems and equipment when they recognized a valve requiring additional maintenance,” Bubriski said.
(more…)

St. Lucie County officials knew their 7,500-square-foot bunker of an Emergency Operations Center was undersized and low-tech.

“We didn’t realize how inadequate it was until we had to live there for 30 days,” former County Administrator Doug Anderson said, referring to the 2004 hurricane season, when the county took a direct hit from two storms in three weeks.

When Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne raked over the area, emergency workers camped out at the EOC to coordinate the county’s recovery. They slept on floors, in hallways, under desks.

They won’t have to endure those conditions again.

Last week, the county opened its new EOC — a $12.75 million, 27,282-square-foot building that replaces the 23-year-old center on Rock Road.

Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light Co. wrote the county a $400,000 check last week to help cover the tab. In exchange, the state’s largest utility wants to use the state-of-the-art EOC as a backup hurricane command center, just in case its Miami and West Palm Beach centers end up in the direct path of a major hurricane.

“Then we would bring our team here,” Amy Brunjes, external affairs manager for FPL on the Treasure Coast, said at the EOC last week.

Unlike the old emergency hub, which was mostly underground, the new EOC at the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds was built with eco-friendly features: lots of natural light; chairs made from recycled materials.

The building has sleeping quarters, enclosed generators, a morgue available on site and a helicopter pad outside.

The odds are better than picking all six Powerball numbers — but still pretty slim.

Of the 8,000 or so job-hunters that flooded tiny Indiantown last month with hopes of landing work building a solar-power plant, about 50 to 100 could get offers in July.

That’s when Lauren Engineers & Constructors — the contractor overseeing construction of Florida Power & Light Co.’s solar-thermal plant — expects to need the first batch of employees, mostly concrete helpers and finishers. (more…)

INDIANTOWN — Another 3,500 job applications were taken Saturday at Timer Powers Park in Indiantown on the last day of a two-day job fair to recruit workers for the Florida Power & Light Co. Solar Power facility in western Martin County.

In all, 8,000 applied for some 1,100 jobs the project is expected to bring to the area before construction closes at the end of next year.

“That’s a fair but maybe conservative number,” said John Dinger of Workforce Solutions, which collected the applications and will immediately begin pre-screening them.
(more…)

Wondering if Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed 300-mile natural gas pipeline will cut through your property?

The utility is hosting a meeting 4-8 p.m. today at the Indiantown Civic Center to give residents an up-close look at its plans for the proposed $1.5 billion project.

FPL announced plans for the Florida EnergySecure Line earlier this month, pitching it as a way to make the state less vulnerable to disruptions in natural gas supplies from the Gulf of Mexico.

If approved by the Florida Public Service Commission, the pipeline would run from Palm Beach County to Bradford County in north-central Florida, with about 10 miles in Martin County.

FPL wants the pipeline up and running as soon as 2014.

Ray Kofke and three buddies piled into a Ford Escape early this morning and cruised out of Lee County, one of the hardest-hit parts of the state in this recession.

They drove more than two hours to another suffering region with a collective goal: getting jobs.

In Indiantown, they found lots of competition. More than 4,300 people flocked to the rural community for a chance to be among the 1,000 hires needed to build Florida Power & Light Co.’s new solar plant. (more…)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is hosting open houses next week to answer questions about safety at Florida Power & Light Co.’s two nuclear plants.

NRC staff will be on hand starting at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the St. Lucie nuclear plant’s FPL Energy Encounter building, 6501 S. AIA, Jensen Beach.

The Turkey Point nuclear plant open house is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday at Homestead City Hall.