Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Awards Scholarships

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LUDLOW, Mass. — The Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Corporation (BWPCC) has selected two students from the Lanesborough/Hancock area, one from the Mount Greylock Regional High School class of 2025 and one from the McCann Technical School class of 2025, to receive $1,000 scholarships. 
 
The scholarships are awarded to qualifying seniors at select schools in the Berkshires who are planning to attend either a two- or four-year college or trade school program.
 
This is the third year of the BWPCC scholarship program. The BWPCC owns and operates the Berkshire Wind Power Project, a 12-turbine, 19.6-megawatt wind farm located on Brodie Mountain in Hancock and Lanesborough. The non-profit BWPCC consists of 16 municipal utilities located in Ashburnham, Boylston, Chicopee, Groton, Holden, Hull, Ipswich, Marblehead, Paxton, Peabody, Russell, Shrewsbury, Sterling, Templeton, Wakefield, and West Boylston, and their joint action agency, the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co. 
 
This year's scholarship recipients are Malia Koffi (Mount Greylock) of Lanesborough and Dylan Turner (McCann) of Hancock.
 
Koffi will attend Berkshire Community College and major in Health Sciences. In high school, she served as captain of the Mount Greylock softball team, as a member of the Black Student Union, and was a three-time recipient of the Greylock Way Award, which recognizes students and staff who exemplify the school's core values of Accountability, Respect, Integrity, Stewardship, and Excellence in their daily lives.
 
Turner will attend the Elite Lineman Training Institute in Georgia. While at McCann, he played on the varsity baseball team, was a member of the National Honor Society, and participated in SkillsUSA, and McCann's Corporate Work Experience, where he worked for a local electrician.
 
"We are proud to support the 2025 Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Corporation scholarship recipients, whose proactive perseverance was demonstrated throughout their successful high school journeys,” said MMWEC Chief Executive Officer Ron DeCurzio.
 
Since 1998, MMWEC has awarded $70,000 in scholarships to help students defray the cost of higher education.
 
MMWEC is a not-for-profit, public corporation and political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts created by an Act of the General Court in 1975 and authorized to issue tax-exempt debt to finance a wide range of energy facilities.  MMWEC provides a variety of power supply, financial, risk management and other services to the state's consumer-owned, municipal utilities.  It is the largest provider of asset-owned generation for municipal light departments in New England.

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North Adams City Council Hears Housing Authority Grievances

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Unhealthy odors, drugs, mold, peeling paint, unsecured doors, lack of security and frightened residents. 
 
That was the list of grievances that current and former tenants of the North Adams Housing Authority's high rise on Ashland Street laid before the City Council on Tuesday. 
 
"I've stayed quiet long enough. I've been professional long enough. Somebody needs to do something. Damn it! It's getting too bad over there. It's worse than it's ever been. There's more drug people there. There's more dealers there. There's drunks rolling around in there, drinking out front, doing drugs out front," said Tenants Association President Cory Fortin. 
 
"Everybody's pointing fingers at everybody. Let's all get together and do this damn thing. Get it done. I'm sick of it."
 
Tenants have been speaking out at council meetings about security issues and Councilor Lillian Zavatsky, liaison to the authority, requested time for Fortin to speak. The authority has been in some upheaval lately with the loss of commissioner and the abrupt resignation of the executive director last week. 
 
The association had called for a formal grievance hearing against Jennifer Hohn after she locked their offices. Hohn has not publicly spoken about her resignation. The Housing Authority is meeting on Thursday for "acknowledgement" of the vacancy. 
 
"My paperwork that I put in for my maintenance request, ah, disappeared. We have nothing on record. There's a lot of things that this board, this council, the mayor, everybody needs to look at the big picture," Fortin said, adding that some tenants were worried about attending the meeting because of fears of retaliation. "All I'm asking for is the right support and for this this council, this mayor, and everybody to do what's right."
 
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